In his 1987 presidential address to the American Political Science Association,” One Soul at a Time: Political Science and Political Reform,” Samuel P. Huntington (1988, 3–10) argued at some length that “political science … is not just an intellectual discipline (but) also a moral one,” and that “the impetus to do good in the sense of promoting political reform is … embedded in our profession.” Therefore, “it is impossible to have political scientists in the absence of political participation, and political science has only developed with the expansion of political participation. In a society in which there is no participation—no competition for power—political scientists would have nothing to do.” It logically follows that “the connection between democracy has been a close and continuing one.”

Political divisions based on class would seem to be central to contemporary American politics. Inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth have grown steadily over the last 30 years, creating greater differences in opportunity and challenging the longstanding American belief in equality of opportunity (Hochschild 1995). The two major parties differ sharply in their concern for class issues, making class political divisions all the more likely.

In A Nation Too Good to Lose, former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark worried that the future of Canada was by no means guaranteed: “I am surprised by the number of thoughtful Canadians, particularly outside Québec, who assume that Canada will stay together in the future simply because it has stayed together in the past” (1994, 50). He noted that, “There is no rule that says every country should succeed, and none that requires failed countries to stay together. Divorce is acceptable in international relations. So no one argues that Canada should stay together just because it is here” (125).

The American Political Science Association's (APSA) Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy (2004) asserts that inequality is on the rise in the U.S., and democracy's future may be dim. These assertions are allegedly supported by empirical evidence.

“To arrive at some understanding of what is going on is hard enough,” says Abraham Kaplan, “without having also to meet the demand that we anticipate what will happen next” (1964, 351). Despite Kaplan's warning, attempts at forecasting American elections by political scientists have grown in recent years. Foreshadowing election results is not just a casual interest for political scientists. It both sparks interest in the work of our discipline, and serves as a pedagogical tool. We admit that many challenges present themselves when we attempt to predict complicated social phenomena; but if we, instead, limit our research to description and explanation, the danger is that repeated analysis of the same datasets will track patterns again and again that do not exist in the reality outside our samples. One guard against this is to take theories about politics and employ them to predict future events. In this spirit, this paper utilizes well-known patterns of congressional elections to predict those of the 2006 Senate.

In the assembled critiques, the report of the APSA Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy is labeled simultaneously “dangerous quackery” and a “timid document.” Are we all reading the same report? At least when it comes to Stephen Earl Bennett's commentary (2006), probably not.

Data matter. Protest data are no exception. Not all datasets are equal, nor do all have equal validity and reliability. Thus far, there has been no serious debate regarding the quality of protest datasets. Increasing attention to protest studies suggests that now is the time to talk about the sine qua non for growing knowledge in this sub-field of comparative politics. In this paper I emphasize the importance of the underlying data sources. In particular, I argue that protest datasets should be drawn from many sources, particularly as many local sources as possible, in order to provide accurate and meaningful data. To support this contention, I first discuss traditional protest datasets and their limitations and provide suggestions about how to overcome these limitations. Second, I explain an alternative type of dataset coding and its characteristics. And finally, I use statistical tests to illustrate the importance of local sources.I give my sincere and deep thanks to Erik S. Herron and Ronald A. Francisco for reviewing drafts of this paper and giving me indispensable comments and continuous encouragements. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Collins and Omur Yilmaz who edited drafts of this manuscript. My appreciation also goes to anonymous reviews of this paper and the editors of PS: Political Science and Politics. I would like to thank my late farther, Ki-Dae whose love and support were simply endless. I'll share any compliment with them, but only I will take responsibility for any error.

The time does seem to be ripe for revisiting the urban-rural divide, with an eye toward understanding what lies beneath it. The last two presidential elections have revealed an urban-rural cleavage that is hard to ignore. Most observers now recognize that the “red” vs. “blue” Election Night maps really mask an urban-rural divide within states—a gap that has increased in recent years according to a range of definitions. In 2004, the difference in Democratic support between the most and least populous counties in the nation exceeded 25 points (see Figure 1). Survey marginals are comparable, although rural populations are not well represented in most national polls. Tabulations from the 2004 American National Election Studies (ANES) indicate a 20-point gap in presidential preference between inhabitants of counties with more than a million people and those in non-metro counties of less than 25,000.

