The Socially Mediated Internet Survey (SMIS) method is a cost-effective technique used to obtain web-based, adult samples for experimental research in political science. SMIS engages central figures in online social networks to help recruit participants among visitors to these websites, yielding sizable samples for experimental research. We present data from six samples collected using the SMIS method and compare them to those gathered by other sampling approaches such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk. While not representative of the general adult population, our SMIS samples are significantly more diverse than undergraduate convenience samples, not only demographically but also politically. We discuss the applicability of the method to experimental research and its usefulness for obtaining samples of special, politically relevant subpopulations such as political sophisticates and activists. We argue that the diversity of SMIS samples, along with the ability to capture highly engaged citizens, can circumvent questions about the artificiality of political behavior experiments entirely based on student samples and help to document sources of heterogeneous experimental treatment effects.

What kind of Internet data is generated in authoritarian political environments? And how can political scientists use that data to better understand the dynamics of nondemocratic regimes?

As other contributors to this symposium have noted, Louis Fisher has played a major role in shaping debates in such diverse policy battlegrounds as federal budgeting, war powers, and the use of legislative and presidential vetoes. Fisher is also widely (and fairly) credited with spurring interest in “constitutional dialogues”—the “process in which all three branches” along with “the states and the general public” offer separate, competing, and sometimes complementary visions of the Constitution and the values it embodies (Fisher 1988, 3).

On August 1, 2012, we prepared a forecast of the 2012 presidential vote for PS. Our model contains two variables: (1) the cumulated weighted growth in leading economic indicators (LEI) through quarter 13 of the current presidential term and (2) the incumbent party candidate's share in the most recent trial-heat polls, which were for the month of July. What mostly distinguishes our model from others is the reliance on leading indicators from the quarter ending in March of the election year. The early reading of LEI works well as a predictor because it summarizes growth in the economy leading up to the election year and also provides advance indication of changes in the economy during the election year. The exact equation and the exact forecast change as the poll readings change during the election year.

Those who write for this symposium faced two choices in their careers: producing highly specialized articles with little application to government controversies or devoting themselves to public policy and making contributions to it. They chose the latter. I want to explain my approach and also give recognition to the accomplishment of other scholars who have been engaged with contemporary issues. All of them are eminently comfortable in maintaining the original commitment of political science to public law. At the risk of overlooking deserving scholars, I also identify others who decided to orient their research to thinking about and helping to resolve government issues.

Our Proxy Model of presidential election forecasting declared, from data issued six months before the November contest, that Obama would garner 52.7% of the two-party popular vote. [See the model release in our Monkey Cage blog-post (Lewis-Beck and Tien 2012a) on September 18, 2012, and in the October issue of PS (Lewis-Beck and Tien 2012b).] Thus, that forecast called the correct winner, with a point estimate error of only 0.9 percentage points.

Predictions of the United States presidential election vote outcome have been growing in scope and popularity in the academic realm. Traditional election forecasting models predict the United States presidential popular vote outcome on a national level based primarily on economic indicators (e.g., real income growth, unemployment), public approval ratings, and incumbency advantage. Many of these forecasting models are rooted in retrospective voting theory (Downs 1957; Fiorina 1981), essentially rewarding the party in office if times are good, punishing it if times are bad. These models have successfully predicted election results by modeling economic performance and incumbent approval ratings (Campbell 2012; Fair 1992; Fair 1996; Klarner 2012). For example, Abramowitz's (2004; 2005) “time for a change model” predicts election results using economic performance during the first half of the election year, the number of years the incumbent party has been in office, and presidential approval. For a full review of 13 presidential forecasts for the US 2012 election, see PS: Political Science and Politics October 2012 (45 (4): 610–75). Although national models are the most common, researchers have also started to use state-level predictions for presidential and congressional outcomes, with mostly positive success (Berry and Bickers 2012; Jerome and Jerome-Speziari 2012; Klarner 2012; Silver 2012). These models use similar predictors, such as incumbency, economic conditions, and home-state advantage, and predict the per-candidate percentage of popular vote. Unfortunately, with state-level models, many of the economic variables used in predicting national models are unavailable beyond 10–15 election cycles (compounded also by 1959 additions of Alaska and Hawaii), so state-level models naturally have a shorter period of analysis than do national models.

