Political scientists, historians, pundits, and campaign managers have often sought to understand electoral politics by examining intrastate political geography. But what practical or theoretical contribution can political geography make when we have the powerful tool of survey research? We use a geographic statistic to identify regional nodes in four states, for the 1928–36 and 1988–2000 presidential elections. By weighting county-level election returns for their contribution to the total statewide vote for each party, we find that traditional regional characterizations of these states' politics are altered dramatically. We find that the parties typically compete on the same turf, making clear sectional distinctions harder to draw. Furthermore, over time within three of these four states, the Democratic vote has become more geographically concentrated, while the Republican vote has become more geographically dispersed. These findings have implications for the organization of statewide governing coalitions, the cost of party mobilization efforts, and the study of candidate emergence and success.

Do state legislators use media tactics in policy-making? If so, which legislators, how often, and to what ends? Despite a number of recent studies asserting the importance of the media in American politics, we still have not answered these basic questions. Using a survey of state legislators from California, Georgia, and Iowa, I find that state legislators frequently use media tactics in policy-making, although they still prefer traditional forms of legislating. While the bulk of their media tactics is aimed at constituents, state legislators also target policy elites. This suggests that state legislators use the media for more than just aiding in their re-election. Finally, my analyses suggest that the frequency with which legislators use media tactics is largely a function of the resources at their disposal.

Is public policy in states that allow initiatives and referenda more responsive to public opinion than in states that do not? Political science theory provides conflicting answers to this question. On one hand, these direct democracy mechanisms give citizens a direct voice in public policy, which may directly and indirectly shape policy to their wishes. On the other hand, formal theories of collective choice call into question the ability of direct democracy to produce policy that reflects the underlying distribution of mass preferences. This study tests these competing hypotheses by assessing the impact of public opinion on abortion policy using a new survey-based measure of state-level abortion attitudes (Brace et al. 2002). The empirical findings indicate that states with initiatives and referenda are more responsive to public opinion on abortion policy.

How well are the state- and national-level literatures on interest representation connected? We identify landmark studies at both levels and conclude that there is little cross-fertilization between them. Rather, the landmark state studies are more descriptive, and focus on a trade-off between group and party power, reflecting the legacy of Belle Zeller, while the national-level studies are embedded in theories used in the broader discipline and, therefore, focus on different processes. One consequence of this is that the national literature does not cite state-level studies very often. We conclude with recommendations for enhancing the impact and theoretical contribution of the state literature on interest organizations and the politics of interest representation.

Despite the bias against such studies in our discipline, we argue that research designs focusing on a single state are sometimes preferable to those employing data from all 50 states. Single state studies are appropriate when the researcher wishes to generalize to a unit of analysis other than the states themselves, when conditions in a given state provide a unique opportunity for the most rigorous test of a hypothesis, and when the measurement advantages of a single-state study outweigh the costs of limited generalization. We draw on a range of literature to reinforce our primary contention, that it is soundness of theory and rigor of analysis, rather than the number of states, that makes research valid and important.