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Opposition Research Assignment
Imagine that you work for one of the two major-party senatorial campaign committees: the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) or the National Republican Senatorial Campaign (NRSC). Both of these committees have political and research sections that conduct analyses of the political vulnerability of candidates of the opposing party.
Only one-third of the 100 members of the Senate are up for election every two years and winners get to hold their seats for six years. Moreover, Senate races are often highly competitive because the importance of the position. Accordingly, your boss at the Committee has assigned you the task of evaluating the vulnerability of one of the senators up for reelection in 2008. You need to give a four page assessment (plus tables and sources) of the vulnerability of your member and advice to the campaign committee.
Data Collection and Analysis
Demographic Characteristics of the State
You should construct tables showing the following:
(1) Racial composition of the state (and the U.S.); (2) Income distribution of the state (and the U.S.).
Basic Background: Naturally, the text should relate to the tables but it should also contain additional information and analysis. How wealthy or poor is the state compared to others? Is the state largely urban, suburban, or rural? What are its major regions? What is the racial or ethnic composition of the state?
Political Demographics: How well is the state coping with the economic crisis? Have any of its industries suffered especially strongly or is it weathering the downturn relatively well? Is unemployment above or below the national average? Do any major ethnic groups in the state have strong foreign policy concerns? Has the senator been attentive to these concerns and earned support from these groups?
Of course, you should feel free to gather and to discuss additional demographic information which you think may be helpful in assessing the senator’s political chances in 2008.
Political Characteristics of the State and Senator
You should construct a table or tables showing the following:
(1) How did the state (and the U.S.) vote in past presidential elections? (2) How did the state vote in past elections for the U.S. Senate? (3) How did the state vote in past gubernatorial elections? 2
(4) Look at the senator’s last reelection contest. Which counties (or towns if your senator is from New England) voted most strongly and against the senator?
Again, the text should relate to the tables but should also go beyond them. Does the state usually support Democrats or Republicans in the statewide elections examined in the tables? Is it a marginal state or does it tilt heavily to candidates from one party? Even if the state is closely divided, is one part of the state more Democratic (or Republican) than other parts? Does the political composition of the state make it easier or more difficult for the senator to win the general election?
Is the senator likely to face a strong primary challenger? If so, from what wing of the party? Find out if this challenge is likely to have support among party activists by looking at state blogs which support candidates from the senator’s party.
Ideology of the Senator
Many different interest groups rate how strongly individual senators support their agenda. You should construct a table showing how various interest groups rated the senator. You may also consider collecting data on ratings for the other senator from the state in which your senator is seeking reelection if you think that may be useful.
Based on your examination of the state, does the ideology of the senator potentially make it difficult for the senator to win reelection in either the primary or the general election? Will Democratic senators encounter difficulties if they support the Obama Administration? Will Republican face choppy waters at home if they oppose it? Why or why not?
Committee Service
On what committees (or subcommittees) does the senator serve? You can present this information in a table or in the text depending on what you think is most useful. How might the senator be able to use their service on these committees to advantage their state and help secure reelection? For example, does a senator from a largely agricultural state serve on the banking committee?
Overall Assessment
No tables but sharp thinking and explanations are needed here. How vulnerable is the senator from the opposing party? Explain what factors make this senator a good or a bad target for your party in the next election. You should identify strong potential challengers to your representative. Your party’s senatorial committee has only limited resources so they do not want to waste them if there is no real probability of defeating the incumbent. Should the party invest its resources in this contest because it is a vulnerable seat? Remember that this paper is NOT meant to assess whether the senator does a good job but whether you think that the opposing party can defeat them in the next election. 3
Due Date and Grading
Due Date and Late Papers
The paper is due at the beginning of class on February 10th . Remember that for each day that the paper is late, the grade on the paper will be reduced by one-third (e.g. a paper that would have received a B receives a B- if it is one day late, a C+ if it is two days late). I would hate for you to lose points unnecessarily. Please be prepared to turn in a hard copy and do not email the paper to me because I cannot print them out. I recommend printing out the paper the night before in case there are any printer problems. If a paper is late, I will not count it as handed in until I receive a hard copy.
In addition to turning in a hard copy of your paper, you also must submit your paper electronically over the internet at http://www.turnitin.com/. Click on "New Users" in the upper-right-hand corner of the web page. Set the dialogue box to "student" and click next. At this page, you will need to enter your class ID and password. The class ID is 2559788 and the password is “America”.