This article quantifies books' impact in terms of citation counts—in published articles and in other published books. The average political science book published by a university press receives about three times the number of citations received by an article indexed in the SSCI. Books' impact varies by subfield, with books published in methodology receiving many more citations on average than books published in other subfields, followed by books in international relations. Overall, books published on American politics are cited least frequently. Results suggest that political scientists should supplement quantitative indicators of article and journal impact (which are based only on citations in peer-reviewed articles) with similar measures that account for the scholarly influence of published books.

Google search data have several major advantages over traditional survey data. First, the high costs of running frequent surveys mean that most survey questions are only asked occasionally making comparisons over time difficult. By contrast, Google Trends provides information on search trends measured weekly. Second, there are many countries where surveys are only conducted sporadically, whereas Google search data are available anywhere in the world where sufficient numbers of people use its search engine. The Google Trends website allows researchers to download data for almost all countries at no cost and to download time series of any search term's popularity over time (provided enough people have searched for it). For these reasons, Google Trends is an attractive data source for social scientists.

On September 10, 2012, immediately following the close of the Democratic Party's national nominating convention and 57 days before Election Day on November 6, my Convention Bump and Economy Model predicted that Barack Obama was likely to receive 51.3% of the national two-party popular vote. The Convention Bump and Economy Model consists of Gallup's preconvention preference poll, the net convention bump in the polls, and an adjusted second quarter GDP growth rate. The forecast pegged the certainty of an Obama plurality at 67%. No sure thing, but more likely than not. The traditional Trial-Heat and Economy Model predicted Obama's vote at 52.0%. The Convention Bump and Economy Model's prediction was the preferred forecast in 2012 because of the lateness of the parties' nominating conventions. Democrats did not even begin their convention until after Labor Day.

The conventional wisdom about political science international education assumes that students choose between short “island” study abroad programs that are accessible but have only superficial impact, and longer immersion programs, achieving a greater effect. This article argues that well-designed study abroad programs can combine the best of both models to achieve significant impact even in a short program. It proposes a “bridge model” for reconceptualizing study abroad not as a discrete event with more or less impact on student learning, but as a key intervention that furthers a student's overall development within an internationalized curriculum. The article examines the case of a peacebuilding study abroad program in Ecuador. It measures alumni perceptions of impact, objective outcomes, and alumni network development. The key finding is that solid program design and structured cross-cultural interaction produces the type of long-term effect and networks traditionally associated with immersion programs.

During the past two decades, mounting evidence suggests that much of human social cognition occurs without deliberate effort and largely outside conscious awareness. Dual-process models, which distinguish explicit (conscious, slow, effortful) cognitive processes from implicit (often unconscious, fast, effortless) cognitive processes, “form the dominant paradigm [of social cognition research] for the past 20 years or more” (Evans 2008). Although these advances in social cognition research have begun to be integrated into models of political cognition over the past decade (e.g., Kim, Taber, and Lodge 2010; Lodge and Taber 2013; see Nosek, Graham, and Hawkins 2010 for a review), and are beginning to influence other disciplines like communication (see Hefner et al. 2011), the role of implicit processes in outcomes commonly studied by political scientists deserves more attention. This symposium aims to showcase the diverse set of subject areas within political science to which dual-process models have been and can be applied. We hope that this symposium is a springboard for those who are considering bringing a dual-process approach into their own research by providing an overview of relevant literatures and methods.