We agree with the Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy that not only the quality but the very legitimacy of American democracy is threatened by persistent and rising inequalities of political power and influence. Class conflict is as old as democracy itself, and there is an intrinsic tension between the inequalities generated by free markets and the political equality that is at the core of democracy. No institutional fixes or policy remedies will fully overcome this tension, and in some respects it may be a useful tension. But current institutional and policy arrangements—especially at the local level—are exacerbating inequalities and political divisions in ways that are toxic for democracy.Because our discussion here draws heavily on our book Democracy at Risk, we wish to fully acknowledge and thank each of the book's co-authors, including Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Jeffrey M. Berry, Michael Brintnall, David E. Campbell, Luis Ricardo Fraga, Archon Fung, William A. Galston, Margaret Levi, Meira Levinson, Keena Lipsitz, Richard G. Niemi, Robert D. Putnam, Wendy M. Rahn, Rob Reich, Robert R. Rodgers, Todd Swanstrom, and Katherine Cramer Walsh. Our co-authors in that effort have contributed significantly to our understanding of the issues we discuss here, including by offering prose that we have relied on and put to use in this article. While we acknowledge our deep debt to our colleagues, any errors remaining are, of course, ours alone.

“To arrive at some understanding of what is going on is hard enough,” said Abraham Kaplan, “without having also to meet the demand that we anticipate what will happen next” (1964, 351). Political scientists have been taught to describe and to explain phenomena rather than to predict them. Kaplan, for one, appeared to think that this was enough. But within the rich soil of explanation, Kaplan admitted (346), lay the seed of prediction. Indeed, Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim (1948, 138), whom Kaplan took to task for saying so, flatly stated that “an explanation is not fully adequate” unless it also served as the basis for prediction (quoted in Kaplan, 346).

Weighting survey data based on social background characteristics such as age, education, gender, and race is a standard practice in public opinion polling. By adjusting the composition of their samples to conform to known demographic characteristics of the population, pollsters greatly increase the accuracy of their results. However, with the exception of the Zogby Poll, most major polling organizations, including the Gallup Poll, have strongly opposed weighting their data based on party identification. This opposition is understandable. Party identification is not a fixed characteristic of the electorate. It is a political attitude that can vary over time. As a result, most pollsters believe that there is no way of accurately determining the underlying distribution of party identification in the population for weighting purposes.

Justin is not alone. In a recent study of high school seniors from California, for example, only 28% agreed that “I think people in government care about what people like me and my family need” (Kahne and Middaugh 2005). Related findings are common. A survey by the National Association of Secretaries of State, for example, revealed that two-thirds of all young people agreed that “our generation has an important voice, but no one seems to hear it.” Moreover, those youth who were least trusting were also the least likely to vote, to believe that government can affect their lives, or to pay attention to politics (National Association of Secretaries of State 1999). These findings, combined with numerous other indicators that show low and in many cases declining civic and political participation, indicate that forms of engagement required for a participatory democracy to thrive are in need of attention (Macedo et al. 2005).The initial research for this essay was generously supported by a grant from the Surdna Foundation. Subsequent research and writing was generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We also wish to thank Melinda Fine, Barbara Leckie, Tobi Walker, and James Youniss for helpful feedback on earlier drafts. The authors are solely responsible for any and all conclusions.

Within polling places, does the scarcity of voting machines cause longer lines and thereby dissuade some people from voting? Are voting machines scarce in some areas because turnout would be low, irrespective of the availability of voting machines? In Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, the answers to these questions carried very real and significant political stakes. Consider the following from Franklin County, the second most populous county in the state. In precincts where voting machines were plentiful (i.e., where there were fewer registrants per available voting machine), turnout was especially high and John Kerry's share of the presidential vote was low. In contrast, in areas of machine scarcity (i.e., precincts with many registrants per available voting machine), turnout was lower and Kerry's vote share was higher. These relationships are shown in Figures 1A and 1B. Given the strong association between machine availability and the Kerry vote, if machine (un)availability was a cause of (low) turnout, then Kerry may very well have received fewer votes than he would have had more machines been available or had the distribution of available machines been less skewed toward precincts that were more supportive of George W. Bush.I appreciate input from SSRC Commission members Henry Brady, Martha Kropf, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Michael Traugott with whom I collaborated on the SSRC's “Interim Report on Alleged Irregularities in the United States Presidential Election of 2 November 2004” (Brady et al. 2004). I also thank Benjamin Bishin for comments on the paper. The Social Science Research Council and its staff, including Jason McNichol, Dashiell Flynn, and Sarah Alexander, provided generous support for this work. The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily shared by other SSRC Commission members or the Social Science Research Council.

In November 2000, exit poll interviews with voters in Florida indicated that Al Gore won the state. As a result, many television networks declared Gore the winner of Florida, a pivotal state to winning the presidency in 2000. Only a few hours later, the first vote tallies from the Florida Secretary of State's office revealed that George W. Bush was in fact leading in Florida. After 45 days of recounts and lawsuits, it was clear that the exit polls were wrong; Bush had won the state by the narrowest of margins. As a result of the flawed exit poll the media and pollsters scoured and reanalyzed the methodology used in 2000 to prepare and correct for the 2004 presidential election. The old system, Voter News Service (VNS) was scrapped entirely, and Edison-Mitofsky Research was chosen to implement a new and more accurate national exit poll in 2004 by a consortium of news organizations retained by the Associated Press called the National Election Pool (NEP). What happened? Exit poll results from Edison-Mitofsky showed John Kerry ahead in Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico—all states which he lost to Bush in 2004.Author names are listed alphabetically. The co-authors were also the co-principal investigators of the Loyola Marymount University 2005 Los Angeles Mayoral Exit Poll. Thanks to Salvador Paniagua and Haven Perez for their tremendous research assistance in implementing this project and to the more than 120 student researchers who participated in the exit polling and data entry. Robert Aguinaga and Antonio Gonzalez of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project also provided valuable assistance in implementing the poll. Mark Blumenthal, of mysterypollster.com was instrumental in tracking down exit poll archives.

