Chapter 19 Exercises

These exercises ask you to apply the analytical frameworks of this chapter to current data and to your own political environment. They are designed to be done individually or in small discussion groups. Some require internet access to public data sources; all have been written so that the data needed is freely available without paywalls or special accounts.

When an exercise asks you to take a position on a contested question, your first job is to make sure you understand the strongest version of each side's argument before stating your own.

Exercise 19.1 — Identify Your State's Primary Type

Determine the type of primary your state uses for federal elections — closed, open, or semi-closed — and answer the questions below.

Steps:

  1. Visit your Secretary of State's website (or the National Conference of State Legislatures' database, www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/state-primary-election-types). Identify whether your state holds a closed, open, or semi-closed primary for federal races.
  2. Find out whether the rules differ between presidential and congressional primaries in your state.
  3. Look at the Wikipedia article for the most recent presidential primary in your state and read the "rules" or "process" section.

Answer:

  • What type of primary does your state hold? Cite the source.
  • If you are a registered voter, are you eligible to vote in your party's primary under those rules?
  • What is the case (in §19.10.4) for closed primaries? For open primaries? Which case do you find more persuasive given your state's politics, and why?
  • Identify one election in your state in the past decade in which the primary type plausibly affected the outcome (a closed primary excluded independents who would have voted; an open primary admitted cross-party voters who shifted the result; etc.). If you cannot identify one, explain why such cases are rare or hard to identify.

This exercise should take 30–45 minutes and should be 400–600 words in your written answer.

Exercise 19.2 — Trace a Recent Realignment Story

Pick one of the realignment claims discussed in §19.5 and §19.8 and evaluate the empirical evidence for and against it.

Choose one:

  • The education realignment (white college-educated voters shifting Democratic since 2008)
  • The Hispanic Republican shift (Hispanic voters, especially men, shifting toward Republicans 2012–2024)
  • The Southern realignment (Southern white voters shifting Republican from 1968 onward)
  • The 2016 critical-election thesis (whether 2016 marked a Seventh Party System)

Steps:

  1. Find at least two sources making the case for the realignment claim and at least two making the case against.
  2. Identify the data each source relies on (election returns, exit polls, ANES survey data, etc.).
  3. Identify any methodological disagreements between the sources (different definitions of "Hispanic," different ways of measuring "education," different baselines).

Answer:

  • State the realignment claim in your own words.
  • Summarize the strongest version of the case for the realignment.
  • Summarize the strongest version of the case against the realignment (or against treating it as a "critical" realignment rather than gradual change).
  • Cite at least three primary or secondary sources you consulted (academic articles, ANES tables, Pew analyses, Cook Political Report breakdowns).
  • State your own assessment, with reasons.

This exercise should take 60–90 minutes and should be 700–1,000 words.

Exercise 19.3 — Analyze the Educational-Attainment Realignment Data

Locate the 2024 exit poll or ANES data on vote share by education level. Pew Research, Catalist, and ANES are good sources. Build a simple table comparing 2008 and 2024 results.

Steps:

  1. Find a credible source for 2008 vote share by education (e.g., the Pew "validated voters" series, ANES 2008 cumulative data, or exit polls reported by major news organizations).
  2. Find the corresponding 2024 data from the same or comparable source.
  3. Construct a 2x2 table showing 2008 and 2024 Democratic and Republican vote share for college-educated and non-college voters. (Optional: split by race.)

Answer:

  • Show your table.
  • Calculate the size of the education gap in 2008 and in 2024 (the difference in Democratic vote share between college and non-college voters).
  • Calculate the change in the education gap between the two years.
  • The text claims a sixteen-point swing among white college graduates between 2000 and 2024. Does your data support, contradict, or refine that claim?
  • What are the limitations of using exit polls or post-election surveys to make these comparisons?

This exercise should take 60–90 minutes and should be 600–800 words.

Exercise 19.4 — Steel-Man RCV vs. Plurality

Write two essays of approximately equal length: one steel-manning the case for Ranked-Choice Voting, one steel-manning the case for retaining first-past-the-post (FPTP). Each essay should make the strongest empirical and theoretical argument for its position. You should not state which position you actually hold.

Steel-manning rules:

  • Cite at least one academic source per essay.
  • Address the Burlington 2009 election and the Alaska 2022 special election in both essays — describe what each side says about those cases.
  • Address the empirical evidence on voter satisfaction, turnout, and outcome moderation in jurisdictions that have adopted RCV.
  • Use the language each side actually uses for itself.

Answer:

  • Two essays of 350–500 words each, totaling 700–1,000 words.
  • Each essay should be written in its own voice — that is, an FPTP defender writing the FPTP case would not say "RCV proponents claim X but…"; they would say, "X is true."
  • Append a brief (100–150 word) reflection on which case was harder to steel-man, and why.

This exercise should take 90–120 minutes.

Exercise 19.5 — Democracy Audit: Your District's Party-Organization Activity

Identify the local party committees in your congressional district — both the Democratic and Republican county or district committees — and assess their actual activity level.

