A high percentage of information in this article comes from a class with Professor Rich Arenberg at Brown University. He recently passed away, and I will forever be grateful for what I learned from him, and now get to share with you.

Voting

Voting as a Student

Generally speaking, if you go to school in a different state than you grew up in, you can pick which state you want to vote in. Personally, I grew up in Florida but went to Rhode Island for school, so I kept voting in Florida as I felt my vote was needed more. You can check and/or update your voter registration at vote.gov.

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How You Can Vote

• Registering to vote
  
  • Every state has a different deadline for registration - 30 days to same day registration
  • North Dakota is the only state that does not have a deadline
• Mail-in voting
  
  • Request a mail-in ballot from your state's election office
  • Also called absentee voting
  • Trump wants to eliminate it but historically, Republicans did better with the mail-in vote
  • Some states don’t open and process mail-in votes before polls close (like Pennsylvania and Georgia) which shows a Trump lead before polls close, but is followed by a steady blue change when mailed votes open
• In-person voting
  • Polls are usually set up in places like libraries and schools, run by local voters who sign up to be poll workers
  • You can Google your closest polling location!

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Who Can Vote

• History of who can vote
  
  • Early in history: white property-owning males
    
    • Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person so some states could have more representation in the Electoral College but they could not vote
  • Women
    
    • 1848: first campaign for women’s suffrage
    • 1920: 19^th amendment gave women the right to vote
  • People of color
    
    • In 1870, the 15^th amendment said voting could not be restricted “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”
    • Jim Crow laws: poll taxes and literacy tests to restrict black voting
    • In 1964, the 24^th amendment eliminated poll taxes
    • In 1965, the Voting Rights Act sought to end the restrictions on black voters but also prevented new discriminatory laws from being developed 
  • 2013: Shelby County v Holder preclearance
    
    • SCOTUS ruled that preclearance was unconstitutional which was a heavy blow to the Voting Rights Act
  • Prior to 1971, the national minimum age requirement was 21, even though 18-year-old men could be drafted 🡪 26^th amendment 
• Who can vote now?
  
  • Now: any 18-year old+ citizen that is not a felon
  • Felons?
    
    • Most all states ban felons while they are in prison – only Maine and Vermont allow incarcerated felons to vote 
    • 20 states allow felons to vote after they are released
    • ~11 states mean felons lose their voting rights indefinitely for specific crimes or require a governor’s pardon to vote after a period of time, governor approval, or further action
    • 4.6 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of felonies
      
      • 1 out of every 15 African Americans is affected by this
    • Unless Donald is in prison on Election Day, he would not lose the right to vote

• 1845 they decreed the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, picking November because the farmers’ schedules worked well

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Voting Outcomes

• Coat tails: the political outcome based on the influence of what happens at the top of the ticket (presidential vote)
• Split-ticket voting: when a voter votes for the presidential candidate of one party and then congressional member(s) of another party
  
  • Increasingly over the past 50 years, voters have cast their votes on a straight party line
  • Ticket splitting peaked in 1972, when nearly 30% of voters did so (President Richard Nixon won in a landslide over Dem George McCovern)
    
    • Democrats retained Congressional majorities despite a Republican president being elected
  • In 2016, in no state did the presidential party chosen not align with the party of the congressional candidates
  • In 2020, only 7.1% split their ticket
• “October surprise” became a label in 1980 for a random twist in candidate’s campaigns leading up to an election
  
  • Started with the conspiracy that Reagan’s campaign kept the hostages hostage to make Jimmy Carter look bad 
  • Senate investigated this in 1992 – Prof Arenburg worked for the Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and advised him not to elevate the investigation into senate hearings

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Why Vote

Voting is one of the few ways you can make your opinions count in politics. Others include petitions, fundraising, protesting, and direct action, but voting is unique in its direct influence. A lot of people say "it's one vote, it doesn't count" but imagine if everyone said that.

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In the year 2000, the Bush vs Gore presidential election came down to the state of Florida. In a state of almost 16 million people at the time, Bush won by only 537 votes. 537 people that decided their "one vote" did matter went to the polls and decided who would become the next president. It DOES matter, and it costs you nothing to cast your vote.