With the 2006 midterm election fast approaching, Democrats' chances of regaining control of the House of Representatives remain unclear. On the one hand, national political conditions appear to be more favorable for Democrats than at any time since the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. A pickup of only 15 seats would give Democrats control of the House in 2007 and, since the end of World War II the average midterm seat loss for the president's party is 24 seats. Moreover, when the president's approval rating is below 50%, the average midterm seat loss is 38 seats and, according to data compiled by pollingreport.com, George W. Bush's average approval rating during the month of June was only 37%.

On April 19, 2005, after just four rounds of voting, the College of Cardinals announced that 78-year-old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been selected as the new pope. This announcement startled many. To be sure, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for nearly a quarter of a century Ratzinger had helped select the vast majority of the cardinals who gathered to choose a successor to John Paul II, so his selection as pope could be seen as fulfillment of a simple quid pro quo. Even so, it had been widely speculated that Ratzinger's conservative beliefs would spark passionate opposition among the electors and that his age and reputed poor health would also work against him (Novak 2005).

The 2005 Workshop for Department Chairs was dedicated to discussing the legal issues that face department chairs. Themes included sexual and racial harassment, tenure, and hiring. APSA's Departmental Services Committee (DSC) sponsored the workshop and Edie N. Goldenberg (University of Michigan), a member of the DSC, moderated the panel. American University Counsel Hisham Khalid, Loyola University Chicago's Susan Gluck Mezey, and retired Wheaton College President Dale Rogers Marshall were also part of the panel. The Workshop drew 75 attendees to hear the four presentations and to consider how to deal with legal issues. The 2006 Workshop for Department Chairs is “Planning for Assessment & Accountability Issues”—more information will follow in the coming months.

Political consulting is not a wholly new enterprise. Advisers have provided services informally to politicians for centuries. In recent years, however, political consulting has become increasingly formalized. Sabato (1981) offers an operational definition of contemporary political consultants: a campaign professional who is engaged primarily in the provision of advice and services (such as polling, media creation and production, direct mail fundraising) to candidates, their campaigns, and other political committees. Fueled primarily by developments in the United States, the political consulting industry experienced tremendous growth in the 20th century since the establishment of the first modern political consulting firm in 1934 (Friedenberg 1997; Baumgartner 2000; Thurber and Nelson 2000; Lathrop 2003; Plasser and Plasser 2002). Presidential candidates have sought the expertise of political marketing professionals consistently since Alfred Landon's 1936 campaign (Baumgartner 2000). Since 1969, when Joseph Napolitan (who had worked on Hubert Humphrey's campaign in 1968) founded the American Association of Political Consultants with 25 members, the organization has grown substantially, currently boasting over 4,000 members. (Baumgartner [2000] estimates the number of political consultants across the United States to exceed 35,000.) This proliferation of political consultants instigated the formation of an industry that has become increasingly specialized and professionalized (Thurber 1998; Baumgartner 2000).

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina flooded more than 80% of the city of New Orleans. As the stories of hurricane victims, mostly African Americans, dominated the national news coverage, New Orleans' racial politics in particular, and the racial divisions in general, once again invited public debate. Why did a city that had been firmly controlled by African-American politicians from the mayor's office to the city council exhibit such a clear racial image? What role did Whites play in the city's political establishment?This project was supported by research grants from the American Political Science Association and the University of Wisconsin, which allowed the author to travel to Memphis and New Orleans to collect original data and interview the mayor of Memphis and other politicians. The author would also like to thank Susan Reed, Martin Gruberg, Wayne Parent, and David Siemers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the article. Special thanks go to the three reviewers and the editors of PS: Political Science and Politics, and to Laura Fisher-Guex, James Vanderleeuw, and Susan Howell for their invaluable assistance with the data-collection/recording process.

Conferences are an integral part of academic life. They generate focal points for intellectual exchange and encourage professional socialization. They help scholars working on similar issues to identify others who might be part of their specialist community while also creating opportunities to learn about research that colleagues are doing in different areas of the discipline. In other words, conferences provide an opportunity for scholars to present their work in progress, to see what others are working on, and to network with their peers.The authors would like to thank PS's anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.