Events Calendar

Howard Phillips Hall, Room 305G
November 6, 2009
01:30 PM - 03:30 PM

Announcing the Final Examination of Ms. Janelle Middents for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science.

This thesis examines split-ticket voting in the United States. While split-ticket voting has generated a large literature many of these studies have been too narrow in their focus, either studying split-ticket voting in a specific election or failing to take into account some major variables that might explain split-ticket voting. The thesis utilizes data from American National Election Survey Data from 2004 and 2008. Independent variables that are hypothesized to affect whether individuals are ticket-splitters or not are grouped in three broad categories: demographic, attitudinal and system-level support. Such an approach will directly address a major controversy within studies of split-ticket voting, namely whether voters engage in ticket-splitting to deliberately divide control of government, or whether the motivations for ticket-splitting are driven by less purposive considerations. This research will utilize cross-tabulation analysis in order to discern bivariate relationships between each of the independent variables and the dependent variable. A multivariate analysis using binary logistic regression will then undertaken to simultaneously examine the effects of the independent variables in each category.