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Even if you feel like politics do not affect you, they do. Politics affects prices of groceries and gas, the quality of water and air, access to education, healthcare, etc. True, the outcome of an election does affect some people more than others--but that is all the more reason to use your vote if you feel like it doesn't really affect you. Vote for the people it does affect. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who feels the impact of who is in office in their day to day life.

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If you don't feel like doing the research on your ballot (which if you are here, you probably are fine with doing), talk to a family member or friend whose values mirror yours about what they are voting. The next best thing to doing your own research on people and policies is to trust the research done by someone close to you, or even by journalists that you agree with. Be careful of the biases on the internet, but the internet can be a great resource to understand some of the jargon and claims.

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2026 Elections

• Republicans are defending nearly two thirds of the Senate seats
• GOP’s 2024 gains coupled with an evenly divided battleground map gives Republicans a solid chance to limit defeats
  
  • Usually in midterm elections, the party with the president usually suffers some defeats 
• By most accounts, there will likely be seven vulnerable Senate seats
  
  • Four are currently held by Republicans in Maine, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina 
  • Democrats would need to take all four vulnerable seats and defend all the ones they already have 
    
    • Vulnerable Democrat seats:
      
      • Georgia
      • Michigan
      • New Hampshire 
  • Texas’s seat, held by Republican John Cornyn, may pick a MAGA person and that could improve Democrat’s chances
  • Ohio’s seat will be vacated by JD Vance, so GOP Governor Mike DeWine appoints a senator for now, but they will run in a special election in 2026
    
    • Governor is a more moderate conservative 
    • Democrats might have a good shot at flipping this seat if outgoing Senator Brown were to run again 
  • Maine and NC seats

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An Overview of US Government

Senate Overview

• Total 100, 2 from each state
• A quorum of the Senate is 51
• Only a third of Senators are running in any particular congressional election
  
  • Thus a continuous body because there are already people there that are not heading out
  • Rulebook is continuous – can be changed, recodified, etc, but the basics stay the same
• Pro forma session: a session where little or no business occurs in the Senate
  
  • Usually just one or two people where the presiding officer gavels the body into session and then immediately gavels the session to a close

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The House Overview

• Congress made 435 members the permanent cap in 1929
• Redistricting: Every 10 years, after the census, the representation for each state is adjusted
• Every two years, there are 435 separate congressional elections 
• The first House had 65 members from 13 states
• The only branch of government that has always been elected by voters since its formation (1789)
• Not a continuing body: all the members must stand for election every two years
  
  • Unlike the Senate in this way
  • “People’s House”  / More representative to the winds of public opinion
  • Lowkey disappears in between old and new house electors 
• “Few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent member of the US House of Representatives [winning re-election]
  
  • Factors: Gerrymandering, name recognition, leverage created by holding office, campaign funding (donors want to be on good terms with the winner), access to official resources 
  • In 2018, the average House incumbent raised four times as much as their challenger
• “Franking privilege” – advantage of Members of the House that allows them to use the mail without paying postage for “official business”
  
  • Their signature goes where a stamp usually would be
  • First adopted in 1789 by the First Congress

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Swing States

• Main swing states: Texas, Florida, Montana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Nevada
  
  • *If you have the option to vote in one of these states, that might be a good choice!
  • Leaning R: Texas and Florida and Montana (pretty much red states now)
  • Leaning D: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan
  • Leaning I: Maine and Vermont 
  • True toss-up: Ohio (No Republican has won recently without Ohio)
• Blue wall states: swing states that are surrounded by blue states
  
  • In 2016, Trump won these

• Northern swing states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania 
• Sun Belt states: North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada

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Polling

• Don’t make much of any single poll 
• Always pay attention to the margin of error
  
  • 2020 Quinnipiac poll predicated Joe Biden would win Florida with 48% to Trump’s 45% - MOE was +/- 2.8 pts
  • Recent NY Times poll had Trump ahead by one point, well within MOE
• Question crosstabs (subsets of a poll)
  
  • Ex: Among Black Americans, Harris was leading Trump by X points
  • Higher margin of error looking at a subset because of an even smaller sample size
• Go beyond the “horse race” to look at other salient questions like trends and movement
  
