TRUMP, CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM, AND ISSUE POLARIZATION: THE ATTITUDES AND ACTIVISM OF IOWA CLERGY IN THE 2020 CAUCUSES

Prior research has investigated the differences between evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, and Catholic clergy in American general elections. We know less about attitudes and activism of clergy in presidential nomination campaigns. This research highlights results from a survey of 480 clergy on candidate support, issues, and political activism in the 2020 Iowa caucuses. A strong Iowa caucus showing often fuels momentum for candidates in the rest of the nomination race, as with Barack Obama in 2008. This 2020 survey covers issues such as immigration, racial justice, health care, and more. I also explore how Iowa clergy think about political activism and views on Christian nationalism. I find that most Democratic-leaning clergy supported center-left candidates in Iowa in 2020. Among Iowa clergy of all parties (including independents), most disapproved of the job Donald Trump was doing as President. A comparison with a 2012 survey reveals increasing polarization of the three clergy groups on political ideology, church-state issues, and racial justice.

Pumping Up the Base: Deployment of Strong Emotion and Simple Language in Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speeches

Background and Method: This research examines the nomination acceptance speeches of US presidential candidates from Republican and Democratic parties in the post-WWII mass communication era (1948–2020, 38 speeches). Variables studied are the emotional tone of the speeches, their abstractness, their Grade Level, their employment of personal pronouns and their mentions of “America”. Speeches were scored with the Dictionary of Affect in Language (a sentiment analysis tool).Predictions: On the basis of functionalist theories of political discourse, it was predicted that the speeches would have a pleasant and active or celebratory emotional tone. Based on related research that focused on the effects of mass distribution on presidential communications, it was predicted that the speeches would increase in pleasantness, arousal and linguistic simplicity across years.Results: As predicted, speeches were pleasant and active in tone. Across years, speeches became significantly more arousing, less abstract, simpler, and longer. When individual speeches were divided into five equal portions, a strong significant quadratic trend was observed for pleasantness, which started high at the beginning of a speech, fell in the center, and rose again at the end.Conclusions: Presidential nomination acceptance speeches are emotionally pleasant and active and linguistically simple (Grade 8 level). Between 1948 and 2020, they remained pleasant, and became more active and simpler. In service of their aim to “pump up the base” individual speeches began on a pleasant, nationalistic and personal note, encompassed duller and more impersonal material in their centers, and became positive again at the end.

US midterm elections pose challenges for Democrats

Significance At present, Republicans need to gain only five seats to take control of the House of Representatives and just one to control the Senate. Awareness that the party holding the White House usually loses seats in midterm elections is driving tactics among both Democrats and Republicans. Impacts Republicans are likely to rely on law and order issues that have proved politically successful for them in the past. Republicans will link Democratic 'softness' on illegal immigrants to rising crime and Biden’s approach to Mexican border security. Securing a Republican Congress may well lead Donald Trump to commit to running for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

Lessons from the Use of Ranked Choice Voting in American Presidential Primaries

Grounded in experience in 2020, both major political parties have reasons to expand use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in their 2024 presidential primaries. RCV may offer a ‘win-win’ solution benefiting both the parties and their voters. RCV would build on both the pre-1968 American tradition of parties determining a coalitional presidential nominee through multiple ballots at party conventions and the modern practice of allowing voters to effectively choose their nominees in primaries. Increasingly used by parties around the world in picking their leaders, RCV may allow voters to crowd-source a coalitional nominee. Most published research about RCV focuses on state and local elections. In contrast, this article analyzes the impact on voters, candidates, and parties from five state Democratic parties using RCV in party-run presidential nomination contests in 2020. First, it uses polls and results to examine how more widespread use of RCV might have affected the trajectory of contests for the 2016 Republican nomination. Second, it contrasts how more than three million voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries backed withdrawn candidates with the low rate of such wasted votes for withdrawn candidates in the states with RCV ballots. Finally, it concludes with an examination of how RCV might best interact with the parties’ current rules and potential changes to those rules.

