Laurie L. Rice

Campaign-Related Social Networking and the Political Participation of College Students

College students politically participate through traditional mechanisms at lower rates than their elders. Yet, members of this group may participate by other means, like friending candidates and joining political groups through social networking websites. We argue that these online activities serve as a meaningful form of civic engagement by broadening who participates and encouraging other forms of participation. Using a survey of randomly chosen undergraduates at a large Midwestern university, we discover that important distinctions exist between those who friend or join these online social networks and those who participate in more traditional off-line political activities. While interest in politics is a precursor to off-line engagement, it does not predict friending or joining an online social network that is political in nature. However, friending candidates or joining such networks appears to mobilize college students to engage in other forms of political participation.

Congressional Response to Statements of Administration Policy and Presidential Signing Statements

We explore the sensitivity of Congress to statements of administration policy (SAPs) and signing statements in the struggle with the executive over policy. We hypothesize that the nature and use of objections contained in these presidential communications generates additional congressional oversight. To test whether this happens, we developed a dataset with all SAPs, signing statements, and congressional oversight hearings from 1997 through 2007. The results indicate that the type and number of objections raised in presidential communications affects congressional oversight activity.

College Students and Online Political Expression During the 2016 Election

While college students traditionally exhibit low levels of political participation and interest in politics, they are more likely to engage in some forms of political expression than their elders. Their greater familiarity with online forms of political expression and engagement potentially lowers their barriers for political involvement. In turn, this potentially draws more young adults into the political process. The authors compare the precursors of expressive forms of online political engagement to those of talking to someone off-line and trying to persuade them to vote for or against a candidate or party among college students. They find that both activities are positively connected with politically oriented activity on social media as well as the frequency with which one reads blogs. They also discover that the mechanisms that explain online political expression are both similar to and different from those that explain off-line attempts at persuasion in several key ways.

Campaign Visits, Party Ties, and Challenges to the Party Establishment in Presidential Nominating Contests

Rice examines Donald Trump’s claims that he won the Republican nomination by bringing new people into the Republican Party. Instead, she finds evidence that Trump won through drawing in Republicans who do not normally participate in their party’s nominating contests. Rice argues that campaign visits help expose voters to the range of ideas within their party and strengthen ties between voters and party. Meanwhile, voters in areas completely ignored by a party’s candidates become more vulnerable to outsider appeals like those of Trump. She finds that Trump did better in these previously ignored areas as well as in counties with higher unemployment rates. However, on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders did better in states with open contests, suggesting he succeeded in drawing in new people to the Democratic Party. She concludes with a discussion of the strategic implications of these findings for party leaders.

Introduction: Turning Lemons into Lemonade? Party Strategy as Compensation for External Stresses

Rackaway and Rice review the tripod model of political parties and discuss how changes in the electorate and campaigns challenge its stability. They focus specifically on how the 2016 election brought new challenges to the Republican and Democratic parties, with candidates for their party’s nomination on both sides mounting significant challenges to the party establishment. These challenges require new strategic adaptations. The chapter concludes with an overview of the remainder of the book and the insights these chapters provide into the state of American political parties.

Conclusion: The Paradox of Partisanship in 2016 and Beyond

Rackaway and Rice discuss the challenges inherent in the paradox of party organizations weakening at the same time partisanship in the electorate strengthens. They discuss the factors that have produced these seemingly contradictory trends and the variety of pressures American political parties found themselves under during the 2016 election. These pressures continue beyond the election, and a variety of factors combine to make the futures of the Democratic and Republican parties look bleak. Yet, parties over time have demonstrated a remarkable amount of adaptability. Surviving this latest round of challenges will require strategically adapting to a changing electorate. The chapter also discusses the insights that the other chapters in the book, taken together, provide into parties’ prospects for the future.

Taking College-Level Political Science Courses and Civic Activity

The annual Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey (2013) showed a 40 percent decrease in the number of incoming college freshmen who think that keeping up with politics is important. In 1966, 60 percent of this group thought that keeping up with politics was important (Galston 2004), while only 36.1 percent thought so in 2013 (Eagan et al. 2013). This trend coincides with research findings that indicate that the percentage of young adults who exercise suffrage has declined in this timeframe (Levine and Lopez 2002; Miller and Shanks 1996), and that young adults are less apt than their elders to engage in other forms of political activity such as contributing money to political parties or candidates, contacting their elected officials, or voting (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Zukin et al. 2006).