  • AKA consider the context
  • Ex: right track/wrong track (as in how do you think the country is doing and what is the response trend)
  • Ex: “does this candidate care about people like me?” is a good question to look at and is one of the most predictive questions 
• Pay attention to the presidential approval polls and congressional generic polling
• Influences where candidates go and where they put their ad money
• Internal polling is more expensive and more finely tuned/reliable than the public polling
• Turnout is predicted by past voting behavior 
• “Hidden Trump vote” – people might be embarrassed to admit they’re voting for him so that might skew the polls
• Political polling has been around since the 40s, but it was in the 60s that widespread polling began 
• Today’s emphasis on targeted social media advertising as well as demands for a “ground game”
• Benchmark poll: the first poll conducted for a campaign 
  
  • Used to understand what support candidates may have / how well known they are 
  • Reveals any major issues worth considering 
• The thicket of media polls has been encouraged by media focus on the “horse race” aspect of campaigns 
• Pew Research does not really allow for “independent” as a label, and pushes respondent to identify with one of the major parties
  
  • Only 3% voters end up identifying as independent or refusing to answer 

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Who Can Run for Office

• Presidents must:
  
  • Be 35 years old
  • Been a US resident for at least 14 years
  • Born in the US
• House and Senate candidates must be native-born or naturalized citizens
  
  • 30 years old for the Senate
  • 25 for the House
  • Candidate must be a resident for the state they are running in
  • No term limits
• 22^nd amendment – term limit of 2 for presidents
  
  • Triggered by FDR’s four terms in office
  • Adopted in 1951
• 14^th amendment – you can not have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion…or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” 
  
  • LOL Trump?
  • 4-3 Colorado Supreme Court barred Trump from running because of the 14^th amendment 
  • 🡪 US Supreme Court reversed the Colorado decision and said the responsibility for enforcing this lied with the feds and not the states
• State and local races have their own requirements
  
  • Usually candidates must have signatures
    
    • In 2022 Republican governor candidates were disqualified due to thousands of forged signatures on their petitions to run
  • Term limits

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‍Campaign Fundraising

• Dark money: the contributor doesn’t have to be identified until after the campaign 
• SuperPacs raised more than 2.1 billion dollars and the 2024 exceeded that by the end of September 
• In 2016, 66% of all SuperPac funding came from donations more than $1 million
  
  • In 2018, this number was 68%
• Fundraising as a barometer of support 
  
  • Initial fundraising is like a first primary 
• Independent political committees like super PACSs can raise and spend unlimited resources but have to disclose funding 
• “Dark money” contributions

• OpenSecrets documented millions of contributions from groups with anonymous donors (dark money groups and shell companies)
  
  • 653 million in the 2020 presidential election
  • 71 million in 2016 election

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Debates

• It’s not just about who sees it when it’s taking place, it’s about who just sees the clips that show up online afterward

• Rules have to be agreed to by both campaigns 
• The Biden campaign pushed for only the microphone of the candidate who has the floor to be actually activated now but Kamala’s campaign actually pushed for this to be overturned because Trump is his own worst enemy and it would reflect poorly on him

• Fact-checking by moderators
  
  • In the 2024 presidential election, people were saying the moderators were biased, but Trump was really the only one that needed to be fact-checked-- and honestly, in my opinion, other things should have been fact-checked too. People in this kind of critically powerful position should not be able to lie!!
• VP debates never seems to affect much
  
  • The undecided voter is likely not going to decide off of them

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Nominations

• Semi-open primary: voters may cross party lines, but their ballot choice is a form of registration
  
  • So if you were a Republican who wanted to vote in the Dem primary, you can get a Dem ballot but it will change your registration to Dem
• Semi-closed primary: one in which independent voters may choose either party’s primary to vote in; registered party members must only vote in their own primary  
• There are other kinds of primaries too
  
  • Jungle primary: top-two primary which nominates two candidates without respect to party
    
    • Used in California, Washington, and Nebraska

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Democracy

• Democracy: “a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting” (Merriam Webster)
  
  • “An organization or situation in which everyone is treated equally and has equal rights.”
  • Majority rule
  • Protection of freedom, human rights, minorities
  • The rule of law
  • Free and fair elections
  • Peaceful transfers of power 
• “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” – Ben Franklin maybe or just colloquial saying
• Elections are the means to democracy
  
  • Americans have two major election decisions: whether to vote and how to vote
  • Rules are created by the Constitution, laws passed by Congress and state legislatures, other decisions are made by other officials, political parties, and courts

• Almost half the world considers themselves democracy but only 28% actually qualify