President Obama received approximately 51.5% of the two-party vote in the 2012 election. The last Bread and Peace Model forecast of Obama's vote share, based on advance estimates of 2012:quarter 3 personal income posted on October 26, 2012, by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), was 46.6%—lower than the 47.5% forecast appearing in the October issue of PS, which was based on July 27, 2012, BEA data. The Bread and Peace Model therefore underpredicted Obama's vote by 4 to 5 percentage points, equivalent to around 2 model standard errors. The president's vote therefore benefited from a +2-sigma composite shock to Bread and Peace Model fundamentals. Figure 1 shows actual and predicted values for 2012 in perspective of incumbent vote shares at all presidential elections 1952–2012.

Recent trends in political science include civic engagement and experiential education pedagogy, but this has been notably absent from courses on international relations and comparative politics. This article discusses how I designed an international civic engagement experience for students—without leaving campus. I echo other scholars' claim that civic engagement pedagogy can and should be used in courses with an international focus, and I provide one example of how to go about that task.

The events of 2011 transformed the politics of the Arab world. In just under 12 months, dictators fell in three countries: Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. In Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria, protests and violence continued throughout 2012 to shake what were once assumed to be the solid foundations of long-standing autocratic regimes. Although it is too soon to assess the outcome of these events, one immediate consequence is clear: the empowerment of public opinion in Arab politics. For the first time in more than 50 years, the voices of average Tunisians, Egyptians, and Libyans can directly influence political outcomes. This shift may yet prove to be temporary, but its importance in driving current events cannot be discounted.

In 2011, more than 3% of all black men in the United States were imprisoned, compared to only 0.5% of all white men. Among prisoners ages 18 to 24, black men were imprisoned at a rate more than seven times that of white men (Carson and Sabol 2012). It is becoming increasingly urgent for researchers to understand what accounts for these race-based disparities. While a broad constellation of social problems exist that likely contribute to these disparities in concert, different fields of social science tend to focus on different types of explanations. Political scientists and sociologists have tended to emphasize the role of institutional factors, including criminal justice policies and practices, in maintaining race-based disparities. Social psychologists, in contrast, have tended to emphasize individual factors, including punitive responses to crime by jurors, judges, and criminal justice professionals.

This article provides a foundation for understanding the role of implicit biases in political behavior, particularly implicit racial attitudes and voting behavior. Although racial attitudes have rarely played a major direct role in American presidential politics until 2008, numerous local, state, and federal elections are held every year in the United States that involve minority candidates. As a result, the implications are considerable.

Political science instructors commonly emphasize the importance of effective writing. However, it is unclear that students either understand or share the norms about what this entails. A notable example is the appropriate use of voice. Prior literature has shown that academic writers often believe it is appropriate to use the pronoun “I” for a variety of rhetorical purposes but suggests that students may be unaware of this reasoning. We examine this topic by determining more precisely how commonly “I” is used in a major political science journal, conducting a survey of political science undergraduate students at a large comprehensive university, and interviewing political science faculty at the same university. Although each group's attitudes are complex, we find evidence that students' views commonly conflict with disciplinary norms. We close by considering the implications for teaching about writing in political science.

Retroactive digitization of the printed corpus reveals patterns of social evolution and political manipulation. Prior to the introduction of online search, examining the etymology of a political term helped social theorists extrapolate the historical trajectory of a political concept. Now we have tools for quantitative examination of such hypotheses. Using four case studies, I demonstrate the utility of word search dynamics in shedding light on the evolution of long-debated political phenomena. A triad of etymological explorations by Richard Koebner motivates the first three cases.

The Incumbency and National Conditions (presidential approval and aggregated personal finances) Model predicted President Obama would garner 47.9% of the two-party vote, whereas he ended up with 51.8% (based on available information on December 3, 2012). The error in this forecast (3.9 points) is somewhat higher than the average out-of-sample error from 1952 to 2008 (2.4 points). Although the forecast was off the mark, the addition of the 2012 result to the data set does little to change the slope estimates, and the overall fit of the model is only slightly worse (table 1).