This is an overall good introduction to American politics and Tausonavitch is a great professor: lucid, straight to the point, inquisitive, and undogmatic. Lots of readings but you don't need to complete them in order to get an A in the class, just make sure you read the abstracts, intros, and conclusions, look at the vocab on his study guides, go to lecture, and you should be all set to go. I barely used the assigned textbook and was fine without it. However, if you want to take a deeper dive into politics, I think the articles he assigns are quite refreshing and insightful.

Professor Tausanovitch is a pretty boring lecturer. It's super hard to stay paying attention to his lectures so most of the time I felt like I didn't know what we were learning. The format of the tests reminds me of AP tests with a multiple choice section, short essays, and long essay questions. The tests are not too hard but do require a lot of studying and are worth a lot, so make sure to actually spend some time studying if you're like me and never took an AP Gov class in high school. The essay wasn't too bad but it was boring, but I thought mine was horrible yet I still got an A.
The class breakdown is as follows
Participation: 10%
Essay: 20%
Midterm: 30%
Final: 40%

This is my favorite class I've taken so far at UCLA! I thought the material was very interesting, and Mr. T does a great job lecturing and he's very funny. The tests aren't too hard as long as you show up to class and pay attention to what he's saying. As a poli sci major, I will definitely seek out some upper-division classes taught by this professor as well. 10/10 highly recommend :)

I LOVE this professor. Easily the best class I’ve taken at UCLA

The class was pretty cool. Honestly a good standard for an intro to American Politics class. What did kind of throw me off was that half of our qurter was online and the other was in person. Other than that if you took AP U.S. Government in high school this class is pretty similar. Professor T always takes it a step further of course and goes into detail about certian topics. The midterm and final were also pretty fair and manageable.

I enjoyed taking this class. It's basically just advanced AP Gov. Professor Tausanovitch isn't a great lecturer, but he definitely gets the information you need across. He gave us a sheet of terms the midterm and final would cover so if you familiarize yourself with all of them, it's an easy A.

great class, very organized and easy to understand. Some of the readings were a bit long, but you can get by just fine by skimming those. Interesting concepts that tie in to everyday life.

Professor Tausanovitch is decent. His lectures aren't incredibly engaging, but he does present most of the relevant information for the class in his slides (something that most professors I've encountered unfortunately do not do). His voice is easy to understand and he explains things in great detail, occasionally going on too long about fairly simple concepts. I would be all right with taking another class with him.

The textbook is useless. I opened it twice during the quarter, but both times it was simply to define terms; I could have used another resource. Still got an A. The content is fairly easy, especially if you've taken AP Gov in high school, and the tests were not very hard (though the preparation for them was fairly strenuous).

Never went to class, still got an A-. He posts his lectures online and if you took AP gov in high school, this will be an easy class for you. Highly recommend as an easy GE.

Tausanovitch is a great professor! Super engaging lecturer, great slides, ties current events into class... Class itself is pretty easy. If you took AP Gov in high school it should be a breeze.