The Science of Politics: Recent Episodes
Niskanen Center
The Niskanen Center’s The Science of Politics podcast features up-and-coming researchers delivering fresh insights on the big trends driving American politics today. Get beyond punditry to data-driven understanding of today’s Washington with host and political scientist Matt Grossmann. Each 30-45-minute episode covers two new cutting-edge studies and interviews two researchers.
Candidates affiliated with (or sympathetic to) the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) have recently won several Democratic primaries. Although this rise of the left takes a different form, it draws from prior social movements and Bernie Sanders' presidential candidacies. David Purucker has been both a close observer and a participant. He studied how the DSA makes decisions and organizes. Its electoral role draws from its relationship with the labor movement and other liberal causes. He says this year will raise a lot of questions about how the group responds to electoral success and failure.
Candidates celebrate when their campaigns are funded by small contributions. Small donors are playing far greater roles in American politics but they are not having the positive envisioned effects. Ray La Raja and Zach Albert find that small donors are just as advantaged, partisan, and extreme as larger donors, but more impulsive, empowering show horse celebrities and norm breakers over consensus-building lawmakers. They want to redirect reformers’ energy toward strengthening political parties and emphasizing local representation.
We fear that legislatures are gridlocked and performative, rather than focused on actually passing new laws. But some legislators are consistently more effective than others, at the state and national levels. Can we train legislators to be more effective at advancing their bills? Mackenzie Dobson finds that training programs for state legislators don’t make them more effective than their untrained colleagues. Most of the factors that make legislators more effective are structural: the competition between the parties and the positions they hold. Some of the common advice, find bipartisan partners and become an issue area expert, may not work everywhere.
Elite polarization may be helping young people sort out their politics but it could also make them misperceive how the other side lives. Delia Baldassarri finds that millennial and gen Z are now aligning their issue positions with partisanship as much as older generations. They are choosing their party more based on cultural and moral issues and, up to now, that’s been helping Democrats. But partisans assume that the other side has more stereotypical social groups and extreme views than they do. So polarization has confused us about how divided we are.
The Supreme Court’s voting rights decision is upending the midterm election and raising concerns about its role in democratic backsliding. Thomas Keck finds that the Court has rarely helped maintain democratic guardrails in threatening periods. But the Roberts Court had been showing a mixed record until recently. Albert Rivero finds that election law cases at the Supreme Court lead to more party-line voting, but the cases have stood out less as the Court has become more partisan across the board.
Economic inequality is high and rising, without much political response. Most stay that's because our political institutions overrepresent the views of the rich. But Andrew Taylor finds that poor Americans don’t prioritize solving inequality or redistributive policy. They want their representatives to focus more on distributive politics and constituency service and that’s what they do. It's a corrective to a lot of common social science assumptions.
Trust in American elections has declined since President Trump failed to concede the 2020 election. But voters do have real concerns about electoral institutions born of not knowing the process well. Jennifer Gaudette finds that election officials can increase trust in elections by informing citizens of basic facts, such as that election machines are not connected to the Internet. There are partisan patterns of mistrust but that doesn’t mean people can’t learn to trust election procedures, even in jurisdictions that typically vote for the other side.
Rural America has moved toward strong Republican voting even though Republican governance helps explain worse health outcomes in rural areas, from hospital closures to opioid policies. Michael Shepherd finds that rural areas disproportionately suffer from Republican policies but Republicans successfully blame Democrats for worse health outcomes, especially when Democratic policies can be framed as helping immigrants or racial minorities. There’s no obvious way out for Democrats, who own health policy and its outcomes.
Polarized politics is not leaving much room for agreement on economic regulation, even as inequality and business power grow. But Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee find that corporate scandals can often mobilize the public and wider interests to overcome big business power, including after the financial crisis. They argue that this kind of populism can be a useful form of backlash to break through in our calcified political system.
Donald Trump has not been a favorite of university professors or public intellectuals, but he does have a base in some elements of political theory. What are their ideas and did they help bring us Trumpism? Laura Field tracks the intellectual parts of the movement and their relationship to mainstream political figures and activists. From the Claremont Institute to national conservatism, they were born of a deficit in defenses of liberal democracy. But there are many disagreements and odd theoretical turns. It took some opportunistic moments to unite the disparate strands. But these theorists have had a real impact in Republican politics and may shape the future of American government.
The 2026 election will decide who controls the House and Senate for the duration of Trump's presidency. Trump's approval is low and public opinion is moving against his policy ideas. The historical pattern suggests Democrats are on the way to big congressional gains. Carlos Algara studies 80 years of high-frequency data on generic ballot polls and election results. Presidential approval and the ideological direction of public opinion consistently predict congressional vote choices. Like this year, both usually move against the president in midterms. Neither economic statistics and perceptions nor the degree of partisan competition matters independently of those patterns. Generic ballot polls reliably predict seat gains, though a lot more for the House than the Senate.
