1. Electoral Politics

2. Voters and elections
 Impacts of being a rational actor
– We pay attention to information that matters most
for our daily life
– Most people don’t think political information is in
that category
– Voters have low levels of information

3. How we vote--
 Heuristics or Cognitive Shortcuts– rather than getting
full information we use and indicator that can
approximate our preferences.
– Party
– Follow opinion of someone we trust
– Gender
 Split- Ticket Voting– vote for different parties in
different races.
– Strategic reasons– don’t want government getting too
powerful (not a lot of evidence to support this theory)
– Sincere voting– responding to differences between contests
and applying different criteria. I.E., We want different things
from a congressperson, a president, a judge, and a county
commissioner.

4.  Impacts on elections
– Partisanship as a cognitive shortcut (or heuristic)
 Always vote a particular party
– Issues as a cognitive shortcut (or heuristic)
 Vote for the person who has the same opinion as me on
issue X.
 Common heuristic issues include abortion, gay rights,
and taxes.
– Candidate characteristics
 The tall guy always wins
 Trust
 Charismatic and photogenic candidates

5. How we vote--
 Heuristics or Cognitive Shortcuts
– Party
– Personality?
What about Split Ticket Voting?
 Prospective Voting– what kind of politician will the
candidate be?
– Political Issues
– Other reasons
 Retrospective Voting– how good a job did the
politician do last term? Is my life better or worse?

6. Gerrymandering
 a controversial form of redistricting in which
electoral district or constituency boundaries are
manipulated for an electoral advantage.
– Incumbency
– Race

7. Notice how crazy
district #12 looks!

8. Rep. Mike McIntyre

9. Rep. Larry Kissell

10. Legal History
 Wesberry v. Sanders (1964)
– Districts must be relatively equal in population.
– Districts must be contiguous
– Districts must be compact
 Davis v. Bandemer (1985)
– Drawing districts based on party is OK.
 Thornburg v. Ginges (1986)
– Cannot draw lines to unfairly dilute minority representation.
– Race cannot be the ONLY factor in drawing majority-
minority districts.

11. Gerrymandering
 a controversial form of redistricting in which electoral
district or constituency boundaries are manipulated for
an electoral advantage.
– Incumbency
– Race
– Partisanship
 The Drama part I
 The Drama part II
 Oral Arguments
 Court’s Decision
Click the underlined words
to hear the NPR stories on
the Texas redistricting story!

12. Political Implications
Packing and Cracking
Cracking– Breaking up
one group so that they
don’t have a chance of
winning a majority
Packing– Concentrating
a group in one district to
dilute their impact across
districts.
Note: Demographically
the district is evenly split.
But after cracking
and packing,
representation is
not competitive.

13. Incumbent Advantages-
 Name Recognition
 Ties to elites, fundraising
 Allow for retrospective
voting
 Electability
 Pork Barrel
 Case Work
 Political power/ Seniority in
committees
The Big Dig

15. Political Implications

17. Raising money
 Individual Donors
– Rise of the internet means individual donors
continue to matter tremendously!
 Parties
– National
– State
 PACs
– Types
– Bundling

18. 527 Issue Campaigns
 Cannot engage in direct electioneering
 Limits on how close to the election ads can
run
 Are independent and not controlled by the
candidate.

19. Tapping in to how we vote in the
modern age-- Commercials
 Presidential
 A brief history of attack ads.