2008 Conference Program - Midwest Political Science Association

Friday, April 4-8:00 am
23-5 CAMPAIGN STRATEGY: BATTLEFIELD TACTICS
Room Salon 12 on the 3rd Floor, Fri at 8:00 am
Chair Jill Rickershauser, Duke University
jcr12@duke.edu
Paper The Spatial Structure of Political Ambition: Understanding the
Geography of Candidate Emergence
Candidacies do not emerge randomly across the nation or within
states. Our paper is a contemporary examination of candidate
origins, focusing on structural biases that make some locations
better launching pads for strong political bids than others.
James G. Gimpel, University of Maryland
jgimpel@gvpt.umd.edu
Frances E. Lee, University of Maryland
flee@gvpt.umd.edu
Rebecca U. Thorpe, University of Maryland, College Park
bthorpe@gvpt.umd.edu
Paper Strategizing the Presidential Campaign: Candidate Visits in the
2006 Mexican Race
This article examines how presidential candidates in democratic
Mexico allocate one of their most important resources – candidate
appearances. It finds that the three parties followed distinct
strategies because of their different partisan bases.
Joy K. Langston, CIDE, Mexico City
joy.langston@cide.edu
Allyson Benton, CIDE, Mexico City
allyson.benton@cide.edu
Paper The Effectiveness of Local Party Campaigns in the 2005 British
General Election: Combining Evidence From Campaign
Spending, Agent Survey Data and the British Election Study
Using a structural equation modelling approach, this paper
combines available campaign data to produce a latent measure of
campaign effort to analyze its direct and indirect effect on party
performance at the 2005 British General Election.
David John Cutts, University of Manchester
david.cutts@manchester.ac.uk
Edward Fieldhouse, University of Manchester
ed.fieldhouse@manchester.ac.uk
Paper Microtargeting: Campaign Advertising on Cable Television
How do election campaigns use local cable television networks
to carry their message efficiently to specific groups of voters We
examine microtargeting on cable in the Philadelphia media market
by the 2006 Senate, House, and gubernatorial campaigns.
Michael G. Hagen, Temple University
michael.hagen@temple.edu
Robin Kolodny, Temple University
rkolodny@temple.edu
Paper Hitting the Battleground Running: Effects of Electoral College
Strategies
The Electoral College leads presidential candidates to focus
predominantly on a relatively small number of states. I examine the
effects of this campaign strategy on public perceptions of politics
taking into account state-level characteristics.
Henriet Hendriks, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
henrieth@yahoo.com
Disc. Jill Rickershauser, Duke University
jcr12@duke.edu
24-2 ELECTION RULES AND INTRA-PARTY DYNAMICS
Room Suite 11-250 on the 11th Floor, Fri at 8:00 am
Chair Myunghee Kim, University of Central Florida
myukim@mail.ucf.edu
Paper Failure to Converge: Dominant Factions and Party Behavior
This paper develops and tests a theory of dominant (intraparty)
factions that seeks to account for the failure of parties to converge
on the median voter and adopt more moderate ideological positions.
Steven Weldon, Simon Fraser University
sweldon@sfu.ca
Paper
Paper
Disc.
The Institutional Origins of Ideological Flexibility
We develop a game theoretic model to investigate the impact
of electoral institutions on intra-party bargaining between party
activists and party leaders; in equilbirium formal rules strongly
condition actvist incentives to delegate internal powers.
Daniel Max Kselman, Duke University
dmk10@duke.edu
The Evolution of Electoral Competition: The Analysis of
Electoral Repetition Over the Number of Candidates
This paper aims to think about how to incorporate the evolutionary
impact of electoral repetitions in understanding how party system
and electoral competition changes.
Woo Chang Kang, University of Illinois
wkang6@uiuc.edu
Myunghee Kim, University of Central Florida
myukim@mail.ucf.edu
25-5 RACE, GENDER AND IDENTITY POLITICS
Room UEH 401 on the 4th Floor, Fri at 8:00 am
Chair Thomas R. Marshall, University of Texas, Arlington
tmarshall@uta.edu
Paper Public Opinion on Gender and Racial Policy: The Politics of
Rights and Roles, Rights and Separation
We propose a framework for understanding gender, race, and public
opinion grounded in the idea that race is often carried out through
spatial segregation while gender relies on role differentiation to
sustain its hierarchy.
Nancy Burns, University of Michigan
nburns@umich.edu
Donald R. Kinder, University of Michigan
drkinder@umich.edu
Paper Shifts in Minority Public Opinion in the War on Drugs
Although some minority groups supported the policies of the War
on Drugs it is unknown whether minority public opinion has shifted
after years of disparate treatment under the policies. This paper
attempts to address this unknown.
Ann Christine Frost, University of Washington
acfrost@u.washington.edu
Paper Social Class Identity and Political Understanding of Health
Care Reform
This paper probes the role of social class identity in political
understanding through the lens of discussions about health care
reform among members of 23 naturally occurring groups sampled
across a Midwestern state.
Katherine Cramer Walsh, University of Wisconsin, Madison
kwalsh2@wisc.edu
Disc. Rosalee A. Clawson, Purdue University
clawsonr@purdue.edu
26-7 PARTICIPATION BEYOND VOTING
Room UEH 409 on the 4th Floor, Fri at 8:00 am
Chair Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri
milyoj@missouri.edu
Paper Appointed Boards and Commissions: Understanding Their Use
in Local Government
The purpose of this study is to explore the use of appointed
volunteer boards in local government. Surveys from 547
municipalities help explain whether and how often governments use
boards. Representativeness of boards also needs to be improved.
George William Dougherty, University of Pittsburgh
gwdjr@pitt.edu
Jenni Easton, University of Pittsburgh
jee32@pitt.edu
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