Legislators spend considerable time dialing for dollars to support their party, even if they themselves are not in electoral danger. That helps them move up the party leadership ladder, but does not help them achieve their policy goals. Michael Kistner finds that when legislators spend a lot of time raising money, they spend less making policy. By rewarding fundraising, parties miss out on both diverse leaders and effective legislators. But states that reform their campaign finance system are able to make more landmark policies.
AI tool improvement is compounding fast enough for researchers to start using tools like Claude Code for real social science tasks. What are the early lessons from using AI to conduct research? Will it just mean more slop papers and slop reviewers? Or will it lower barriers to exploration, replication, and robustness, with findings accumulating and spreading faster? Andy Hall designed and executed an extension of his research paper with AI in an hour. He's now compared his results to an extension by hand and created a tool to allow readers to make their own design choices. We discuss the early evidence on how AI has changed research output and quality. The future of research is coming fast.
Some Americans prefer obedient, respectful, and well-mannered children and others prefer independent, curious, and self-reliant kids. And that divide is a surprisingly broad window into contemporary political views and partisan choices. How did we become increasingly divided by our preferences for order over independence? Christopher Federico and Christopher Weber find that authoritarian values, measured by these parenting preferences, increasingly structure Americans’ attitudes toward social and cultural issues and their political predispositions. Now that the parties divide on cultural concerns, especially in the Trump era, these attitudes increasingly drive White Americans’ partisanship and vote choices.
Do rich white Americans always get their way in policymaking? Or does it matter who is in charge? Agustin Markarian finds that different groups see their policy preferences better represented depending on which party is in power. White Americans get what they want more under Republican control—and not only because white voters are mostly Republicans. In the Senate, Republicans with higher Black populations also fail to represent their views on their congressional votes. Whether it comes to policy outcomes or legislative voting, different groups win under different parties.
Despite calls for politics to return to kitchen table economic issues, the culture war rages on. That could be a product of the distinct incentives facing politicians, who have to win elections, and media actors, who just have to keep your attention. Aakaash Rao and Shakked Noy find that cable news outlets talk more about culture war issues while candidates favor economics. Every minute cable news spends covering the culture war, they gain audience from people who would otherwise prefer entertainment. When they talk economics, people switch channels. And where cable news penetrated more, people started seeing crime, immigration, and race and gender as more important than economics—and candidates eventually shifted their behavior to match. It's not just about the part cable news played in the rise of the culture war but also about how actors seeking to mobilize rather than win converts might be the source of our wider polarizing shifts.
Donald Trump has taken extraordinary actions to redirect or ignore congressional appropriations, from dismantling foreign aid to making the Education Department a ghost town. But how unique are Trump’s efforts to avoid spending when he does not favor it? Kevin Angell compares what Congress appropriated to what agencies actually spent over decades, finding that presidents have long moved spending toward their preferences. Even after impoundment controls, presidents found ways of not spending money they never requested from Congress. Trump is more blatant and could be more extreme, but administrations have long used their tools to obtain some power of the purse from Congress.
How unique is Donald Trump’s trajectory as a president born of backlash? What should we make of Trump following Barack Obama? Julia Azari finds that backlash presidents like Trump tend to follow transformative presidents like Barack Obama who represent changes to the American racial order. And the backlash presidents commonly face impeachment as they are seen as transgressive figures. She finds parallels in the previous pairings of Andrew Johnson after Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon after Lyndon Johnson. It puts Trump, the American presidency, and our racial politics in useful historical context.
A year before the midterms, quarterly fundraising reports are already reshuffling expectations and causing some candidates to drop out. And candidates are spending almost as much raising money as they collect. That’s because in congressional primaries and general elections, the top fundraiser still wins 92 percent of the time. Danielle Thomsen finds that candidates are raising money earlier and in larger amounts than ever. And everything from who runs for office to who rules in Congress is now governed by money, even though most of the value is in signaling rather than actually using it to communicate with voters.
Many thought the second Trump administration would feature a confrontation between a Supreme Court intent on limiting executive discretion and an empowered president flaunting the rules. Instead, the Supreme Court has largely acquiesced to Trump’s moves, using the shadow docket to overturn lower court actions limiting Trump, even those from Republican judges. Adam Bonica finds that Trump has sought to purge and cut more liberal agencies but has been repeatedly shot down by lower courts. Yet the Supreme Court alone has often sided with the administration, making the courts much less of a check on executive power.
Democrats are out of power in all three branches of government, uncompetitive in many states, and divided on how to prepare for 2026. What’s the path forward? Should the party refocus on economics over cultural issues? Moderate across the board? Or embrace the abundance agenda as their electoral and policymaking future?
