Making Sense of the 2016 Elections: A CQ Press Guide

by Brian Schaffner, John A. Clark

Overview

Get a big picture understanding of what happened in the 2016 elections and why. Designed to be used as a supplement to American politics texts, this brief overview from Brian Schaffner and John Clark provides a concise analysis, going beyond horserace journalism, and gives students an accessible insight into political scientists' view of this ground breaking election. Students will benefit from seeing how broader political science concepts apply to a campaign and election that is fresh in their minds. Whether packaged with another SAGE | CQ Press title or used on its own, Schaffner and Clark’s Making Sense of the 2016 Elections will give your students the key insight they need.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506384191
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	01/31/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	48
Sales rank:	1,000,481
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Brian Schaffner is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a faculty associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is also the Founding Director of the UMass Poll and a co-PI for the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Schaffner’s research focuses on public opinion, campaigns and elections, political parties, and legislative politics. He is the coauthor of the book Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail, the coeditor of the book Winning with Words: The Origins&Impact of Political Framing, and coauthor of Understanding Political Science Research Methods: The Challenge of Inference. His research has also appeared in over thirty journal articles.
John A. Clark is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Western Michigan University. Clark’s research focuses on political parties, campaigns and elections, legislative politics, and the politics of the American South. He is the coeditor of Southern Political Party Activists and Party Organization and Activism in the American South, which won the 1999 V. O. Key Award as the best book on Southern politics. He has authored or coauthored more than thirty book chapters and articles in scholarly journals. Since 2002, he and Schaffner have coauthored a series of short monographs analyzing the presidential and midterm elections; 2016 marks the eighth in the series.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Electoral Landscape in 2016
Choosing the Presidential Nominees
The Invisible Primary
The Democratic Party Decides on Clinton
The Republican Party Decides Not to Decide
The General Election Campaign
The Case for Thinking the Campaign Mattered
The Case for Thinking the Campaign Was of Minimal Importance
Campaigns Are Mostly about Mobilization
The Outcome
Another Electoral College/Popular Vote Split
Where the Election Was Won
How Key Groups Voted
Why People Voted for Trump
The Battle for Control of Congress
How Republicans Kept the Senate Red
Why Republicans Retained Their House Majority
Diversity in Congress
The 2016 Elections in the States
Governors and State Legislatures
Ballot Proposals
Putting the 2016 Election into Context
Notes
About the Authors