Democratic Disarray: Organizational Messaging Coherence and the Local Echoing Press During the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus

The Iowa caucuses are the inaugural event of the American presidential nomination process. When the state Democratic Party failed to report the 2020 caucus results in a timely manner and manage the consequences, the crisis situation threatened the legitimacy of the party and the integrity of the results. This research presents an in-depth case of the Iowa Democratic Party’s public communication response regarding an event described by the Des Moines Register as “hell” and a “results catastrophe.” Specifically, we were interested in how the Iowa Democratic Party responded to the crisis event and the extent to which the party organization was successful in disseminating favorable messaging about the caucus process to the local press. Drawing on organizational crisis management and echoing press perspectives, this analysis uses network and qualitative analytic approaches to assess message development, dissemination, and ultimately adoption. A local event with national implications presents a critical case in investigating how a political party, due to its institutional role in American elections and unique organizational structure, struggled to respond to the crisis.

Belonging 2.015

The year 2015 saw historic levels of refugee movements out of Syria, Iraq, and North Africa to Europe, which coincided chronologically with terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. The Republican presidential nomination campaign singled out refugees from Syria and Iraq as existential threats, and the “Islamophobia Industry” mainstreamed an anti-Muslim discourse in the presidential primary, naming Arab refugees as a potential fifth column, leading to the passage of the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act (HR 4038). The seismic sociopolitical shifts of 2015 shaped the experience of belonging among Iraqi refugee youths. Iraqi youths employed multiple strategies in confronting the disturbing ways in which they were being profiled in the public arena. One important strategy was in calling attention to a counternarrative—the proactive and positive ways that the local Muslim and Arab community was reaching out across cultural and religious barriers to mobilize against hate.

Democratic Disarray: Organizational Messaging Coherence and the Local Echoing Press During the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus

The Iowa caucuses are the inaugural event of the American presidential nomination process. When the state Democratic Party failed to report the 2020 caucus results in a timely manner, researchers began to assess how party and press officials co-constructed the events. This research presents an in-depth case of the Iowa state and local Democratic Party’s public communication response regarding an event described by the Des Moines Register as “hell” and a “results catastrophe.” Specifically, we were interested in how the Iowa Democratic Party responded to the crisis event and the extent to which the party organization was successful in disseminating favorable messaging about the caucus process to the local press. Drawing on organizational crisis management and echoing press perspectives, this analysis uses network and qualitative analytic approaches to assess message development, dissemination, and ultimately adoption. A local event with national implications presents a critical case in investigating how a political party, due to its institutional role in American elections and unique organizational structure, struggled to respond to the crisis.

Breaking the Eleventh Commandment

A closer look at Representative Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey’s decision to challenge Richard Nixon for the 1972 Republican presidential nomination due to Nixon’s failure to bring the Vietnam conflict to a conclusion reveals some intriguing aspects of the relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy during the U.S. experience in Vietnam. In breaking the GOP’s “Eleventh Commandment”—the exhortation to not speak ill of fellow Republicans—McCloskey acted on the courage of his convictions in opposing the war and his party’s sitting president. For McCloskey, Vietnam transcended politics; it was a moral issue on which he was willing to sacrifice his political career—unlike most other members of Congress and politicians in successive administrations during the Vietnam era. Moreover, McCloskey’s failure to gain traction with voters in the GOP primaries with his antiwar stance presaged George McGovern’s struggles against Nixon in the fall campaign in 1972.

Misreporting: Social Scientists, Political Commentators, and the Politics of Presidential Selection

A familiar framework for interpreting the politics of presidential nomination, built on an accumulating body of social science research plus the extended observations of experienced commentators, received remarkably little use in the day-to-day reportage of the Democratic and Republican contests of 2016 and 2020 as they unfolded. So this paper begins by sketching out the factional structure of the modern Democratic and Republican parties, along with the bandwagon dynamic that recurrently resolves their factional disputes. It then applies these foundational interpretive factors to the two most recent pairs of nominating contests. What results are four orthodox and recurrent stories that stand in sharp contrast to media narratives that were all too frequently a mix of incomplete basic understandings plus wildly overemphasized idiosyncrasies.

Money for Nothing? Financing the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential Nomination Campaigns

The aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between campaign money and winning the 2016 and 2020 presidential nominations in the United States. While in the last two decades of the twentieth century candidates who raised most money almost always became major party nominees, the record is mixed for presidential cycles 2004-2012. By comparing various dimensions of campaign finance, including activities of candidates' campaign committees and outside groups, the Author demonstrates that while successful fundraising, resulting in dozens of millions of dollars at the disposal of candidates, seems necessary to run a competitive campaign, raising the most money is no longer pre-requisite for becoming major party presidential nominee.