Texas, California, and Missouri are moving forward with plans for mid-decade redistricting to gain partisan advantage—with other states threatening to follow. They are not hiding the motive: President Trump asked Texas to gain Republicans seats and Governor Newsom is saying he needs to retaliate. Just how much has gerrymandering gained the parties in Congress? And how much is likely to change now? Eric McGhee finds that both parties are increasingly extreme in gerrymandering but that prior mid-decade redistricting gains have been small. Daniel Kolliner finds that Republican control of redistricting has led to large increases in seat share, with Democratic control gains limited to large states.
President Trump has pressured and attacked the Federal Reserve and is now trying to replace governors. What are the consequences if the Fed is losing independence and moving toward presidential control? Cristina Bodea finds that the Fed was never the most independent and is becoming less so in the face of public pressure. That could make a normally conservative institution move toward enabling inflation and government spending. We also talk about international comparisons, populist pressure on central banks globally, leader gender, and the role of tariffs and democratic backsliding.
As the next AI cycle begins, state and national governments are trying to keep up. And AI policy now matters for energy, health, education, foreign, and economic development policy as well. What can we learn from the early AI legislation? Chinnu Parinandi finds that partisan alignments and institutional capacity shape where and how consumer protection versus economic development AI policies appear in the states. Heonuk Ha finds an AI boom in congressional legislation with key thematic clusters—from innovation and security to data governance and healthcare.
American students are falling behind while local school boards are preoccupied with culture war controversies. Is local democratic control of schools a detriment to improving student outcomes? Vlad Kogan finds that school boards regularly prioritize the needs of teachers and administrators over students. Elections are unrepresentative and sometimes partisan and drive schools to distraction. He draws surprisingly positive lessons from post-Katrina New Orleans and Chicago school closures and argues for on-cycle elections that grade schools on student achievement.
The Republican Congress has quickly remade fiscal policy, with substantially more success than in Trump’s first term. How did they achieve so much more without compromise? How much will their routes around the filibuster matter for the decline of congressional appropriations? And are we setting up for a huge new step in presidential spending power: pocket rescissions? Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution is the expert on how Congress bends the rules of the filibuster to make use of partisan majorities. We discuss how much Congress is ceding power to the President and making tax and spending decisions even more partisan.
After President Trump bombed Iran, Democrats in Congress declared the action illegal. But it follows a long history of increased presidential control of military operations along with congressional deference and abrogation of war powers. How did we get here? Casey Dominguez finds that although the founders bestowed war powers with Congress, by the Spanish-American war legislators had expanded their view of the president’s powers and begun applying a more expansive view to their own party’s presidents. The role of nationalism, the rise of American power, and polarization all have echoes today.
Politicians are launching outlandish negative attacks and Americans have developed more negative views of the other party. But how connected are polarizing politicians and a polarized electorate? Mia Costa finds that political elites have more polarized views of the other side than the public but they still benefit electorally and legislatively from avoiding negative partisan attacks. Divisive rhetoric still breeds viral tweets, cable news appearances, and donations, but Americans mostly don’t like it or reward it. The polarizers just get more attention.
Politics seems to be holding us back in a world of technological and social progress. Research has found health cures, invented magic new tools, and connected us all, often with public policy assistance. Yet, the American political system remains deeply divided and dysfunctional, with the relationship between science and government at a low point. Can we use social science not just to improve policy choices, but also to improve the functioning of the political system?Cowen—an influential researcher, blogger, podcaster, and author—has led the Progress Studies movement, which seeks to understand why progress happens and how to accelerate it. The movement has gained institutional support and stimulated new policy ideas to improve living standards and human flourishing. But it has not yet cracked the code on translating these ideas into political success. How can science can be deployed to improve the American political process, and how much does the Progress Studies movement depend on successful politics?
President Trump is claiming power over independent agencies and trying to redirect the administrative state, saying he is its unitary executive. But this is not the first time presidents have invoked broad authority. John Dearborn finds that President Reagan sought to gain power over civil rights agencies, saying they had gone too far in promoting affirmative action, restricting their activity and disciplining their leadership. Multiple current Supreme Court justices were involved in the saga, which helped build the unitary executive theory. David Hausman researches attempts to control the immigration courts under the first Trump administration, finding that both adding judges and setting precedent with Attorney General opinions were influential. But it mostly worked by building the bureaucracy, rather than restraining it.
Donald Trump’s expansive executive action has been met with a flurry of court action, as Democratic officials and liberal interest groups challenge each action—with a lot of early success. Can liberals succeed in limiting Trump through the courts or are American courts an inevitably conservative institution? Paul Nolette finds that Democratic Attorneys General have banded together to fight Trump, building on successful action last time. They are able to select the venues and usually win standing, becoming key actors in limiting executive action. But Brian Highsmith finds that over the long run, judicial supremacy tends to advance conservative goals in the American system. Even if Democrats win in the courts now, that may allow the judiciary to develop a longer term constraint on government.
