Related Research Articles
In representative democracies, gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent of creating undue advantage for a party, group, or socio-economic class within the constituency. The manipulation may consist of "cracking" or "packing".
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American to be elected to the presidency, as well as being only the third sitting United States senator elected president, joining Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, Biden became the first senator running mate of a senator elected president since Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960 election.
Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, commonly used during political campaigns. Canvassing can be done for many reasons: political campaigning, grassroots fundraising, community awareness, membership drives, and more. Campaigners knock on doors to contact people personally. Canvassing is used by political parties and issue groups to identify supporters, persuade the undecided, and add voters to the voters list through voter registration, and it is central to get out the vote operations. It is the core element of what political campaigns call the ground game or field.
The Illinois General Assembly is the legislature of the U.S. state of Illinois. It has two chambers, the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate. The General Assembly was created by the first state constitution adopted in 1818. As of 2022, the current General Assembly is the 102nd.
The youth vote in the United States is the cohort of 18–24 year-olds as a voting demographic. Many policy areas specifically affect the youth of the United States, such as education issues and the juvenile justice system. The general trend in voter turnout for American elections has been decreasing for all age groups, but "young people's participation has taken the biggest nosedive". This low youth turnout is part of the generational trend of voting activity. Young people have the lowest turnout, though as the individual ages, turnout increases to a peak at the age of 50 and then falls again. Ever since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote in 1972, youth have been under represented at the polls as of 2003. In 1976, one of the first elections in which 18-year-olds were able to vote, 18–24 year-olds made up 18 percent of all eligible voters in America, but only 13 percent of the actual voters – an under-representation of one-third. In the next election in 1978, youth were under-represented by 50 percent. "Seven out of ten young people…did not vote in the 1996 presidential election… 20 percent below the general turnout." In 1998, out of the 13 percent of eligible youth voters in America, only five percent voted. During the competitive presidential race of 2000, 36 percent of youth turned out to vote and in 2004, the "banner year in the history of youth voting," 47 percent of the American youth voted. In the Democratic primaries for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the number of youth voters tripled and even quadrupled in some states compared to the 2004 elections. In 2008, Barack Obama spoke about the contributions of young people to his election campaign outside of just voter turnout.
For about a hundred years, from after Reconstruction until the 1990s, the Democratic Party dominated Texas politics.
The 2004 United States Senate election in Illinois was held on November 2, 2004. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald decided to retire after one term. The Democratic and Republican primary elections were held in March, which included a total of 15 candidates who combined to spend a record total of over $60 million seeking the open seat.
Illinois's first congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Illinois. Based in Cook County, the district includes much of the South Side of Chicago, and continues southwest to Joliet.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is an American public policy think tank headquartered in Washington, DC. According to its mission statement, the Joint Center, through research, policy roundtables, and publications, produces innovative, high-impact ideas, research, and policy solutions that have a positive impact on people and communities of color. Ranking at #50 on the University of Pennsylvania's 2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, the Joint Center served as the intellectual hub for a generation of post-Civil Rights era black thinkers, including Maynard Jackson, Mary Frances Berry, William Julius Wilson, Shirley Chisholm and John Hope Franklin. Originally founded in 1970 to provide training and technical assistance to newly elected African American officials, the Joint Center has since expanded its portfolio to include a range of public policy issues of concern to African-Americans, AAPIs, Latinos, and Native Americans.
The 2010 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010, in the middle of Democratic President Barack Obama's first term. Republicans ended unified Democratic control of Congress and the presidency by winning a majority in the House of Representatives.
The 2000 United States House of Representatives election for the 1st district in Illinois took place on November 7, 2000 to elect a representative from Illinois's 1st congressional district for the 107th United States Congress. Incumbent Democratic Representative Bobby Rush faced a primary challenge from Illinois Senator and future President Barack Obama. Rush defeated Obama 61 percent to 30 percent, with other candidates combining for the remaining nine percent. Rush later defeated his Republican opponent, Raymond Wardingley, 88 percent to 12 percent, ensuring his reelection. Subsequent to this election, Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, and later elected President in 2008.
