Since 2008, the economic fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis has led to the defeat of a number of incumbents in the world's major democracies. For instance, in the former EU-15, eight countries (including France) have ousted their incumbents in favor of new leaders. The United States is no exception, and the 2012 US presidential election will see Barack Obama running for a second term during difficult economic times. After hitting a high of 10% in October 2009, the nation's unemployment rate decreased to 8.2% in May 2012. Nonetheless, this is still 0.7 percentage point higher than what Ronald Reagan faced in 1984 or what confronted George H.W. Bush in 1992 as they ran for their second terms. Looking at measures of presidential popularity for the month of May since 1980, Barack Obama's approval rating is at 46% in the Gallup polls, which is the third-worst rating after George W. Bush (30% in 2008) and George H.W. Bush (39.4% in 1992). Given Barack Obama's approval rating and the current national unemployment level, must we conclude that Barack Obama is irremediably on the ropes against Mitt Romney in 2012?

This article examines the extent to which service-learning courses affect students' attitudes and opinions. Elsewhere, we used a pre/postsurvey field experiment to demonstrate that volunteering with a homeless person tends to erode the stereotypes held by the domiciled—a confirmation of the venerable contact hypothesis. Here we use the same research design to assess whether students in service-learning courses exhibit a similar type of opinion change after spending a day with a homeless person. We find that even with limited contact a significant number of service-learning students came away from their time with homeless individuals holding fewer stereotypes and with a more nuanced perspective on the causes and consequences of homelessness. Nevertheless, working with a homeless person did have a negative effect on some students and contact generally failed to change students' views on public policy.

Engaging students in the design, administration, and postelection analysis of an exit poll can be an excellent experiential learning activity. Lelieveldt and Rossen (2009) argue that exit polls are a “perfect teaching tool” because they provide students with a cooperative (rather than competitive) learning experience; help students better connect theory, methodology, and course substance; and allow students to move outside of the classroom by branching out into the community. As professors at the University of Colorado, Denver (UCD), we have organized student exit polling during the 2008 and 2010 elections in the Denver area for research methods and elections classes. Although we have found these exit polls to be rewarding experiences for instructors and students alike, the reality is that conducting an exit poll with a group of polling neophytes, in the confines of a single semester, can be challenging. In this article, we discuss strategies and issues for instructors to consider when using an exit poll as an experiential learning exercise.

Wake Forest has appointed Rogan Kersh as the University's new provost and professor of political science. A Wake Forest alumnus, Kersh currently serves as the associate dean of academic affairs and professor of public policy at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

This article examines the effectiveness of a collaborative group learning project for teaching a core competency in comparative politics: constitutional structures. We use a quasi-experimental design and propensity score matching to assess the value of a constitutional writing group project and presentation. The results provide strong evidence that these learning tools are highly valuable for teaching abstract concepts. Students who participated in the project scored significantly higher on a short series of questions in final exams given several weeks after the completion of the group project. Somewhat paradoxically, the project increased competency but did not affect student self-reported interest in the subject matter. The challenges and improvements that can be made for the use these types of learning tools concludes the article.

Politics and Society in Contemporary China, Elizabeth Freund Larus, Lynne Reinner Publishers

As undergraduate students increasingly rely on the Internet as their primary method for gathering sources, they often overlook the rich and varied resources available to them in library collections. Furthermore, students often lack the sophistication to effectively seek out and use information, an ability generally referred to as information literacy. Political scientists and librarians at one institution sought to address the gap in student information literacy skills by creating and implementing a semester-long library lab component integrated into the required research methods course within the political science department. This article presents the steps taken to implement the lab component, including the student learning outcomes we sought to address. We also focus on the measures we used to assess the impact of the lab component. Students who participated in the lab component demonstrate markedly improved information literacy skills compared to those who did not.

Nearly all forecast models of US presidential elections provide estimates of the national two-party vote (Campbell 2008). Each of the nine forecasts published in the 2008 forecasting issue of PS: Political Science and Politics made national popular vote total predictions for the major party candidates, while only one provided an expected result in the Electoral College (Klarner 2008). These national vote models are assumed to be reliable forecasts of who is likely to win the general election. In most cases, this assumption is reasonable. It becomes problematic, however, at precisely the point that forecasts are most interesting: when elections are close. In tight elections, national forecasts can and have produced a “winner” different from the actual winner. Consider the forecasts and ultimate outcome of the 2000 election. Each of the 2000 presidential election forecasts predicted vice president Al Gore to win a majority of the two-party popular vote, which he did, but none correctly predicted governor George W. Bush to assume the presidency (Campbell 2001). Never in US history have White House residents been determined through a national popular vote. Presidential elections are decided through contests in the states and the District of Columbia. The forecast model we developed explicitly models the presidential contest based on factors inherent to these 51 jurisdictions. This modeling approach allows us to make a projection of the Electoral College result, which popular vote estimates cannot.

As state capitals and city halls influence our daily lives, how can students become active participants in the affairs of their communities (Saffell and Basehart 2009)? For students to explore this question and local policy making in general, I developed a city council simulation for a state and local government course. This article describes the details of this city council simulation so that it can be easily replicated. Moreover, the goal is for students to move beyond classroom lectures and become more informed participants of local policy making.