Donald Trump has now unilaterally imposed huge global tariffs, upending the world economy. But we did get a preview of Trump’s trade approach in his first term, allowing researchers to analyze the political consequences. Thiemo Fetzer finds that China, the EU, Canada, and Mexico reacted to the first term tariffs strategically, trying to hurt Trump’s constituents. Omer Solodoch finds that the first term trade war announcement immediately hurt Trump politically, reducing approval and affecting voting intentions. They both say the new trade war is bigger, with political consequences likely to grow.
The 2nd Trump administration has begun tearing down the administrative state, firing thousands, cancelling contracts, and shuttering agencies. But they have also used the power of the state to ramp up summary deportations, crack down on universities, and threaten prosecutions of their political opponents. So is this the culmination of Republican efforts to scale back government or a sign that they just want to redirect its goals? Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney Milkis find that we have overestimated conservative efforts to reduce the size and scope of government and underestimated their usage of the enlarged state to pursue conservative goals.
We have the parties that we said we wanted: they compete over extensive policy programs, with voters making decisions among clear issue position alternatives. But how did they get here and have they now gone too far? Katherine Krimmel finds that the American parties became extensively programmatic as they lost vestiges of clientelism and became national parties after federal growth and civil rights. But Trump may be changing the nature of the party system. And running on the issues may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Five years after the COVID lockdowns, the performance of government and policy experts is not looking great in retrospect. Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee find that policymakers dispensed with years of pre-pandemic planning that suggested the tools used to fight COVID would not work. Experts did not sufficiently consider the costs of their preferred approaches and spoke publicly of consensus while privately admitting limited evidence. Policymakers and experts deterred alternatives and suppressed dissent, leaving us with today's increased distrust of health and political authorities. The second Trump administration is now empowering the skeptics and taking advantage of Americans’ distrust of expertise.
Courts are pausing dozens of Trump administration actions—from mass firings to agency shutdowns. But does the judiciary have a real enforcement mechanism? Will public faith in the courts mean Trump faces consequences in elections and public esteem or will that faith wilt as the judiciary is just seen as another partisan institution? Amanda Driscoll, Michael Nelson, and Jay Krehbiel find that Americans have faith in the rule of law and respond well to courts that invalidate executive action—and partisanship does not seem to interfere. It’s a potentially optimistic story about the role that courts and public opinion may play in limiting democratic backsliding. But they all see risks in practice, as dozens of judges use arcane rules to limit the president while Republicans attack judicial branch oversight.
While promising mass deportation and an immigration crackdown, Donald Trump gained Latino support in 2024, just as he had in 2020. Why do some Latinos support anti-immigration policies and candidates? Loren Collingwood finds that many Latinos separate themselves from recent immigrants as atypical of their group. But does that explain recent Democratic politician moves? He also finds that legislators respond to local interest groups, not only district opinion. And he has other research showing where sanctuary city policies matter and where they do not. Even with some support, he still expects a backlash to Trump policies.
American interest groups are increasingly lining up behind the Democratic or Republican Party and trying to build coalitions within those parties rather than across them. But historically, that has not been the most effective method to bring policy change. Jesse Crosson finds that interest groups are increasingly taking positions on issues outside their areas of expertise in an effort to unite their partisan coalitions. They are facing pressure to toe the party line, but it might prevent the broader coalitions they need to build to pass legislation.
How did Americans become politically divided on culture war topics like guns, abortion, women’s role, gay rights, and environmentalism? The common story is that it took polarizers from the top: politicians and activists associated with each party moved the public to their respective sides. But Neil O’Brian finds that the culture war followed America’s racial realignment because racial attitudes were always tied to other cultural issue views in the American public, well before they were emphasized by the parties. Once the parties divided on race, they brought culturally liberal voters to the Democrats and culturally conservative voters to the Republicans. And that combination of issue attitudes and alignments largely mirrors patterns across the democratic world.
Trump has promised to remake the federal bureaucracy in his own image and go after his political opponents and the media in his 2nd administration. But there are signals that public protest and civil society mobilization are subdued. How much do we have to fear further democratic backsliding under Trump 2? Brendan Nyhan finds expert consensus on many reasons to be concerned but also evidence that experts were too pessimistic about the likelihood of bad actions the first time.
When Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, an outpouring of excitement among Indian Americans foretold potential gains for Democrats among Asian Americans, the fastest growing minority group. But Asian Americans neither turned out in record numbers nor moved toward Democrats. In fact, Indian Americans moved toward Trump. Janelle Wong has followed the trajectory and diversity of Asian-American voters. She does not see a realignment in the making but does see significant moves rightward and divergence across country of origin subgroups. This adds to the evidence of racial dealignment, but also the complexity of American racial categories.
