POLS 222 Who Wins and Why? Electoral Systems in Comparative Perspective
Did you know that the party that won a majority of seats in the US House was not always the party that got the most votes? The "simple" electoral system used in most US House elections is the primary cause! This course will explore the role of electoral systems in shaping governance, policymaking, party systems, and election outcomes. Students will primarily focus on comparative legislative elections, meaning comparing the design of election systems across the globe, though presidential elections and sub-national United States elections will also be considered. In this course, students complete a series of in-class exercises, problem sets, and a final paper where they examine election results and calculate several mathematical quantities of interest. These include the Gallagher Disproportionality Index, the effective number of vote-winning/seat-winning parties, logical expectations about the country's party system based on mathematical models, the allocation of assembly seats at the district level based on election results using proportional allocation formulas, and the allocation of seats to parties under complex electoral systems such as the single transferable vote and mixed member proportional representation. This course counts for the Comparative Politics subfield in the Politics major and satisfies the CMPS requirement.
Core Requirements Met
- Global Connections
- Mathematics/Science