During his confirmation hearings, then-judge John Roberts analogized the role of a judge to the role of a baseball umpire. Roberts argued that umpires do not make the rules; they simply apply them. Legal scholars have criticized Roberts from a legal realist perspective because the analogy misconstrues the nature of judging as formalistic. I believe Roberts also misconstrued the nature of umpiring as formalistic. Like judges, umpires must rely on their experience, rather than logic, because the rules of baseball are sometimes incomplete, indeterminate, and contradictory. On occasion, umpires even ignore the rulebook (justifiably). The judges-as-umpires analogy thus illustrates the differences between legal formalism and legal realism in a way that students can more easily understand.

Although research at other levels of elected office has shown that incumbency has a powerful, additive effect on votes (Hogan 2004; Jacobson 2009; Krebs 1998), these effects largely have been ignored in presidential forecasting models (but see Abramowitz 2008). Instead, some scholars speculate about the conditional effects of incumbency; specifically, the decreased applicability of the retrospective model when the president is not on the ticket leaving the somewhat-harder-to-blame-or-reward vice president to represent the administration. The difficult-to-predict 2000 presidential election generated some discussion on this point. Although I and others argued (Campbell 2001; Holbrook 2001; Wlezien 2001) that part of the explanation for the forecasting error in 2000 lies with Al Gore's failure to embrace the Bill Clinton-Al Gore record and reinforce retrospective voting, others indicate that the retrospective cue may generally be weaker when the president is not on the ticket (Campbell 2001; Lewis-Beck and Tien 2001; Nadeau and Lewis-Beck 2001). Indeed, Campbell (2001; 2008) argues in favor of only giving half weight to presidential performance variables when the vice president, rather than president, is representing the incumbent administration. The logic here is simple: absent the president on the ticket, it is more difficult to frame the election as a referendum, leading voters to attach less weight to incumbency-oriented considerations. This is not to say that factors such as presidential approval and economic performance are unimportant when incumbents do not run, only that these factors might matter less.

We consider the neglected importance of temperature as an explanatory variable. We show that: (1) colder states have turnout that is high relative to the national average; (2) the coldest states in the United States were more likely to adopt Election Day Registration (EDR) than other states, and very hot states never did so; and (3) those who live in colder states live longer.

Social class differences in civic engagement persist for both youth and adults. Although empirical evidence is mixed, several recent social changes pertaining to youth suggest that social inequalities in civic engagement may be growing over time for young people. Using data from the National Election Study, we compared trends for youth and older adults of varying education levels and tested the hypothesis of an increasing educational disparity in youth political participation. Results for voting supported our expectations: declines over time were found for less-educated youth only. Unexpectedly, participation in other political activities for more-educated youth declined more over time compared to other groups. Our findings highlight the need to create equal opportunities for youth civic engagement across social groups.

In 2007, University of Oklahoma political science professor Cindy Simon Rosenthal was elected mayor of Norman, Oklahoma, after having served as a member of its city council. Was her activity unique within the political science profession among female political scientists? Her election stimulated the curiosity of some of us in the women-and-politics-research community. To what extent had female political scientists attempted to move from the “Ivory Tower” to the “Public Square” as elective office holders? What had their experiences been like? We explore those questions with particular interest in a number of theoretical propositions from women and politics studies. For example, how did they decide to seek elective office? Were they self-starters or had they been recruited? What role did their families play in their campaigns? To what extent was gender perceived as a factor, and in what ways in their various campaigns? How successful were they, and what role did their academic credentials play in their campaigns? Did their quests for public office affect their academic careers? Did they use the findings from the women and politics literature to inform their quests? Perhaps, too, we thought, their campaigns might provide distinctive insights about running for and serving in public office and inform discussion about the role of gender in political life.

Prediction markets are designed to aggregate the information of many individuals to forecast future events. These markets provide participants with an incentive to seek information and a forum for interaction, making markets a promising tool to motivate student learning. We carried out a quasi-experiment in an introductory political science class to study the effect of prediction markets on student engagement with the course topics. Although we found no significant improvement in students' enthusiasm or extent of topical reading, we did find that those students who were already reading broadly at the course start were more likely to trade actively in the markets. These findings indicate that prediction markets may be most successful as an education tool in settings, like graduate education, where individuals are already knowledgeable about the topics of the market, instead of an introductory learning context.