President Trump has made his picks for his second term cabinet more quickly and the transition is more organized and ready for Executive Branch action. Will hopes and fears of an executive reinvention be born out or will the difficulties of the first term show their face again? David Lewis finds that Trump’s first term choices did not go over well with career civil servants but that there was not as much change as sometimes implied. Heath Brown went in-depth into the last transition from Trump to Biden and foresees problems ahead from chaotic transitions and the major ambitions of Trump’s second term appointees. They are both looking ahead to more radical shifts in Trump’s second term, with more appointees at odds with the agencies they are directing.
Analysts previewing a second Trump administration say he will now have unchecked power, with compliant administrators and courts. But there is a long history of presidents using executive actions to claim more power than they have—with the bureaucracy surprisingly resilient to oversight and reinvention. Kenneth Lowande finds that unilateral presidential action is often used for credit claiming rather than substantive policy change. The charade works in the short term, generating media coverage and group support, but it may undermine public faith in the long term due to unmet expectations. Trump's first term was full of executive actions with media frenzy that amounted to much less in practice.
In this live episode of The Science of Politics, panelists examined the class, race, and gender dynamics that shaped the 2024 election. The panel features Tom Edsall, Amanda Iovino, Patrick Ruffini, and Ruy Teixeira. Did the election cement a class realignment of American politics? Did Republicans peel off minority voters based on changing perceptions of the GOP as a working-class party? And how did these dynamics interact with the growing gender divide in voting?
Polls missed the 2016 election outcome and did even worse in 2020 on the margin, underestimating Donald Trump again. Should we believe the polls this time? What have pollsters changed? Have they overcorrected? In an era of one percent response rates for phone surveys and opt-in Internet panels, should we even talk about them in the same way? Michael Bailey finds that our theories about random sampling don’t really apply anymore. And weighting with larger samples does not solve our non-response biases. Brian Schaffner finds that weighting on several factors has increased, likely helping pollsters avoid undercounting Trump supporters. They both say survey research is important to get right but that the solutions are not obvious.
Pre-election polls show Black voters moving toward Donald Trump in 2024, even though he is now running against Kamala Harris. And Trump did gain a bit of margin among Black voters in 2020 compared to 2016, though he still loses nine out of ten. Should Democrats fear more attrition among Black voters this year or is it just a mirage from bad polling? Christopher Towler finds that Democrats made a lot of gains among Black voters this year by switching from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. He says the gender divide may grow this year, but he thinks Black voters will come home to the Democrats. But Idan Franco finds that some Black voters support Trump because of their racial attitudes, not in spite of them. In other research, he finds similar trends among Hispanic voters, where immigration attitudes make some more likely to support Trump.
In the last 12 years, academic language about structural inequality made its way to media and popular discourse, leading to conservative critiques of “wokeness.” But how much really changed beneath the surface in our elite institutions? Musa Al-Gharbi finds that wokeness has peaked after it was the product of socio-economic trends in the professions. But he says it was mostly surface-level, visible in social norms that distracted from underlying economic realities.
Presidential campaigns narrow the battleground to an ever-smaller group of potentially pivotal states—where they spend most of their time and money in the race to 270 electoral votes. How do presidential campaigns envision and select their paths to victory? And how much do these decisions matter? Daron Shaw takes us inside the presidential campaigns from 1952 to 2020, with data and analysis from the campaigns themselves. He finds that calcified partisanship and campaign finance liberalization have moved us into a micro-targeted era, with a smaller group of mutually agreed battleground states. But resource allocation decisions can still make enough of a difference to tip the balance in several recent elections--and maybe 2024 as well.
College-educated voters are moving toward the Democrats, with the less educated moving toward the Republicans. Will 2024 continue the pattern or reverse the trend? What will that mean for the culture war that has engulfed the nation and refocused the political parties? David Hopkins breaks down the consequences of the diploma divide, from woke business to the COVID wars. This is not just about polarized sides moving apart: it’s about the victory of educated liberals in the culture war and the backlash that has evened party competition while transforming the Democrats.
After years of signs that the American parties were institutionally weak and vulnerable to takeover, Democratic Party elites coalesced to quickly replace their presidential candidate. But a longer historical sweep suggests it will not be a quick return to parties’ traditional roles. Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld find that Democrats and Republicans have become hollow shells, unrooted in civic organizations, with Republicans captured by extremism and Democrats ineffectual. Their weaknesses, they say, are the source of our political discontent.
Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. And the conversation has immediately turned to race and gender. What do we know about how Black and Asian women candidates are treated by parties and voters? How does the Harris experience compare to others running for office? What does it mean for her ability to win in November and inspire a new generation of more diverse leaders? Jamil Scott has researched the unique features of Black women candidacies, from the decision to run to raising money to adapting to stereotypes. And she has also studied the increasing racialization of American elections. She tells me the typical tropes and conversations came immediately to this campaign.
