1. The use of spatial voting models is predicated on issues being representable on a left-right spectrum. List 10 issues from recent political campaigns. Which of them are representable on a left-right spectrum? Which are discrete, and which are continuous? Some issues that may appear to be discrete, such as the availability of guns and gun control laws, may be more nuanced. Explain how such issues may also be modeled on the left-right spectrum.

2. Under the Electoral College, most states award all their electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular election. A complaint about the Electoral College is that the candidate with the most votes under the Electoral College may not be the popular-vote winner. Legislatures in some states, such as Pennsylvania, have proposed dividing their states into electoral districts and then using a winner-take-all method to award all the electoral votes of an electoral district to the popular-vote winner. Can a similar complaint occur at the state level, in which the candidate with the most electoral votes in the state is not the popular-vote winner in the state? Explain. How does this relate to the National Popular Vote law and the Electoral College?