Do our models of political behavior bear any resemblance to reality? Forecasting elections is one opportunity to assess whether our models of voting behavior are accurate. Over the past few decades, political scientists have been willing to put themselves out there to forecast elections. Explaining a past event allows us the ability to retrofit our models before we make them available to the broader community. In short, forecasting elections provides us the opportunity to develop humility. The forecasting community has done a reasonable job over the past few elections. Aside from 2000, forecasters have been largely accurate. Even in 2000, the forecasting community can claim a modest victory. The community was right about the popular vote winner; it just happened that the popular vote winner lost the election that counts—the Electoral College.

Large majorities in nearly every country support democracy, according to studies of cross-national surveys. But many of these reports have treated as missing data persons who did not provide a substantive response when asked to offer an opinion about the suitability of democracy as a regime type for their country, which has led to substantial overestimates of expressed support for democracy in some countries. This article discusses the consequences of excluding such nonsubstantive responses and offers suggestions to improve the study of popular support for democracy.

The traditional way of introducing comparative politics to freshmen, which is through the study of institutions, is contrasted with an alternative approach. An everyday-politics approach compares the daily struggles of global youth—how they cope in times of peace and war, and with issues of wealth and poverty, identity, education and employment, and citizenship and immigration. This approach contains four elements: juxtapositions, recognition of the vicissitudes of growing up in a more complex world, the use of stories, and social action in our daily lives. This combination “gently” introduces the concepts of comparative politics but with an emphasis on how politics affect the lives of other young people. These stories also show the various forms of political participation and political resistance in different countries. An everyday-politics approach, while still experimental, seems to yield some positive results in helping students care about politics, gaining an understanding of how much is at stake for them, and connecting them to the wider world.

Researchers have long recognized that higher education is dominated by professors whose politics are well to the left of the American political center. The cause and implications of this ideological imbalance have been intensely debated since the 1960s. Although critics of higher education, such as David Horowitz, argue that the political imbalance in academia is largely the result of ideological discrimination, emerging research on the views, values, and experiences of the professoriate tells a more complex story. Despite the relatively small numbers in the academy, the findings suggest that many conservative scholars can succeed in a predominantly liberal environment. Drawing on the latest research, as well as their own personal experience, the authors outline steps that conservative faculty can take to avoid needless political conflict and work happily in a profession largely dominated by the Left.

We know little about the amount of career preparation offered to students in political science departments. This lack of information is particularly troubling given the state of the current job market and the growth of applied degree programs on university campuses. To address this issue, this article presents the results of a December 2010 survey of 279 political science department chairs that asked questions about the level of career preparation in their respective departments. Based on our empirical findings, we believe that political science departments are not doing enough to address their students' career preparation. Our results demonstrate that most departments rely on voluntary internships and faculty advisers to address career-related issues for political science majors. Only a few departments use required internships, required resumes, specific classes related to career preparation, and social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to support career preparation. We also found substantial differences in career preparation across department type (BA, MA, and PhD) and between public and private universities, urban and rural universities, and universities with different average SAT scores. Our findings should interest faculty and administrators who are concerned with different approaches to career preparation on college campuses.

In March 2009, at a time when President Obama was basking in the glow of the honeymoon with the public every new president enjoys, I asked, “Will Barack Obama be a one-term president?” What prompted me to pose so impertinent a question at so hopeful a time was that the Office of Management and Budget was projecting that that year the federal government would spend 28% of gross domestic product (GDP). This amounted to a 7% point increase compared to the previous year, the largest peacetime one-year jump since 1930. The most recent estimate for 2012 is that federal outlays will take up 24.3% of GDP, up 3.5% points since 2008. This is the second-largest peacetime increase from one election year to the next since 1880, edged out only by Franklin D. Roosevelt's first-term surge of 3.6% points.

