Leslie Wins the Election
From Parks and Recreation (NBC)
Categories:
Run time: 1:53
Clip Description: The result of Leslie Knope’s city council race comes in, and the margin is small enough to be contested. The payoff of a season-long municipal campaign, played for the anticlimax as much as for the triumph.
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: Margin of victory and recount thresholds; turnout in local elections; why the same voter behaves differently in a municipal race than in a presidential one; the administration of elections as a state and county function rather than a federal one.
Possible Uses in Classroom: Good for the last day of an elections unit, when students have the presidential race in their heads and need the contrast. It is also the cleanest way into election administration, which is hard to make interesting until a race is close enough that the rules decide it.
Discussion Questions
- The margin here is very small. What happens procedurally in a real municipal race decided by a handful of votes, and who decides it?
- Turnout in American local elections is routinely under a quarter of eligible voters. Name two features of local elections that depress it, and say which you would change first.
- Leslie ran on parks. In a low-turnout local race, does running on one concrete issue help or hurt, and why?
Assignment
Find a recent municipal election in a city of comparable size where the margin was under one percent. Using the local election office’s own records rather than press coverage, report turnout, the margin, whether a recount was triggered and under what rule, and what changed in the result. Two pages. The hard part is the recount threshold: say whether you think it is set at the right level, and name the cost of setting it wrong in each direction.
Clip hosted on YouTube, posted by NBC on the official Parks and Recreation channel.
For AP Students
AP U.S. Government and Politics
Unit 5: Political Participation
Topics: 5.2 Voter Turnout; 5.3 Election Rules and Voter Turnout; 5.10 Elections and Campaigns
The CED asks students to explain how election rules and the structure of an election affect who votes. A local race decided by a few votes makes both visible at once, and local races are where the rules vary most.
Discussion questions
- List the factors the CED names as drivers of voter turnout. Which of them work differently in a municipal election than in a presidential one, and in which direction?
- Local elections held on their own date draw far lower turnout than local elections held alongside a presidential race. Explain the mechanism, then say who benefits from the lower turnout.
- Elections in the United States are administered by states and counties rather than by the federal government. Name one advantage and one cost of that arrangement, using the recount question as your example.
Short activity
Read your own ballot (15 minutes). Have each student pull up the most recent sample ballot for their home precinct and count the offices on it. Then have them mark only the races where they could name a single position held by either candidate. The gap between the number of races and the number they can speak to is the lesson; spend the last five minutes on what that gap does to down-ballot outcomes.