Professor Zaller is a really nice guy and teaches well in my opinion. His lectures were a little unorganised at the beginning of the quarter when things were online because people would constantly interrupt and ask dumb questions but he tried his best to teach the materials. There were weekly reading quizzes with pretty heavy readings, but the texts were pretty interesting and as long as you read them the quizzes were extremely easy. The midterm and final were take-home and also not very hard. Overall, Zaller does care a lot about people learning and clearly has a genuine interest in the subject. I think people are kind of hard on him in these reviews but as long as you do what's required you're good. I also never saw him be rude to students or anything of the sort.

Zaller is very passionate about this class but he is so boring. There is also a ton of reading and weekly quizzes which are graded pretty easily. I would skip this class if you can. It's easy but very very boring.

This class was A LOT of work, the other reviews aren't lying when they say its around 200 pages of a reading for each lecture. You will have to do the reading for the quizzes the professor gives in the beginning of lecture. He says that the quizzes are incredibly easy, but they require a pretty in depth reading. I did the reading each time but that wasn't enough. I often had to reread it, study it, and go over with other students for every quiz (which is a lot of work when you have a quiz every sing week and sometimes two). The midterm and finals were not hard though, it was just an essay prompt where you could bring in a cheat sheet version and just summarize everything you've learned so far. The lectures are posted online but remember you have to take quizzes so you have to go to lecture most of the times, at least in the beginning. Some lectures were honestly painful to sit through he often would get fixated on one comment that was hardly relevant to the lecture, reading, etc. For instance at one point I asked if we could deviate from the comment a study had used "crack baby" because I didn't understand a separate part of the reading and he refused to even let me ask my question because he wanted to discuss why somebody would use that phrase for over an hour. For reference the reading was largely just to point out there is extremes on both the left and right. Anyway, I digress. The class is a LOT of work but an A is possible. He offers extra credit make sure to do them. I am selling the course reader for cheaper than it is in Westwood text me at ********** or email me at *************

First off I want to say that there is no need to purchase course material for this class. it can all be acquired through other means.
Second, Professor Zaller is a living legend and he came out of retirement to teach us so I gotta respect him for that.
Now in terms of the class. Was it a lot of work, YES. Was it doable, also yes. I want to preface that I was taking 5 classes the quarter I took this class and still managed to do well so I want to stress that it is manageable. He assigns about 1000 pages over 10 weeks and that includes some interviews and some videos so it is not 1000 pages of reading. His weekly quizzes were definitely difficult but doable and because he likes to make sure that 90% get an A on them, he curves if people do exceedingly bad. I would say the issue with this class is motivation on the student's end. People simply did not show up to class except for quizzes. Like out of a 400 person class, maybe 100-150 showed up for non-quiz lectures. Is Zaller kind of monatanous and dull, yes but he also does respond to question fairly openly while rambling.
Also, this class does not have discussion sections, something I found as a drawback but it did mean less of a time commitment.
His midterm and final consisted of 1250 word papers and they were fairly doable but I will say his grading scheme was very unclear and makes for much frustration.

Overall, I would give this class a 6/10 because it was pretty interesting content-wise and an easy A but be warned of the workload and of Zaller's political bias as he is very upfront about it.

Zaller got a lot of flack this quarter, but I think it was somewhat unwarranted. As long as you do the readings and pay attention, the quizzes were fairly straightforward. Also, it gets easy to know what to look for and he gives a lot of hints about what you will be quizzed on, which I thought was generous. The midterm and final were easy as long as you follow the structure that he lays out for you. It is a lot of work but I never felt like the readings were a waste of time or irrelevant to the class material. Would 10/10 recommend to anyone with an interest in politics.

I’ve personally had a great experience with professor Zaller... while the assigned readings are mandatory, they read more like short stories and often he just wants to know that you’re engaged with the quizzes. Yes that means being relatively specific, but he also gives you multiple questions so if you don’t remember one there’s usually another you’d be able to answer. I would say the quizzes are easy but know that reading could take anywhere from 3-12 hours/week depending on the workload (sometimes it varies), and you should take notes of key players/events and their effects if u aren’t already. It’s a bit historically loaded at the beginning but quickly becomes very modern and you get an understanding of where political parties are headed. Don’t know if I got an A yet but I think the quizzes better prepared me for the two essay exams because I did really well on my midterm, and it seemed like a lot of people in the class had a similar experience. Also, he grades on a scale of sorts, so it’s based on whoever does the best. If you care about what you’re learning, you’ll enjoy it and find it easier than others seem to have on this page.

Good class, very insightful professor, as long as you do the readings you should be fine.

This class requires constant upkeep with the weekly quizzes, but it is extremely manageable. I had an awesome TA who made this class extremely manageable, but I could understand and sympathize with the prior reviews who said not to take this class. Zaller is slightly (putting it lightly) all over the place, ut truly wants you to learn and do well in the class. The two papers are straight-forward, and as long as you make your argument clear and concise, you will do well in this class. Just do the readings, show up to most lectures, and go to discussion and you should get an A in the class.

One of my favorite professors at UCLA. He is very nice and approachable. Class is very interesting and easy to pass.

Don't listen to half of these reviews - Zaller is extremely knowledgeable about politics and the class was incredibly straightforward. His quizzes were manageable and he was more than accommodating to the students who lost their minds over every thing that didn't go their way. For instance, he would give unproctored online quizzes where some people, somehow, got 0/9, 1/9, or 2/9 - because of this he curved the grade so that these counted as, at least, an 80%.

There are a fair amount of readings but other than that the class was not hard or demanding whatsoever. Most people get an A in the class, just look at every year's grade distributions. To put it simply, it takes more work to do poorly in this class than it does to do well.