We report the results of hypotheses tests about the effects of several measures of research, teaching, and service on the likelihood of achieving the ranks of associate and full professor. In conducting these tests, we control for institutional and individual background characteristics. We focus our tests on the link between productivity and academic rank and explore whether this relationship reveals a gender dimension. The analyses are based on an APSA-sponsored survey of all faculty members in departments of political science (government, public affairs, and international relations) in the United States.

A common complaint from political scientists involved in the study of religion is that religious issues have been largely overlooked by political science. Through a content analysis of leading political science and sociology journals from 2000 to 2010, this article considers the extent of this claim. The results show that political science publications involving religious topics have been significantly fewer than those engaging with subjects typically regarded as being more central to the discipline, and markedly less numerous than religious articles in leading sociology publications. Where political science publications have engaged with religious issues, these articles have also focused on a limited number of subject areas and been concentrated in specific disciplinary subfields. The proportion of articles covering religion has shown no real increase since the turn of the century. These findings underpin calls for political scientists to take religious issues more seriously.

Words should be chosen and used carefully so that they convey the meaning or meanings that you intend—and do not convey any unintended or double meanings. Writing should leave little ambiguity or uncertainty about what you are referring to—unless some purposeful ambiguity is desired. Sometimes words that are abstract or superficial may be chosen to suit the writer's purpose. For example, there is a long tradition of euphemistic writing. But such use of words should be well-considered and deliberate, not the result of carelessness or indifference.

For more than two decades, political scientists have created statistical models aimed at generating out-of-sample predictions of presidential elections. In 2004 and 2008, PS: Political Science and Politics published symposia of the various forecasting models prior to Election Day. This exercise serves to validate models based on accuracy by garnering additional support for those that most accurately foretell the ultimate election outcome. Implicitly, these symposia assert that accurate models best capture the essential contexts and determinants of elections. In part, therefore, this exercise aims to develop the “best” model of the underlying data generating process. Scholars comparatively evaluate their models by setting their predictions against electoral results while also giving some attention to the models' inherent plausibility, parsimony, and beauty.

This article discusses my approach to teaching a course on Islam and human rights. I begin by examining the attention Islam has received in the media and classroom. Then, I discuss how I structure lectures on Islam and human rights, the various readings associated with the lectures, as well as common themes discussed in class that include but are not limited to Islamic law, women's rights, and minority rights. From there, I discuss a range of different approaches to the Islam and human rights discourse. I then describe how I test the students' knowledge of the material.

In 1997 we first offered American government classes online as well as face-to-face classes. We administered pre- and posttests to our students to measure their general knowledge of American government, political attitudes, demographics, and some behaviors. Following an initial report in 2001, we continued to gather data for 10 more years; this current study covers nearly 3,200 students during 13 years. We examine the sample as a whole and changes in audiences and outcomes, over time, for the two teaching formats. Although the kinds of students taking online classes have become more similar, a few differences persist. Learning outcome differences continue to be insignificant. Neither format has a clear advantage in students' changes in attitudes, but the online classes increased students' newspaper reading. Class dropout rate and faculty workload both favor face-to-face classes, but flexibility in scheduling and student demand clearly favor online classes.

The election forecasts presented in this article indicate that control of the White House after the 2012 election is a tossup, that control of the US House will likely remain in Republican hands, and that although closely fought, the Republicans have the edge for control of the US Senate. These forecasts were made on July 15, 2012. Obama was predicted to receive 51.3% of the two-party popular vote, 301 electoral votes, and to have a 57.1% chance of winning the Electoral College. The year 2012 was forecast to be one of stasis for the US House, with almost no change in the number of seats controlled by the Republicans: they were forecast to pick up two seats, and to have a 75.6% chance of maintaining their majority. Lastly, the Republicans were predicted to pick up five seats in the US Senate and have about a 61.6% chance of attaining majority control.

Traditional writing assignments often fall short in addressing problems in college students' writing as too often these assignments fail to help students develop critical thinking skills and comprehension of course content. This article reports the use of a two-part (staged) writing assignment with postscript as a strategy for improving critical thinking in a lower-division political science course. We argue that through well-designed writing assignments, instructors can encourage students to reconsider concepts, critically evaluate assumptions, and undertake substantive revisions of their writing.