In the midst of a harrowing political campaign, can Americans tone down their partisanship and unify around their common American values? Matthew Levendusky finds that Americans misperceive those in the other party and can improve their views if they are reminded of our shared national identity. From the Olympics to the 4th of July, some moments remind us that we have more in common than we may think. But reduced animosity also requires knowing real people on the other side of our divides and building cross-partisan friendships.
Democrats and Republicans rely on partisan think tanks for policy proposals, along with the numbers and findings that justify them. How did think tank research reach a central place in our politics and how influential are they? E. J. Fagan finds that partisan think tanks like the Heritage Foundation helped polarize the congressional issue agenda and debate, replacing the non-partisan expertise that Congress used to rely on. Conservative think tanks are gearing up for a possible second Trump administration while Biden’s policy agenda remains reliant on the liberal side of the think tank establishment.
The impact of racial attitudes in American politics isn’t just about the presence or absence of anti-Black prejudice. Some White Americans say they are highly sympathetic to the plight of Black Americans. Are they just placing Black Lives Matter signs in their yards or does it translate into political views and actions? Jennifer Chudy finds that many White Americans, especially liberal Democrats, have sympathy that translates into support for redistributive social welfare policies and opposition to punitive criminal justice policies. There is a growing and important left side of Americans' racial views.
We have overestimated the influence of partisan misinformation during political campaigns. But that doesn't mean we're well-informed. Americans know little about important public policy issues and they "know" things that aren’t so. Emily Thorson finds that Americans concoct information about current policy to match what they think they know. It's not that they are fed misinformation but that the media report little about the details of current policy, leaving voters to make up the facts. Correcting this misinformation about existing policy can make a difference and help Americans evaluate new proposals for policy change.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr is polling higher than prior third party candidates and his supporters could make the difference in a close election. Americans say they want a third party, but is this what they had in mind? Jonathan Cervas finds that in 2020, third parties actually took more potential votes from Republicans than Democrats. Victor Wu finds that lots of Americans say they want a third party. But most partisans seeking third options clearly favor their side’s issue positions. There’s not much of a constituency for a grand unity ticket in the middle.
Despite popular resistance in each party, Congress just reached wide bipartisan agreement on military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan along with a forced sale of TikTok. Even in a polarized age, Congress has managed bipartisan votes on controversial issues in an election year. Jordan Tama finds that bipartisan coalitions are quite common in congressional consideration of foreign policy—from overlapping competing alliances to broad support for internationalism, Congress is far less polarized on foreign policy than domestic policy. William Bendix finds that legislators are consistent in how they sponsor foreign policy bills based on their ideological views even across administrations of different parties. He also finds that hawks usually lead and win congressional votes over doves, regardless of who is president.
Joe Biden is facing re-election shepherding an unsteady economy through high interest rates. Is this Democrats' bad economic luck repeating itself? Joe Stone finds that Democratic presidents have regularly expanded economies at the beginning of their terms but Republicans benefit from expanded economies leading up to the election. And partisan misalignment with the Federal Reserve also dampens economic performance. William Clark finds that the Fed raises interest rates as elections approach under Democratic presidents and lowers them for Republican presidents. And the Fed is more responsive to inflation under Democratic presidents. They both say the historical patterns may help explain why Biden finds himself in a more difficult position.
Our jobs shape our politics, including whether we run for office and which side of the political spectrum makes us feel most comfortable. Just as we are polarizing geographically, even our workplaces are now more likely to be filled with those who agree with us about politics. And our politicians come from these workplaces, often taking the specific concerns of their occupations with them. Max Kagan finds that you are most likely to encounter fellow partisans in your workplaces, partly because metro areas, occupations, and industries are politically homogeneous, and partly because we select into workplaces that share our politics. Jack Landry finds that state legislators bring their occupational concerns with them to legislating, shaping their committee assignments, campaign contributions, and personal financial interests. They both say it’s a complicated causal chain: we may segregate our work interests because of factors related to politics but we could also be socialized into the norms and interests of the places where we work.
Congress is fearful of TikTok’s influence, but America’s young people increasingly see it as a key platform for learning about and spreading political ideas. Will TikTok get young people engaged in the 2024 election or serve as another distraction? Neta Kligler-Vilenchik finds that young people embody an expressive citizenship, where you should speak out if you see injustice, and have found TikTok to be a fruitful platform. But she doubts that older politicians have figured out how to use it for effective persuasion. Richard Fox finds that TikTok users are liberal and more active, online and offline. But they take politics less seriously. He sees the same complaints about media change that scholars have been making for generations: we're favoring shorter, less substantive, and emotional clips over real learning. They both say we should be skeptical of TikTok remaking politics but that we should listen to young people, who see real change.
