One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied in that event. We computed these probabilities a week before the 2008 presidential election, using state-by-stat...

We use variation produced by the Electoral College—the creation of battleground and non battleground states—to examine explanations for why people vote. We employ a longer time series (1980-2008) than previous research to gauge the effect of battleground status on state-level turnout. Our model includes (1) midterm elections, allowing us to directly compare the effect of battleground status wit...

We survey the evidence on whether racial attitudes negatively affected Barack Obama’s vote share in the 2008 presidential election. There is some evidence pointing toward this possibility. First, the increase in the Democratic vote share in the presidential election between 2004 and 2008 was relatively smaller in Appalachia and some Southern states. Second, there was a significantly smaller 200...

We apply charismatic leadership theory to the historic 2008 United States presidential election, in hopes of inspiring dialogue around how leadership theory can inform the critical process of evaluating and electing public leaders. While numerous leadership theories are relevant to understanding the 2008 election, charismatic leadership theory highlights aspects of the leader, followers, and th...

In the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential election, many wondered what his election indicates about the importance of race in the United States. In this paper, we explore whether a desire to protect the racial hierarchy motivated Whites to endorse the belief that Obama’s election means that race is no longer a problem. The results from two studies align with this possibility. Among Whites who ...

This paper presents data from a survey leading up to the 2016 US presidential elections. Participants were asked their opinions about candidates and also vote according three alternative voting rules, in addition plurality: approval voting, range instant runoff voting. The participants split into two groups, one facing set of four (Clinton, Trump, Johnson, Stein) other nine (the previous plus S...

In addition to the historic events surrounding the Florida vote, the outcome of the 2000 US Presidential Election has sparked a widespread discussion of the current electoral system. This discussion is not likely to fade away with a final resolution of the election outcome. The first part of this note points to some problems surrounding the voting logistics. Problems of this type are in the cen...

The United States, uniquely among all countries, elects its head of state using a two-tiered system called the Electoral College. If we view the states that make up the Electoral College as voters and make some simplifying assumptions, it is possible to use the theory of voting and voting power to measure the power of the individual states in a presidential election. Modeling the Electoral Coll...