Feel free to turn it in early on turnitin to make sure that you have cited sources properly. If you need to make changes, you are welcome to make them and then resubmit your paper electronically until the day that the paper is due in class. I would much rather students learn from their mistakes on the program than catch anyone in academic integrity violation.
Grades
Focus on the following areas in order to receive high marks:
(1) Data Collection: Have you collected all of the information and created all of the tables requested in the above detailed outline of the assignment? Have you collected any additional information needed to conduct the requested analysis of the senator’s reelection chances?
(2) Analysis: Does the paper make a well-thought out assessment of the senator’s chances for reelection based on the information which you have collected and what you have read about the state?
(3) Presentation and Citations: Is the paper well-written and free from spelling and grammatical errors? (Make sure to proofread and check out the writing center if clear writing is not one of your strengths.) Does the paper utilize the proper citation format outlined in class and on the guide posted to Blackboard? Do you use sources well or does your paper merely reflect the bias of your sources?
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Citations
Attached to this assignment is a guide on how to do parenthetical citations with a reference list in political science format. I realize that you may have learned other formats but this is the most common one in political science and should be used here. Fortunately, it is very easy. Of course, all information or ideas taken from another sources must be cited. Remember that any text taken from another source needs to be placed in quotation marks in addition to being cited appropriately.
Suggestions on Sources
The Almanac of American Politics 2008 published by the National Journal and Politics in America 2008 published by Congressional Quarterly (CQ) should both be very helpful in your research. They contain a wealth of political information about the state and senator you are studying.
You can also find demographic data on the Census website at: http://www.census.gov/
On this page, you can immediately find out a lot of information by selecting your state in the dialogue box labeled “Find An Area Profile with QuickFacts”.
The Current Population Survey (CPS), conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also contains a wealth of demographic data. You can find the results from the CPS at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/
On the lower right-hand side of this page, you can select a state and press the “Go” button to get quickly to information on a single state. On the new page, just click on the “at a glance” link towards the top of the page to learn more about unemployment and the importance of various sectors to the state’s economy.
Interest group ratings can often be found on the websites of the group as well as in the Almanac of American Politics and Politics in America .
C-SPAN has great links to selected political news and websites at: http://www.c-span.org/resources/capitalnews.asp
Links to liberal state blogs can be found on the left side of the home page of either http://www.leftyblogs.com/ or http://mydd.com/. Conservative state blogs are linked in the middle of the page at http://townhall.com/youropinion/
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You can search The Washington Post , The New York Times and many other newspapers from around the nation using LexisNexis Academic Universe through the university library website. The National Journal and CQ Weekly Report can also be accessed and searched through the university library website. (To find the National Journal , go to the National Journal Group’s Policy Central and click on National Journal .) You might also want to check out the CQ Voting and Elections , CQ Researcher , and CQ Congress Collection databases.
Congress and the party campaign committees also have websites that you may find useful. You can access both House committee websites through www.house.gov and Senate committee websites at www.senate.gov. The party committees’ websites may be found at www.nrsc.org, www.nrcc.org, www.dscc.org, and www.dccc.org. Remember that, like the official websites for the senators, these sites are heavily biased.
Information on past presidential election results can be found at www.uselectionatlas.org as well as the Almanac of American Politics and Politics in America .
There are many books on elections, representation, and congressional committees. I can only recommend a few here: Richard Fenno’s Congressmen in Committees is a classic that can provide lots of information on why members want to be on particular committees and the various goals that members achieve through membership on various committees. David Mayhew’s Congress: The Electoral Connection explains how the goal of achieving reelection can propel the actions of members of Congress. Morris Fiorina’s Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment is another classic on Congress. For information about congressional elections and what factors increase and decrease the competitiveness of elections, you cannot go wrong with either Paul S. Herrnson’s Congressional Elections or Gary C. Jacobson’s Politics of Congressional Elections .
