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.

He is an ok professor. His lectures are kinda all over the place like I never knew what I was suppose to be taking notes on. There are reading quizzes that are suppose to be easy, but they can be hard. I personally found that having three lecture quizzes worth 30% of your grade was brutal. So, pretty much, if you bomb one it can be difficult. That being said, his midterm is pretty easy and so is his final. He will give you feedback on outlines for the midterm and final essays. I found the subject kind of boring, but if you like stuff like public opinion then take it.

Loved this class! Very interesting. Learned a lot. Baylor is an extremely smart, funny dude. Midterm and Final will both have study guides and very easy, and fair to prepare for.

The class was a bit boring, but that was because of the information came up in other Poli Sci classes. Baylor can be funny. I found some of the readings interesting, but others were a bit boring.

Baylor is not interesting or engaging at all throughout his lectures, making the topic very dry to listen to. The exams were not extremely difficult, especially if you study the slides and the texts, but there is a ton of reading that doesn't seem to really make sense with the course. He often goes on tangents throughout class where it is not clear at all if this is part of the lecture, or if this is something that he finds funny and just wants to talk about. Overall, this class wasn't horrible and didn't require a ton of work, but I probably wouldn't recommend.

Baylor's class seemed like it would be easy but was pretty tough. Dry lectures and extremely long readings. Wasn't given a ton of direction for the essay.

I enjoyed this class a lot. Baylor is a fairly engaging lecturer, but I think his real strength is his curriculum. It's really well synthesized and Baylor draws a clear and important connection between the public's inattentiveness and real-world political outcomes. It's obvious that he's very much in the Zaller mold, yet there's actually not a ton of overlap between his and Zaller's and Patterson's classes. This class is also more 2016 Election-centric and current-events-centric than those ones, I'd say.

Exams are easy if you go to lecture, and the paper is probably of average difficulty. Workload is on the lighter side.

I wouldn't take this class if you really dislike dry personality types; otherwise, I would highly recommend this class to anyone.