Social Science – Sociology-Getting Elected President in 2020
PROJECT # 2 Getting elected in 2020.
Imagine you are intending to run for President in 2020. To have a realistic chance of election, you must run either as a Democrat or a Republican, and you should say which you are running as. Your two main goals are (i) to win the 2020 Presidential election, which also involves winning your chosen party’s primary election in order to get the party’s nomination (ii) to campaign on issues, and policies related to those issues, that you believe in and that you would actually like to implement. You will certainly need to make some compromises here in balancing these two goals (e.g. your preferred policy stance on a particular issue might make you unelectable, in which case you probably should not advocate for it). You should, in your written project, explain these considerations.
1. Use the ANES 2016 data set to set out where you expect public opinion to stand on three key policy issues that you intend to stress in your campaign to be elected President in 2020. At least one of these issues should be different from the three you analyzed for Project 1. Include in your written project a chart outlining the results for each of these three issues.
1. Perform a crosstabulation of each of these three issues by a demographic variable (can be a different demographic variable for each issue or the same one for each issue), and at least one of these demographic variables should be different from those you used in Project 1. Include in your written project a chart outlining the crosstabulation for each of these three issues.
1. Go online and search one or more of the LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, or any other major source of current polls, and look in them for recent (preferably last six months) survey data. Use these polls to supplement your analysis for at least one of your policy variables..
Examples of Key Issues (you may select different issues than these): economic issues especially the state of the economy; financial reform in the light of the recent financial/economic crisis; health care/health care reform; key foreign policy issues including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, upheavals in the Middle East, the associated refugee crises, attitudes to China and Russia; the issue of North Korea’s missile capabilities, and the US-Mexico relationship; terrorism; social issues (e.g. abortion, gay rights, women’s rights); government (how corrupt, whom it serves etc); religion; attitudes to minorities.
Write a campaign memo addressed to your election staff (i.e. this is your written project), explaining to your staff what stance you and the campaign should take on these three issues in order to maximize a favorable electoral outcome in 2020. Base your views on the survey data you have researched, and refer to the survey data/charts. As written above, remember that your two main goals are (i) to win the 2020 Presidential election, which also involves winning your chosen party’s primary election in order to get the party’s nomination (ii) to campaign on issues, and policies related to those issues, that you believe in and that you would actually like to implement. You will certainly need to make some compromises here in balancing these two goals (e.g. your preferred policy stance on a particular issue might make you unelectable, in which case you probably should not advocate for it). You should, in your written project, explain these considerations.
Maximum length of text for Project 2 should be 2 single spaced pages, plus any graphs or tables..
Campaign video (optional)
For an extra 3 bonus points students can produce a campaign video (2 mins max). You
should base the video on your campaign memo, but instead of a memo the video should be a campaign speech. At the very start of the video you should state the intended audience for your video (e.g. primary party voters in a particular state e.g. national tv audience e.g. factory workers e.g. students etc). Upload the video to youtube, and then include the link in a word doc that you submit in the assigned place.