Members of the Senate Up for Reelection in 2008
Democrats : Republicans : Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) Richard Shelby (Alabama) Barbara Boxer (California) Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) Chris Dodd (Connecticut) John McCain (Arizona) Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) Johnny Isakson (Georgia) Evan Bayh (Indiana) Mike Crapo (Idaho) Barbara Mikulski (Maryland) Chuck Grassley (Iowa) Harry Reid (Nevada) Jim Bunning (Kentucky) Chuck Schumer (New York) David Vitter (Louisiana) Byron Dorgan (North Dakota) Bob Bennett (Utah) Ron Wyden (Oregon) Judd Gregg (New Hampshire) Patrick Leahy (Vermont) Richard Burr (North Carolina) Patty Murray (Washington) George Voinovich (Ohio) Russ Feingold (Wisconsin) Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) Michael Bennet (Colorado) Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania) Jim DeMint (South Carolina) 6
John Thune (South Dakota)
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Parenthetical Citations
Parenthetical Citations have two parts, the citations in parentheses within the paper and the list of works cited in the paper at the end. It is imperative to have a reference list when parenthetical citations are used.
Format of Parenthetical Citations
The basic format is to place the author’s name and year of publication inside parentheses. If you wish to cite specific pages rather than the whole work, you put a comma after the year and then the page numbers
Example: German unification resulted in one of the largest parliaments in “the democratic world” (James 2003, 21).
Note that the citation appears inside the period of the sentence and does not float between sentences. The idea is to link the idea or quotation with the work from which it originates. However, citations appear outside quotation marks because they are not part of the quotation.
If you refer to the author by name and the citation immediately follows, you need only place the year and page numbers, if needed, in the parentheses.
Example: While many praise Germany’s electoral system, James (2003) argues that it needs to be reformed.
For works with two or three authors, include all of their names, separated by commas, in each citation.
Example: The growth of the Republican Party aided the election of African Americans from selected white-majority districts (Grofman, Handley, and Lublin 2003).
For works with four or more authors, use only the first author’s name and “et al.”
Example: Participation has declined markedly since the 1950s (Verba et al. 1972).
Separate multiple works by semi-colons. They should be listed in alphabetical order, though some prefer chronological order.
Example: The impact of racial redistricting on the Democrats has been heavily disputed (Lublin 1997; Parker 1984; Thernstrom 1980).
If your work does not have an author, use a shortened version of the title. For example, I might cite the “FEC Report on Campaign Expenditures in American Politics, August 2004” as simply (FEC Report 2004). Web pages can be cited in a similar fashion by using the title of the web page. The idea is to use a concise title that indicates the source 8 or topic and makes it easy to find in your reference list. Do not put a URL in a parenthetical cite; save that for the works cited list.
Works Cited
Political scientists generally use a format similar to a standard bibliography. Papers should only include sources cited within the paper in parenthetical citations. The year of publication follows the name(s) of the author(s) unless there is no author, in which case the year follows the title of the publication.
One Author:
Norris, Pippa. 2004. Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior . New York: Cambridge University Press.
Two Authors:
Rose, Richard and Neil Munro. 2003. Elections and Parties in New European Democracies . Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Edited Collection:
Grofman, Bernard and Arend Lijphart, eds. 1986. Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences . New York: Agathon Press.
Chapter in Edited Volume:
Riker, William H. 1986. “Duverger’s Law Revisited.” In Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences , ed. Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart. New York: Agathon Press.
Journal Article:
Altman, David and Rossana Castiglioni. 2006. “The 2004 Uruguayan elections: A political earthquake foretold.” Electoral Studies 25: 147-91.
The number after the title of the journal is the volume number. The page numbers of the article appear before the period at the end.
Newspaper or Magazine Articles:
Schneider, Howard and Tomoeh Murakami Tse. 2007. “Rattled Stock Markets Continue Fall.” Washington Post , 16 August.
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Web Page:
Sources which are also found in print should be cited exactly the same as the print version even if you located them on a database. Note that you need to cite the specific URL—not the general URL for the website. Here are some examples of how to cite material which appears only on the web:
Rasmussen, Brent. 2007. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rudy.” Daily Kos . 16 August. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/16/05154/7711. Viewed 18 August 2007.
“ACLU Lawsuit Seeks Access to Lawful Information on Internet for Library Patrons in Eastern Washington.” 2006. ACLU: American Civil Liberties Union . 16 November. http://www.aclu.org/privacy/speech/27445prs20061116.html. Viewed 16 August 2007.
Sources: Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations , Fifth edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 177-228; “A Brief Citation Guide for Internet Sources in History and the Humanities,