Lawrence Julius (“Larry”) Hanks, Sr. (1954–2011), a tenured associate professor of Political Science at Indiana University, passed away at his Bloomington residence on Thursday, November 10, 2011 after a long and courageous battle against cancer.

Robert Entman, J.B. and M.C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs and professor of international affairs at the George Washington University, has won the prestigious international Alexander von Humboldt Research Award for his field-changing contributions to political communication. Entman is the world's first political communication scholar and the first from the George Washington University to receive this award, and he will work at the Free University of Berlin for the majority of 2012. While in Germany, he will conduct comparative research in order to better understand how inequality has grown faster in the United States than in Western Europe.

We explicate the precise role that one specific emotion, disgust, plays in generating political acrimony. We do this by identifying the link between the different dimensions along which moral judgments are made by those espousing different political ideologies and the different emotions which undergird these evaluations. These assessments reliably track along liberal and conservative dimensions and are linked to the way values associated with purity and sanctity elicit greater degrees of disgust among conservatives. Here, we review a growing literature showing how disgust affects the psychology of politics through its influence on the cognitive and emotional processes that govern judgments of morality, as well as its direct impact on specific policy preferences. We then apply these findings to the nature and tenor of political discourse and suggest some ways that disgust might affect the character and function of democratic debate and tolerance. Finally, we discuss what these findings mean for public policy.

For the first time since 1985, APSA is convening in New Orleans, Louisiana for the 2012 APSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition. Join APSA in this historic location to discuss and reflect on the latest scholarship in political science and address issues related to the theme “Representation and Renewal.” The 2012 APSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition will have something for scholars in every stage of their careers, including an exhibition of publishers, placement service, plenary sessions, and networking receptions. More than 6,000 political scientists, publishers, and other scholars are expected to travel to New Orleans to take part in this largest annual gathering of political scientists.

In fundraising, potential candidates who do not collect sizable amounts of “early money” may be effectively eliminated even before the start of the Iowa Caucus. This winnowing raises concern about the impact money has on narrowing the field of candidates from whom voters can choose. To better grasp patterns of successful fundraising, we explore where candidates obtain funds during the preprimary and primary periods. We use individual contributions data from the Federal Election Commission during the preprimary and primary periods of the 2008 Republican presidential nomination contest. Findings suggest that although California, New York, and Texas provide disproportionate amounts of early financing, the ability of presidential aspirants to broaden their support is indicative of campaign success.

The traditional format for teaching courses to undergraduate students has long been that of lecture when professors speak and students listen. However, as times have evolved so too have the pedagogical methods in the classroom. In teaching a course on diversity and discrimination in the society, this instructor opted to combine several teaching methods as a means of not only conveying the substantive material to the class but, more importantly, engaging the students at an interactive learning level. By combining traditional lecture with watching/discussing documentaries and incorporating structured student debate, a dynamic learning environment was created. As a result of incorporating the students into every aspect of the class, the students learned from both the instructor and students alike. Thus, the use of this multifaceted approach created a positive and engaging learning environment for the whole class.

The Political Science Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) announces it awards for basic research support and dissertation improvement grants for fiscal year 2011. The Program funded 25 new projects and 44 doctoral dissertation improvement proposals. The Political Science Program spent $5,234,470 on these research, training and workshop projects and $483,822 on dissertation training grants for political science students. The program holds two grant competitions annually —Regular Research, August and January 15; Dissertation Improvement, September 16 and January 15— and constitutes a major source of political science research funding as part of fulfilling NSF's mission to encourage theoretically focused empirical investigations aimed at improving the explanation of fundamental social and political processes and structures.

In the run up to the 2010 midterm elections, pundits and politicos often talked of an “enthusiasm gap” between Republicans and Democrats. Although conventional treatments have typically equated these gaps with changes in turnout and the composition of the electorate, we argue that the term better describes the participatory patterns of highly engaged voters. Using multiple data sources, including a geocoded, county-wide study that tracked yard sign displays between 2008 and 2010, we examine the visible evidence of enthusiasm gaps in voters' neighborhoods. Our findings echo recent narratives, yet suggest that scholars have missed important dimensions in their examinations of these “wave” elections.

A preview of some of the articles in the April 2012 issue.

The ninth annual APSA Teaching and Learning Conference was held in Washington, DC, February 17–19, 2012. This year's theme was “Teaching Political Science: Relevance in a Changing World.”

APSA is pleased to announce the next editorial leadership of the American Political Science Review (APSR), the flagship scholarly journal in political science. Beginning in July 2012, the new APSR editorial team will be led by John Ishiyama and colleagues Marijke Breuning, Steven Forde, and Valerie Martinez-Ebers from the University of North Texas (UNT). The APSA Council has appointed the new team to a four-year term, renewable for an additional two-year term. Professor Ishiyama will serve as the lead editor for the initial two years, after which time the lead-editor role may rotate among members of the editorial team with the consent of the team and the APSA Council.