Campaign Finance

• GENERAL provisions of FECA and The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002
  
  • You will not need to know specific dollar limits
    
  • Differences between presidential and congressional elections
    
• Role of party in campaign finance
  
  • Independent v. Coordinated expenditures
    
  • Soft money
    
  • Agency agreements
    
  • bundling/cueing
    
  • party strategy
    

• Determinants of voting
  
  • Michigan model
    
  • revisions of Michigan model
    
  • Impact of candidates and issues on vote choice
    
• Trends in Partisanship
  
  • Dealignment
    
  • evidence
    
  • counter-evidence
    

• Party competition
  
  • Determinants of competition
    
  • Impact of competition on policy
    
    • Policy relevance of parties
      
    • Aggregate- v. District-level competition
      
• Party support patterns in Utah
• Autonomy of state party systems
  
  • Impact of federalism, population patterns
    
    
    

1. One dramatic phenomenon in American politics over the last 40 years is the widely perceived dealignment of the party in the electorate. Briefly review the evidence regarding the changing importance parties to the voters and discuss what this evidence means in terms of voters' attitudes toward the parties, their assessments of individual candidates, and in how they ultimately cast their vote.
   
   
2. To varying degrees, the electoral fates of state political parties can be relatively autonomous from those of their national level counterparts. Explain what this means and why it seems to be the case. What explanations have been offered to account for the variations across states in the degree of this autonomy.