This was honestly a solid class. Ignore the reviews about him being a tough grader… I would say the opposite his TAs grade easy and he also curved a good amount. There was a group project….The lectures aren’t recorded tho but the slides he posts are pretty minimal so I would recommend taking notes.Midterm and final are each 10 multiple choice and two short answer but the study guide is basically the same as the tests. He is a little difficulty to get help from outside of class but overall would definetly take again

In order to get the most out of the class you have to show up and interact with the content. His slides is often vague but if you do the readings and show up to class, things should not be as hard. There was like 50 pages of readings each week but it was not dense with a lot of jargon. Instead of discussion sections, we had socratic seminars in class. The midterm and finals were not hard but not easy. Some of the multiple choice might seem like it could be two answers due to how they are worded. He provides a study guide at least a week and a half before the exam. There is also a group project which I hate because some people wanted to do the project last minutes. But other than that, the class is very informative and the professors knows how to explain phenomenons that we see in voting behaviors.

Baylor is definitly a very knowledgeable professor, we had 2 sitting exams, a discussion and a survey to give back which i thought was a very good experience ! The grading, contrary to what people might say is pretty good and the class is engaging if you are interested in this kind of topics. Overall its a pretty easy class to me as long as you read the few pages per class and do the small amount of work needed.

I like Dr. Baylor because you can tell he is super passionate about the content.

I enjoyed the class throughout, I thought the material was engaging and I looked forward to going to class, but it didn't do me any good because I still got a bad grade. He is a HARSH grader, and I think there might be a miscommunication between what he wants to see from his students. He is not very clear, anytime I got a questionable grade I wondered where I went wrong. On the group project that my team and I worked really hard on we got an 84% which we thought was so unfair but I guess that was in part because he wasn't very specific on what he wanted nor didn't want. The final was filled with questions that seemed to try to trick you, it was about 10 multiple choice and two written mini essays. I left thinking I did okay considering I had been studying for like 10 days prior even with a study group from the same class, but in the end none of us were pleased with our grade. In response to those that might say getting an A is attainable, I put a lot of effort into this class and I am not sure I could have done more to get a better grade, I did all the readings and went over his power points and I am not sure what more in my power would have produced anything above a B at best.
Course consisted of a survey project with 2 other classmates of your choice, a final exam, and two discussion posts/replies on bruinlearn.

This class was a mixed bag for me. The material is pretty interesting and you can tell Baylor really cares about the subject matter, but sometimes it's hard to grasp his lectures. He can be somewhat dry at times and he throws a lot of information at you in each lecture. The grade is split up with a survey project, a final exam, and two discussion posts/replies. He does grade somewhat harshly for the discussion section but I found the project and final grading to be very fair.

Overall, if you pay attention and put a moderate amount of work in I think an A is definitely attainable. Baylor is easy to talk to and he wants you to do well, but he's not going to hand out an A either.

In my opinion, Professor Baylor is underrated. As someone who's taken him for multiple classes, I think the reason for his lackluster reviews on here is that he's admittedly dry-humored and unemotional. His demeanor may lead people to check out from his lectures or avoid approaching him for help. In my experience, he's a genuinely helpful and forgiving professor, though. His lectures are well-organized, highly interesting, and normally objective when discussing party politics.

I'm on the fence about this class, leaning more towards dislike. Professor Baylor is a good professor. He wastes no time lecturing; he is organized, quick to respond to emails, and stays a little after class to answer any student's questions. He is not bad as a professor, but his grading distribution was so awful.

There are four assignments for the entire quarter. Here is the Grading Breakdown:
DISCUSSION BOARDS: 10% of our grade. We only have to participate in two discussion boards throughout the whole quarter. One discussion board requirement is a post to a question provided; the second is a reply to someone's post. 10 points total for the discussion boards, aka 5 points for each discussion board.
SURVEY PROJECT: 45% of our grade. This project takes place instead of a midterm exam. We have about three weeks to do it. This project is a mandatory group project, with three people per group. You can choose your group members, so choose wisely. Each group member is required to ask people 24 questions, 72 responses in total. You combine the data and analyze it. 40 points possible.
FINAL EXAM: 45% of our grade. Ten multiple-choice questions and two essay questions. A study guide is provided. We were allowed 1 hour and 15 minutes to do the exam. 50 points possible.

So, while the workload is light, this course has no room for errors. The group project and the final exam have tainted my view on this class, and for good reason, too. The group project was stressful as my group members were not the best. The final exam was so much worse than the group project, however. I studied for a week straight, and it felt pointless. The questions were designed to trick you, and Baylor was aware of that, so he said before the exam was even given out that he would be curving it. Basically, everyone left that classroom feeling defeated. There was even someone crying outside after taking it. Knowing what I know now, I don't know if I would retake this class, so I can't say if I recommend it. I'm glad it's over, though.

Overall, I enjoyed this class. The material is extremely interesting, and taking this class changed the way I think about politics. I feel much more informed about partisanship, polarization, voting behavior, and the relationship between identity and politics. If you want to become more politically literate in a more practical sense, this is the perfect class to help you understand why people vote the way they do.

As for Professor Baylor himself, I always found him to be extremely responsive and helpful. He gives great insight and is eager to help students better understand the material if they reach out. Although it is true that he was a bit disorganized at times with forum posts, I don't think it's fair to say that he doesn't care about his students. Like us, professors are also adjusting to virtual platforms.

This was an interesting class, and as long as you are willing to put in some work and reach out when you need help, you will do well and learn a lot.

Professor Baylor did not care at all about the fact that a pandemic was occuring during this class. He was dismissive to our concerns and ignored our emails. He was very unorganized and would post assignments with only 4 hours before they were due and not give us any extra time for them. Imagine being an international student during that, he literally did not care about timezones. For instance since the midterm paper deadline was 11:59pm and 0 seconds, if you submit it at 11:59pm and 1 sec he counted it as late and docked you 15%. His midterm and final paper rubrics are also incredibly convoluted and so nit picky that people weren't even sure what he was really looking for us to write about. For instance there were points that said "paragraph shows nuance" but he never explained what nuance was. He also had readers grade our midterm paper who graded very slowly and inconsistently. He also didn't think it was his job to tell them a deadline to finish grading which left some students waiting for midterm scores for weeks. He really wasn't well suited for online teaching. He got upset when students were a minute late to zoom class and complained that he shouldn't have to let students in after class has started. Overall he was just very unaware of everything going on outside of his class and was very hard to reason with. I do not recommend him as a professor he made this class way harder than it needed to be.