Kirjahaku

Every four years Americans are inundated with campaign activities from candidates attempting to become the next president of the United States. An under-researched area of these campaign activities are campaign visits—rallies, town hall meetings, and candidate meet-and-greets for example. Almost all candidates conduct visits, yet we do not have a good understanding of how they affect voters. Wendland tackles four big questions throughout Campaigns That Matter: 1) Do campaigns matter? 2) Are campaign visits strategic? 3) Do visits help mobilize voters? 4) Do visits impact candidate preference? Using a unique set of data that includes all visits conducted throughout the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential nominating contests, Wendland explores how these visits affected voters compared to traditional measures of advertisements, campaign spending, and momentum. In doing so, Wendland has provided us with a more comprehensive picture of how voters make decisions in the voting booth.

Since established by the Founding Fathers, the Electoral College was designated to be appoint the president to ensure that the voting process was anti-majoritarian in nature. However, with the advancements of technology allowing for a meaningful and engaged popular vote to ensure the U.S. is led by a president who received the most votes, the Founders concerns about the inability for the country to run a meaningful nationwide election are no longer relevant, leaving room for change. In The Constant Two Plan: Reforming the Electoral College to Account for the National Popular Vote, Jay Wendland explores a novel approach to reforming the Electoral College to allocate for two electoral votes per state alongside the votes from the American public in order to bring the American presidential election process more in line with democratic norms and principles. Wedland demonstrates that the major extant reform plans in place would perform worse than the existing system and a new idea is needed. The Constant Two Plan remedies the small state bias, ensuring the popular vote winner becomes president, and acknowledges the federalist principle many have come to associate with the Electoral College.