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Federal Elections Commission (FEC)

• The FEC (Federal Elections Commission) is a mostly ineffectual agency
  
  • Inaction of the commission is a structural issue
  • The Commission has 3 members from each party, and the rules require four votes to take any enforcement action
  • Possible enforcement actions: court, investigations, regulations, advisory opinions 
• The three Republican members are ideologically opposed to campaign finance laws
• The FEC lacked a quorum to event vote August 2019-May 2020
  
  • 🡪 deadlocked 2-2 vote
• In 2020, three commissioners were appointed but still were deadlocked (3-3)

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Electoral College

• Important aspects of decision-making were purposely insulated from simple majority vote
• The founders of America were skeptical of the popular vote and they saw the EC as a functional organization that would make the decisions ultimately
• Intention to prioritize the educated opinions but now it works the opposite, as an esoteric provision of the constitution

• Electoral college is actually just voter suppression and discouragement LOL -
  • Generally an advantage for Republicans
• The reason Trump beat Clinton… even though more people wanted her in office
  
  • The electoral college was most likely created to ensure that Clinton gets into office but now works the opposite way
• Means of election for the presidency and the Senate were centered around state legislatures 
  
  • House was “the people’s house”
  • Senate was the “state’s house”
• 🡪 1917 adoption of the 17^th amendment for direct election of Senate 
• Unfaithful electors: electoral college members that don’t vote how they are supposed to
  
  • It’s happened, but it’s never changed the results
• With the exception of Nebraska and Maine, all states award all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner in their state
  
  • In Maine and Nebraska, each Congressional district’s electoral vote is awarded to the popular vote winner in that district, and the remaining two are awarded by state-wide basis
• Number of votes = number of congressmen
• The first time that the electoral college hasn’t been aligned with the popular vote was the Bush x Gore election
  
  • Came down to 500 votes in Florida
  • Al Gore won the popular vote
• On election day, voters actually vote for a slate of electors pledged to vote for the presidency 
• Safe harbor deadline: “final determination” due at least six days before electors vote
• Electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their vote
• Governor is required after the final ascertainment of the electors to send to the archivist of the US a certificate including the names and numbers of votes for whom votes were cast
  
  • 🡪 First meeting of Congress in early January, the Archivist is required to transmit to the two houses every certificate received from the governors 
  • 🡪 President of the Senate (VP) opens and presents the electoral vote certificates in alphabetical order 
• A vote in Wyoming counts more than a vote in California
• Pursuant to the 2020 census, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania have lost a vote and NC has gained one 
• A presidential candidate has to reach 270 votes
  
  • Because of this, 96% of campaign events took place in just 12 states (battleground states)
• EC also distorts popular vote because some people don’t turnout if they aren’t in a battleground state
  
  • If you ARE in a battleground state, you feel the imperative to go vote more strongly
• 5 times in US history the electoral college meant the candidate with fewer popular votes win the presidency: 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016
  
  • Major gap between 1888 and 2000
  • Roughly a 5% failure rate 
• 538 total electoral votes 
  
  • If split evenly, every 574,000 people would be represented by 1 vote
  • Ohio has 11.5 million so it should get 20 votes, but it gets 
  • Floridians are missing 5 and Californians are short 10
  • One Wyoming person’s vote = 4 California’s votes
  • It’s possible to win the election with only 22% of the popular vote
• Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia got more than half of the visits in the early 2000s because they have the most electoral college votes up for grabs 
  
  • Now Florida and Virginia are no longer swing states : /
• Goal is to protect smaller states, but only 2/18 states that got a visit were small
• 63% would vote to do away with the electoral college 
• Why NOT abolish?
  
  • People think candidates would focus on the big cities then 
    
    • Top 10 cities are less than 8% of the popular vote so they wouldn’t 
  • Tradition lol
  • The people who benefit from it in politics would not vote for it to go away
    
    • It would mostly benefit Democrats because Dems have consistently won the popular vote
  • Trump campaign: “it will allow the coastal elites” to dominate the election over “hardworking Americans”
• There have been attempts to replace!
  
