Introduction
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This issue of The Forum covers the 2016 elections in the United States. Nicolas Jacobs and James Ceaser put the presidential election in historical context by comparing it to other presidential elections since 1896. Edward Carmines, Michael Ensley and Michael Wagner examine Donald Trump’s appeal to populist voters and show how such voters organized their ideological beliefs around social and economic issues. Byron Shafer and Regina Wagner distill patterns in modern American elections and situate 2016 relative to that pattern. Barry Burden, Evan Crawford and Michael DeCrescenzo examine the “gender gap” between the parties and find it unexceptional and canceled out by partisanship. Samara Klar, Christopher Weber and Yanna Krupnikov draw on psychology to explain why some voters may have disguised their intention to vote for Trump from pollsters. Erika Franklin Fowler, Travis Ridout and Michael Franz explore how the presidential election broke from previous patterns of campaign advertising while congressional elections followed them. Young Mie Kim details how algorithms and digital advertising can increase inequality in political engagement. Morton Keller closes with a historian’s preliminary judgement on how transformative the 2016 election is likely to be.
In our ongoing series of scholar appreciations, Jaime Carson reflects on Gary Jacobson’s 40-year career studying U.S. congressional elections, making him arguably the world’s leading expert on the subject.
In the book reviews, Jennifer Nicoll-Victor reads Ray La Raja and Brian Schaffner’s Campaign Finance and Political Polarization and finds that while campaign finance regulations may reduce corruption, they threaten to increase political acrimony. Bruce Stinebrickner takes up Charles Murray’s By the People and argues that his call for more limited government to be based on quintessentially American assumptions.
©2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The 2016 Presidential Election by the Numbers and in Historical Perspective
- Ideological Heterogeneity and the Rise of Donald Trump
- Modern Eras and Alternative Futures: The American Elections of 2016 in the Longest Run
- The Unexceptional Gender Gap of 2016
- Social Desirability Bias in the 2016 Presidential Election
- Political Advertising in 2016: The Presidential Election as Outlier?
- Algorithmic Opportunity: Digital Advertising and Inequality in Political Involvement
- 2016: Fire Bell in the Night Or False Alarm?
- Gary C. Jacobson and the Politics of Congressional Elections
- Book Reviews
- Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail
- By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- The 2016 Presidential Election by the Numbers and in Historical Perspective
- Ideological Heterogeneity and the Rise of Donald Trump
- Modern Eras and Alternative Futures: The American Elections of 2016 in the Longest Run
- The Unexceptional Gender Gap of 2016
- Social Desirability Bias in the 2016 Presidential Election
- Political Advertising in 2016: The Presidential Election as Outlier?
- Algorithmic Opportunity: Digital Advertising and Inequality in Political Involvement
- 2016: Fire Bell in the Night Or False Alarm?
- Gary C. Jacobson and the Politics of Congressional Elections
- Book Reviews
- Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail
- By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
