This study examines the possible effect of the president's vote totals in states on Presidents Carter's and Reagan's support among senators. Using senators' Congressional Quarterly (CQ) presidential support scores as the dependent variable, this paper hypothesizes that Carter and Reagan's support is significantly and positively related to their electoral success in that Senator's state for the years 1977 through 1988. Several control variables are included to help explain support. There is qualified corroboration for the hypothesis that senator's presidential support scores are significantly and positively related to the president's electoral success for specific administrations and for specific-party senators, although not for the original hypothesis that aggregated the period 1977 to 1988.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voting trends in Mobile, Alabama, which have developed since 1948; particular emphasis is placed upon the role of the Negro vote in Mobile politics before and after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It has become something of a cliché for contemporary scholars to assert that Madison turned Montesquieu on his head and thereafter give little thought to the Frenchman’s theory that republics must remain limited in territorial size. Madison did indeed present a formidable challenge to Montesquieu’s theory, but I will demonstrate in this dissertation that the authors of the Federalist Papers arrived at the extended sphere by following a theoretical pathway already cemented by the French philosopher. I will also show that Madison’s “practical sphere” ultimately concedes to Montesquieu that excessive territorial size and high levels of heterogeneity will overwhelm the citizens of a republic and enable the few to oppress the many. The importance of this dissertation is its finding that the principal mechanism devised by the Federalists for dealing with factions—the enlargement of the sphere—was crafted specifically for the purpose of moderating interests, classes, and sects within an otherwise relatively homogeneous nation. Consequently, the diverse republic that is America today may be exposed to the existential threat anticipated by Montesquieu’s theory of size—the plutocratic oppression of society by an elite class that employs the strategy of divide et impera.