Research Project: What are the voting patterns in Texas lately? Pundits, partisans, and even some political scientists have projected a Democratic Party majority for Texas in the near future. Recent election results call this into question. The research topic for you all is to examine the theories of voting behavior, with particular attention to race/ethnicity and class as key variables. After conducting that literature review, the task will be to collect a data set of recent election results in Texas at the county level. I would also like to see if we can find demographic data at the county level. Analyzing the data is step three. What do the facts on the ground tell us? The last stage of the project is to draw conclusions. I expect this project to be collaborative. You all can work with each other, but you are responsible for your own paper at the end of the course. Especially with the data collection, I think we may all profit from working together. However, the conclusions you draw from the evidence are up to you. Reasonable people can disagree. Especially, the theory you begin with will shape how you interpret the evidence. Again, reasonable people can disagree about the theory. The important part is being clear about how you are logically approaching the matter and how you are interpreting the evidence.