Steps:

  1. Find the websites or social-media pages for the Democratic and Republican county committees that cover your address. (Search "[your county] Democratic Party" and "[your county] Republican Party" or check your state party's directory.)
  2. Determine: How often do they meet? What is their staffing? What activities have they hosted in the past year? Do they have visible membership numbers? Do they have a budget reported publicly anywhere?
  3. If possible, attend (in person or via the party's livestream) one local party meeting. Observe the agenda, the attendance, and the discussion.

Answer:

  • Describe what you found for each party's local committee. Be specific.
  • Compare the two: is one more active than the other? Why might that be (urban/rural, demographics, candidate recruitment success, donor base)?
  • The text (§19.9) argues that local parties are mostly weak compared to mid-twentieth-century norms. Does what you found support or complicate that claim?
  • What activities does the local party do that you didn't expect? What activities does it not do that you would expect?

This exercise should take 90–120 minutes (longer if you attend a meeting) and should be 600–900 words.

Exercise 19.6 — Map Your State's Coalition Shifts

Pick a state of your choosing and map how its presidential-vote coalition has shifted over the past three to five elections.

Steps:

  1. Pull county-level results for your chosen state for 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024 (Wikipedia and 270toWin both have this data).
  2. Identify the top three counties that shifted toward Republicans across those years and the top three that shifted toward Democrats.
  3. Look up the demographic profile of each county (Census Bureau data on education, age, race, income, urban/rural).

Answer:

  • Show the data: which counties shifted, by how much, and in what direction?
  • Identify the demographic patterns: are the Republican-shifting counties whiter, less educated, more rural, or some combination? Are the Democratic-shifting counties more educated, more diverse, more urban?
  • Connect to the chapter's claims about the education and racial realignments.
  • Identify one county whose shift does not fit the dominant pattern. Speculate why.

This exercise should take 90–120 minutes and should be 700–1,000 words.

Exercise 19.7 — The "Party Decides" Thesis Across Two Primaries

Compare the 2016 Republican primary (won by Donald Trump against most party-establishment endorsements) and the 2020 Democratic primary (won by Joe Biden after a coordinated establishment endorsement post–South Carolina) as tests of the "party decides" thesis.

Steps:

  1. Read or skim Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller, The Party Decides (the introduction is enough — chapter 1 is freely available in many places, and the book's main argument is widely summarized). Or find a credible secondary summary.
  2. Pull endorsement data for both primaries — FiveThirtyEight maintained an endorsement tracker for both cycles that is still archived. Track which establishment Republicans endorsed in 2016 (and when) and which establishment Democrats endorsed Biden in 2020 (and when).
  3. Note the timing: when did endorsements coalesce? Before primary voting? After early-state results?

Answer:

  • Summarize the "party decides" thesis in two sentences.
  • Describe what happened in 2016 (Trump's path to nomination despite establishment opposition) and what happened in 2020 (Biden's establishment-backed coalescence after South Carolina).
  • Argue, with evidence, what these two cases together imply about the modern "party decides" thesis. Is it dead? Modified? Still operative under specific conditions?
  • What variable seems most important for the thesis to hold (size of the field, incumbent advantage, the timing of endorsements, the role of debates, the role of social media)?

This exercise should take 60–90 minutes and should be 600–900 words.

Exercise 19.8 — Predict the 2028 Primary

Based on the chapter, write a short analytical essay predicting one feature of the 2028 Republican or Democratic primary, with reasoning grounded in the frameworks from the chapter.

Steps:

  • Choose one party.
  • Choose one prediction: which faction will win, what kind of candidate will emerge as the front-runner, whether the establishment will coalesce, etc.
  • Ground your prediction in the structural and coalitional analysis from the chapter, not in your political preferences.

Answer:

  • 400–600 words.
  • State your prediction.
  • Explain the reasoning (which faction has more institutional power? More fundraising? More primary-electorate support? Whose internal tensions are more likely to be resolved by 2028?).
  • Identify one piece of evidence you have not yet seen that, if you saw it, would change your prediction.

This exercise should take 45–60 minutes.

Exercise 19.9 — The Spoiler Question

Choose one of the third-party candidacies discussed in §19.11 (Wallace 1968, Anderson 1980, Perot 1992, Nader 2000, or Stein 2016). Write an analysis of whether and to what extent the candidacy was a "spoiler" — that is, whether it changed the outcome of the election.

Steps:

  1. Find at least one academic study or statistically rigorous analysis of the candidacy's electoral effects. Herron and Lewis (2007) on Nader is one example; there are similar studies on Perot 1992 and Stein 2016.
  2. Identify the methodology used (county-level vote-share analysis, exit-poll analysis, counterfactual simulation).
  3. Assess the strength of the spoiler argument and the strength of the counter-arguments.

Answer:

  • 500–700 words.
  • Summarize the spoiler claim and the counter-claim.
  • Cite the empirical evidence on each side.
  • State your own assessment, including how confident you are.

This exercise should take 60–90 minutes.