  • 1979- Former Senator of Indiana, Birch Bayh, led the fight in the Senate 
    
    • It actually got a majority but was filibustered
    • Prof Arenburg was there!
  • 2001- push for a policy called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact 
    
    • Process would be triggered only when enough states passed them to represent 270
    • Hard to actually amend the Constitution to replace or reform the EC- so instead we approach reform differently 
    • Means of forcing the popular vote through

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Inflammatory Rhetoric + Voting Restrictions

• Because election are the means to democracy, this is why election denial represents an existential threat to democracy
  
  • Trump’s refusal to lose
    
    • 2020 had Trump’s failed court cases to overturn the election
    • They objected to procedures before the election, so they were found not to have standing since they only objected after he lost
    • Difficult to convince the court to take dramatic action, especially if it won’t actually affect the outcome
    • Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost in 2020 and pursued legal and illegal means 
    • Insists he can only lose by fraud
      
      • Would only accept the results if the election was “free and fair”
      • “The only way they can beat us is to cheat” – Trump in June
  • The insurrection
    
    • Liz Cheney, a Republican and the head of the committee on Jan 6, even said that it was a dangerous claim for him to make that the election was stolen
    • Threatened the peaceful transfer of power
    • He retweeted a tweet about it
    • January 6^th was a certification meeting that no one was really aware of until the insurrection
• Republicans have filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of voting regulations 
  
  • Apparently they have more than 165,000 volunteers ready to watch the polls
  • Open-carry states would allow these poll-watchers to be armed
• Threat of political violence continues to rise 
• Recent (second) assignation attempt on Trump in Florida
  
  • Both potential assassins were former Trump supporters 
• In the wake of the 2020 election, 19 states passed 34 laws restricting voting access 
  
  • The lower the turnout, the better Republicans do
  • The higher the turnout, the better Democrats do
  • The Democratic party is the larger party but has issues with voter turnout 
  • More than 440 bills with voting access restrictions were introduce in almost every state in 2021
  • Red states try to make absentee voting more difficult
  • “Some states have spent the past few years piling on restrictions. In at least 28 states, voters will face restrictions that weren’t in place in the last presidential election.” -Brennan Center 
  • Ex: cutting voting times, restricting registration, strict voter ID laws
  • Weakening the Voting Rights Act in 2013
• Legislation is restrictive if “it contains one or more provisions that would make it harder for Americans to register” or vote
  
  • Restrictive legislation is fueled by false claims of widespread voter fraud 
  • Law enforcement may be permitted to penalize voters, election officials, and volunteer poll workers for ordinary conduct or inadvertent errors
• Some politicians are claiming that there are non-citizens voting in mass
  
  • Non-citizen voting is extremely rare and is a federal crime
  • Crime to register to vote too
  • In Congress, Republicans are threatening to shut down the government unless an amendment outlawing non-citizen voting is attached to legislation
• January 6^th
  
  • Judge Chutkan just made public portions of a filing the prosecutor made about why the case should go forward despite the Supreme Court giving Trump immunity
  • When told that Mike Pence was in peril on Jan 6^th, Trump said “So what?”

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Gerrymandering

• The House is so severely gerrymandered that only 24 of the 435 House races are actually a tossup
  
  • Incumbent reelection rose from 80-85% to 90-95%
• It can and is used in some cases to create majority-minority districts or weaken minority representation
• Can strengthen incumbents and/or maximize a party’s control over a state’s congressional delegation
• Reynolds v Sims (Supreme Court case, 1962) ruled on the principle of “one person, one vote” and required districts be of roughly equal proportions 
• The party in power in a particular state legislature seeks to create “safe seats” resulting in weirdly shaped districts 
  
  • Safe seats mean that there is little incentive to reach across the aisle 
• State’s congressional delegation can change drastically as a consequence 
• Lack of competitive districts fuels party polarization
  
  • Republicans move farther right and Democrats farther left
  • Contributes to the centrifugal forces electing more extreme candidates 
  • “Both political parties have engaged in basically rigging congressional districts to the point where they are absolutely safe districts…detrimental to the kind of dialogue that we need for bipartisanship.” -Former Dem Senator Sam Num
  • It eliminates most competitive seats and thus centrists/moderates are removed too
• Term goes back to 1812
  
  • Massachusetts Governer, Elbridge Gerry, drew a series of strangely shaped congressional districts
  • A political cartoon drew one of the weird districts of a salamander 
  • 🡪 Gerry-mander 
• The practice may go back to the first Congressional election back in 1789
  
  • Virginia’s anti-Federalist Governor Patrick Henry was accused of a designing a district to defeat federalist James Madison (who was opposing James Monroe)
• Historically aimed at electing incumbents
• Is gerrymandering a cause of polarization or an effect?
  
