The 2016 Presidential Election: The Causes and Consequences of a Political Earthquake critically analyzes the 2016 presidential election. The chapters in this book identify key factors behind the election of Donald J. Trump, explore the unconventional campaign, analyze the unexpected election result, evaluate the forecasting models, and speculate on the effect of the election outcome on politics and governance in the Trump Administration.

Winner, 2025 Missouri Conference on History Book AwardSwindler. Murderer. Scoundrel.Robert Boatright was one of Middle America’s greatest confidence men. Although little remembered today, his story provides a rare glimpse into America’s criminal past. Working in concert with a local bank and an influential Democratic boss, “this dean of modern confidence men” and his colorful confederacy of con men known as the Buckfoot Gang seemed untouchable. A series of ...

Americans often worry about political corruption—not only about specific officials misusing their powers, but also more broadly about political, cultural, moral decay or deterioration. Underneath our talk about corruption lie deeper claims and concerns about how we organize our common life. American Corruption Talk presents a study of corruption and corruption talk that seeks to understand those deeper claims and concerns.Robert Boatright and Molly Brigid McGrath focus on ...

This comprehensive study, based on state voter files, shows how low primary turnout distorts representation and explores reforms to increase participationThe Problem with Primary Voters is the most comprehensive study to date of primary election voters. The authors examine state voter files, drawn from the near-universe of US adults and all primary voters, matching these voter files to commercial data and predictive models of voter partisanship and ideolog...

The direct primary, in which voters rather than party leaders or convention delegates select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century. Yet after decades of practice and study, scholars have found little clear evidence that direct primaries changed the outcomes of party nominations. The conventional wisdom has always been that once the Progressive movement declined and voters became distracted by more p...

This Element presents an analysis of campaign finance in city council elections in four midsize Massachusetts cities. It shows that while money does not determine local election outcomes it plays a gatekeeping role – especially for nonincumbents. Moreover, this money comes from a very unrepresentative segment of the electorate. Although elections in these cities are nonpartisan, individual donors and interest groups are sorted into networks that function like political parties. The Element...

This volume considers corruption as a multidimensional, complex phenomenon in which various forms of corruption may overlap at any given time. Extending the seemingly paradoxical notion of “legal corruption” to such settings as the USA, Spain, and the Czech Republic, the book seeks to augment our understanding of corruption in democracies by focusing on conduct that is considered by large segments of the population to be corrupt even though they are not explicitly defined as such by the la...

This volume explores the conflict between two forces: party polarization and party factionalism. The major change in America’s two political parties over the past half-century has been increased polarization, which has led to a new era of heightened inter-party competition resulting in stronger and more cohesive parties. At the same time, elections, particularly primaries, often reveal deep internal factional divisions within both the parties, and the 2020 election was no different. The De...

This book deals with large-scale, systemic corruption, a phenomenon that it identifies as part of the political landscape in most, if not all, societies of the contemporary world. While the analysis is grounded in the political thought of earlier thinkers, especially Edmund Burke, and integrates the insights of several modern analysts of corruption, the volume offers a new, updated theoretical perspective on the topic. This perspective reflects deep concerns with corruption in a world faci...

In many elections, candidates frame their appeals in gendered ways--they compete, for instance, over who is more "masculine." This is the case for male and female candidates alike. In the 2016 presidential election, however, the stark choice between the first major-party female candidate and a man who exhibited a persistent pattern of misogyny made the use of gender more prominent than in any previous election in the United States. Presidential campaigns often have an impact on downballot ...

The 2016 presidential election was unconventional in many ways. The election of President Donald Trump caught many by surprise, with a true outsider — a candidate with no previous governmental experience and mixed support from his own party — won the election by winning in traditionally Democratic states with coattails that extended to Republican Senate candidates and resulted in unified Republican government for the first time since 2008. This result broke with the pre-election convention...

Congressional primaries are increasingly being blamed for polarization and gridlock in Congress. Most American states adopted congressional primaries during the first decades of the 20th century as a means of breaking the hold of political "bosses" on the nomination of candidates. Yet now, many contend that primaries have become a means by which the most dedicated party activists choose candidates unrepresentative of the electorate, and so general election voters are forced to choose betwe...