The opioid crisis has not abated, but so far policy has remained far less punitive than for prior drug epidemics. Is that because it has been characterized and seen as a “white” drug problem? Could it take a more punitive turn if its connotations change? Tanika Raychaudhuri finds that sympathetic media coverage makes Whites more supportive of treatment over punitive policies for Black and White users, but less so for Black users. Justin de Benedicts-Kessner finds that White and Black Americans are more sympathetic when they see opioid users who look like themselves. Users who got into opioids through prescribed drugs see the least blame.
We are headed toward a replay of 2020, with the oldest candidates ever nominated for president. How much does candidate age matter in elections and how do voters judge older and younger options? If voters are disappointed with older candidates, why do they keep electing a gerontocracy?Jennifer Wolak finds that voters do stereotype older and younger candidates but not to the disadvantage of older options. But she also finds that older members of Congress have lower approval ratings. Semra Sevi studied the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, finding that bringing age to voters' attention did not affect their electability assessments. But in other research, she finds that younger voters prefer younger candidates globally. They both say our older candidates are the product of the system, not the voters.
COVID brought expansions of social welfare programs and increased flexibility. But many of the changes expired. Now Congress is considering a bit of a revival of the child tax credit expansion, but recipients of traditional welfare programs won’t see equivalent gains. Did policymakers learn the right lessons from the successes and failures of COVID-era expansions? Carolyn Barnes finds that remote appointments helped recipients but that some program changes confused them. She says we’re back to a period of retrenchment but administrators are trying to adapt when they have incentives to do so. Mariely Lopez-Santana finds that support for the child tax credit expansion was not as high as for other programs because families were not perceived as that deserving. Even recipients were not converted to program advocates.
With the prospect of a second emboldened Trump administration on offer, the administrative state is under attack. How well did the bureaucracy deal with Trump appointees? Was there really a resistance in a "deep state"? And how much are career civil servants affected by chaos and turnover in the political class that sit above them? Jaime Kucinskas finds limited and ineffectual resistance of administrators under Trump, even among those alarmed by his actions, with employees still highly committed to the goals of their agencies. Amanda Rutherford finds that upper-level bureaucrats actually report higher satisfaction when they face political vacancies and they are less likely to want to leave. That suggests chaos at the top may not lead to wholesale degradation.
Are political elites in bubbles, out of touch with the American public, not recognizing how their views and conditions are not reflective of most people’s experience? Prior research found that elites tend to overestimate conservative policy positions in the American public, but there are wider misperceptions across the political spectrum. Alexander Furnas finds that unelected political elites—from government officials to lobbyists to media figures—all assume that public opinion more closely matches their own opinions than it really does. Adam Thal finds that politicians overestimate the level of financial struggles facing constituents. But correcting those misperceptions does not change their opinions.
After a year of minimal lawmaking, the public is disappointed with Congress. And the members don’t seem very happy either, but they are not changing their behavior. How much has Congress deteriorated and why? Alex Theodoridis has a new survey of former members of Congress to explore their insights on what ails Congress. We discuss January 6th and polarization and their favorite presidents and leaders from the past. The former Republicans seem to recognize their party’s plight and everyone sees dysfunction.
Voters are upset about disarray at the US-Mexico border and the increase in illegal crossings under President Biden. But they also reacted negatively to former president Trump’s crackdowns. In both ways, immigration has become more important in our politics, making it more like Europe. Ernesto Tiburcio finds that flows of unauthorized migrants into the US have moved Americans and local governments in a conservative political direction. Areas that have seen more unauthorized flows start voting more Republican and redirect expenditures away from services and toward enforcement. But the backlash may run both ways. In Europe, Alexander Kustov finds that radical-right party success has softened views of immigrants and immigration. But his work also finds that anti-immigration voters prioritize the issue more than those who favor immigration.
Despite relatively strong economic data, the public is sour, judging President Biden poorly and putting him even or below former President Trump in early polling. How will polls and economic assessments evolve as we approach the 2024 election? Robert Erikson finds that early polls are not predictive but that presidents will eventually be judged by their economic standing. He’s co-produced some of the most important scholarship on using polls to predict elections and understanding how citizens judge the president based on economic expectations.
Courts have overruled key policy changes from President Biden acting alone. But Republicans are gearing up to enact a suite of policy changes on Day 1 of a potential new administration, reigniting fears of an imperial presidency. Jon Rogowski finds that presidents act unilaterally quite often, beyond executive orders to include a lot of other tools, especially under divided government. But Dino Christenson finds that significant executive actions are scarce because the president can be constrained by Congress and the courts through the potential reaction of the American public.
Even with low approval, President Biden is still a big fundraising draw. In fact, presidents spend lots of time fundraising and the campaign is now year-round. And Biden has big competition: former President Trump never stopped fundraising or campaigning. Brendan Doherty finds that changes in campaign finance law have enabled a formidable presidential fundraising operation for the party as a whole. It’s a window into the president’s connection to their party and another sign that the divide between campaigning and governing has collapsed.
