Research Field: American Politics
Electoral Patterns in Alabama: Local Change and Continuity Amid National Trends Book
Author(s): Regina Wagner
Abstract: While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look at state level political dynamics in the United States is so far sorely missing, and state level electoral developments and shifts are treated as mere reflections of national-level dynamics and patterns, which significantly impacts our ability to understand macro-level electoral shifts in the United States in general. This book analyzes gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential election results in the state of Alabama from 1945 through 2020. Comprehensive maps of county-level partisan […]
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Hard White: The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics Book
Author(s): Richard Fording
Published 2020, Oxford University Press Abstract: Hard White explains how the mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major shifts in the movement. First, Barack Obama’s presidential tenure, along with increases in minority representation, fostered white anxiety about Muslims, Latinx immigrants, and black Americans. While anti-Semitic sentiments remained somewhat on the fringes, hostility toward Muslims, Latinos, and African Americans bubbled up into mainstream conservative views. At the same time, white nationalist leaders shifted their focus and resources from protest […]
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Right-Wing Critics of the American Conservative Movement Book
Author(s): George Hawley
“Does the Alt-Right still matter? An examination of Alt-Right influence between 2016 and 2018” Journal Article
Author(s): Dr. George Hawley
Abstract: In this paper, we use panel data from the 2016 and 2017 waves of the Voter Study and the 2018 American National Election Studies (ANES) Pilot, to better understand the relative influence of the Alt-Right on mainstream US politics in the Trump era. Given the degree of formal alignment between Trump and a number of key voices within the movement, we first examine the strength of the association between affect for the Alt-Right and support for Republican Party between […]
The Long War Over Party Structure: Democratic Representation and Policy Responsiveness in American Politics. Book
Author(s): Dr. Regina Wagner
Co-authored with Byron E. Shafer
Cambridge University Press, October 2019 Abstract: A long-standing debate in American politics is about the proper structure for political parties and the relative power that should be afforded to party professionals versus issue activists. In this book, Byron E. Shafer and Regina L. Wagner draw systematically on new data and indexes to evaluate the extent to which party structure changed from the 1950s on, and what the consequences have been for policy responsiveness, democratic representation, and party alignment across different […]
“Affirmations for an Aging Electoral Order: The Mid-Term Elections of 2018.” Journal Article
Author(s): Dr. Regina Lea Wagner and Dr. Byron E. Shafer
Abstract At bottom, the election of 2018 produced one more iteration of an electoral order dominating American politics since 1992. So the main task of this paper is to elicit the structure of that order, drop the results of 2018 into it, and see how well those results fit. The key micro-analytic tools for approaching any election did work well in 2018, but cannot distinguish this election from other recent contests. The common journalistic focus on idiosyncratic elements of stability […]
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