  • IMO both
  • People move to areas where they feel they align with the politics – people seek out places where others of like values live and work 
  • Political powers also try to manipulate districts to keep their seats

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Historic Political Party Routes

• “Party” isn’t mentioned in the Constitution
• In 1789 and 1792, electing the president just meant each elector cast two votes 🡪 unanimous George Washington elected President
  
  • John Adams received the second most votes 🡪 so he was VP
  • Pretty straightforward, occurred without a nominating convention 
• In GW’s farewell address, he warned against the “continual mischiefs of the spirit of party” – warning against the division
  
  • “natural to party dissension…itself a frightful despotism.”
• Madison and Jefferson (Democratic-Republicans) came together to appose Hamilton and the Federalists
  
  • Hamilton wanted a centralized government with a strong economic plan and power to tax
    
    • National bank
    • Lose interpretation of the constitution 
    • Rule by elite
  • Jefferson and Madison thought the centralized policies benefited the north at the expense of the south and wanted a limited role for the feds, more control for locals
    
    • Anti-national bank
    • Local rule
  • These parties emerged from the top-down (Congress and elites)
• 1800 🡪 consensus faded over candidates so political parties began to merge
  
  • Party elites met up and selected their nominee for president 
  • Jefferson vs Adams – very toxic, perhaps until 2016
  • No campaigning by candidates at this time
• After Jefferson won, the Federalist party became increasingly regional to New England then disappeared as a national party
• Democratic Republicans dominated, electing Jefferson, then Madison and then Monroe
  
  • All from Virginia!
• 1828- Andrew Jackson’s election over President John Quincy Adams
  
  • Jackson’s base was called “national Republicans” (present day Democrats)
  • Donkey was used for the first time as a joke about Jackson’s name (Jackson, jackass)

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Party Conventions

• 1832- the first national political conventions
  
  • Democrats re-nominated Andrew Jackson
  • Republicans put up Henry Clay (poor guy lost so many times)
• End of 19^th century- reform of the political process led to establishing primaries
  
  • These did not have a major impact until the mid/late 20^th century 
• Starting around 1955, TV networks began to cover “gavel-to-gavel” convention events
  
  • Created drama to keep people interested
• 1956- Adlai Stevenson (D) threw the VP choice to the convention and was the last to do that
• 1960- turning point in convention history
  
  • No longer would elites choose the nominees in “smoke filled rooms” – it was up to the electorate 
  • Conventions tried to balance the declining influence of leaders and growing influence of the people 
• 1968- the Democratic National Convention (most significant and remembered)
  
  • Deep divisions over the Vietnam war
  • Younger more liberal Dems led the anti-war movement, but the party establishment supported President Johnson
  • President Johnson didn’t run again, so his VP Hubert Humphrey came to the convention basically assuming the nomination, but the party was in jeopardy because war disagreements
  • 🡪 Nixon won (R)
• 1980- the last time either party saw a particularly contested convention 
  
  • More so now about introducing nominees to the nation and about hype
  • Conventions are now highly scripted 
• Superdelegate: first established by Dems in 1984
  
  • Hilary Clinton because of early dominance among superdelegates could not be caught by Bernie Sanders
  • In August 2018, the DNC stripped superdelegates of voting rights at the convention
  • 2020 rules: superdelegates to no longer vote on the first ballot at the convention unless there was no doubt about the outcome (so they don’t count unless they don’t matter)
• The 2020 conventions were largely virtual
• “Brokered” convention: only one ballot was cast
• Has not happened in decades
• Candidates typically choose their VPs before the convention
  
  • George Bush (2000) and John McCain (2008) both surprised the convention with their VP picks 
• Conventions now
  
  • Means of validating primary results, progressively more and more scripted
    
    • Planned and executed like a major show
  • Since 1980, there is more “prime time” coverage rather than the full convention being televised
    
    • Tightly scripted 

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Party Lines

• Members of both parties call members of the other party dishonest and immoral
  
  • Nearly an equal proportion of Republicans cite the harm caused by Dem policies as the benefits of the Rep parties as why they identify with their party (76/79%)
• Strong emotions condemning the opposing party is reflected in political violence