Barack Obama won three Illinois Senate elections. The Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama began in 1997 after his first election in 1996 to a two-year term in the Illinois Senate representing Illinois' 13th Legislative District in Chicago. He was re-elected in 1998 to a four-year term and re-elected again in 2002 to another four-year term. He resigned from the Illinois Senate in 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate. He resigned from the U.S. Senate following his election in 2008 to become the 44th President of the United States in 2009.
Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4(b), which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting.
The 1984 United States presidential election in Illinois took place on November 6, 1984. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1984 United States presidential election. State voters chose 24 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States.
Voter suppression in the United States is various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible voters from exercising their right to vote. Where found, such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. Before and during the American Civil War, most African-Americans had not been able to vote. After the Civil War, all African-Americans were granted voting rights, causing some Southern Democrats and former Confederate states to institute actions such as poll taxes or language tests that were ostensibly not in contradiction to the U.S. Constitution at the time, but were used to limit and suppress voting access, most notably African American communities that made up large proportions of the population in those areas, but in many regions the majority of the electorate as a whole was functionally or officially unable to register to vote or unable to cast a ballot. African Americans' access to registration and voting in the South was often difficult until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and continues to be a subject of debate. American women did not have a constitutionally protected right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, while Native Americans' right to vote was not enacted fully until 1924 with the Indian Citizenship Act. Until 1971, with the passage of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, the minimum voting age in the United states was 21, not 18. A constitutional amendment improving voting accessibility for the elderly and handicapped was passed in 1984. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of March 24, 2021, more than 361 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 47 states.
Gerrymandering in the United States has been used to increase the power of a political party. Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas. The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a salamander.
Claudine Gay is a scholar of government and African-American studies as well as a university administrator. She serves as Harvard's Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies, and Edgerley Family Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is vice president of the Midwest Political Science Association.
REDMAP is a project of the Republican State Leadership Committee of the United States to increase Republican control of congressional seats as well as state legislatures, largely through determination of electoral district boundaries. The project has made effective use of partisan gerrymandering, by relying on previously unavailable mapping software such as Maptitude to improve the precision with which district lines are strategically drawn. The strategy was focused on swing blue states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin where there was a Democratic majority but which they could swing towards Republican with appropriate redistricting. The project was launched in 2010 and estimated to have cost the Republican party around US$30 million.
In the United States, Obama–Trump voters, sometimes referred to as Trump Democrats or Obama Republicans, are people who voted for Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama in the 2008 or 2012 presidential elections, but later voted for Republican Party nominee Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Data shows that in 2016, these voters comprised roughly 13% of Trump voters. In 2012, this segment of voters made up 9% of total Obama voters. Seven percent of 2012 Obama voters did not vote at all in 2016, and 3% voted for a third party candidate. While some analysts consider Obama–Trump voters to have been decisive in Trump's 2016 victory, others have disputed this conclusion.
References
- 1 2 3 Joint Center for Political; Economic Studies (2008). "David A. Bositis". Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Archived from the original on November 6, 2008. Retrieved November 7, 2008.
- 1 2 Jill Lawrence (November 5, 2008). "Passionate race drives a massive turnout". USA Today . Retrieved November 7, 2008.
- ↑ "Voter Suppression is Wrong | Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies". jointcenter.org. Retrieved 2017-07-26.
David Bositis, who is not a Joint Center staffer, and has not worked at the Joint Center for over a year.
- ↑ Susan Saulny (November 2, 2008). "Obama-Inspired Black Voters Warm to Politics". The New York Times . Retrieved November 7, 2008.
- ↑ Lyndsey Layton (October 21, 2008). "Black Turnout Could Decide House Races". The Washington Post . Retrieved November 7, 2008.
- ↑ Charles Babington for the Associated Press (March 9, 2008). "Obama sees benefits, limits to black support". USA Today. Retrieved November 7, 2008.