The United Auto Workers is gaining concessions and unions are generating public support with strikes this year. But Democrats have been losing voting share among union members and private industrial unions are still in decline. What dynamics gave rise to unions’ Democratic support and is a resurgence possible? Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol investigate the political evolution of unions in Western Pennsylvania, a former heartland of Democratic union support. They find that union ties used to be an important part of working-class identities, social networks, and community life, guiding people toward Democratic support as part of a social consensus. But today, union members are more likely to socialize in gun clubs and less likely to retain Democratic ties and they see Democrats as socially distant and focused on cultural liberalism and college graduates.
Voters with college degrees are increasingly supporting Democrats, with Republicans now doing better among those without college—a big reversal in recent decades. Joshua Zingher finds that college-educated Americans are more liberal on social issues and that more educated Americans are moving furthest toward Democrats when surrounded by other educated people. White voters are flipping fastest by education but the trends are present across the electorate. Will Marble finds that white college graduates are now more liberal across economic, social, racial, and foreign policy issues. Less educated white voters have increased the importance they place on non-economic issues, polarizing the electorate on these issues.
Most people don’t know who their state legislators are, much less what they are up to. So how do voters hold them accountable to public views? Steven Rogers finds that voters don’t know enough about state politicians and most legislators are not facing competitive elections. Electoral mechanisms are not enough to keep them from diverging from the people they represent. But Chris Warshaw finds that state policy has grown more representative of state publics and more responsive to changes in opinion, only partly because elections change who is in power. State officials also follow public opinion in between elections and out of fear of electoral threat.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, local election officials became objects of unfounded conspiracy theories and attacks. But local clerks, even those elected in partisan elections, do make and implement key decisions about voting opportunities and election procedures. Do they tip the scales to favor their party? Daniel Thompson finds that electing a Democrat vs. a Republican as a county clerk does not affect subsequent election results or turnout. Thompson says reasonable concerns about the partisan effects of election law changes often do not materialize in real advantages.
In 2016, Donald Trump dominated media coverage in the race for the Republican nomination and he is on track to do so again this time. Does the media react to events and signals of public support, moving from one candidate to the next, or does it just focus on the frontrunner? And is media attention the main moving part in presidential primary campaigns? Zachary Scott finds that the media only sequentially highlights candidates in some nomination contests. But Trump dominated coverage more than others, in part due to his fearful and personalized rhetoric. Kevin Reuning finds that public interest follows rather than brings media coverage. Media attention led to increased poll support for Trump in 2016, but not for the other candidates. At least in 2016, the conventional story that Trump garnered outsize coverage and benefited seems correct.
Do our social media feeds polarize us, with algorithms that lure us into echo chambers and trap us with viral political content and misinformation? Andy Guess is part of four new papers that suggest these claims are overblown. The big social science collaboration with Meta found that reducing exposure to content shared by those that agree with you politically does not change political attitudes. Neither does reducing reshared content or changing algorithmic feeds to reverse chronological feeds. Some conservative Facebook users are in a bubble, but we may not be able to blame the algorithm for our polarization.
The hottest July on record is bringing big headlines, with scientists and activists hoping that Americans will notice the changing climate and call for policy action. But the prior record suggests no easy path from climate impacts to mobilization for change. Peter Howe finds that the effects of temperature shocks and natural disasters on public opinion are limited and inconsistent. The effects tend to be on basic awareness and are not as strong as initially suspected. Sam Rowan of Concordia University finds that temperature shocks and natural disasters do not seem to generate climate policy reforms at any level of government worldwide. Climate policy is slowly moving forward but not in response to local extreme weather.
American business used to be a common partner of Republicans. But the party claims that corporations have now gone “woke”, endorsing progressive values. Are companies really moving leftward? Eitan Hersh finds that business leaders perceive their companies moving toward Democratic elites and policy priorities, mostly due to internal demands. Soubhik Barari finds that companies are moving leftward in their social media posts and that public messaging is indicative of their internal behavior. They both say the woke capitalism narrative may be incomplete, but commentators are reacting to real change.
The Supreme Court made major conservative rulings this term but did not go as far as some expected. Are Court rulings out of step with public opinion? How much do they risk public backlash for moving against the public? Joe Ura finds that the Court provokes more backlash for moving in a too liberal direction than a too conservative direction. Stephen Jessee finds that the Court has been moving rightward but that the public is slow to notice. They both doubt the Court will provoke nearly as much backlash this year as with their abortion opinion in Dobbs.
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High levels of political violence and low levels of institutional support suggest we are in the midst of an age of discord. What can we learn from the cycles of history about political disintegration and recovery? Peter Turchin predicted the tumult. He points to our large class of aspiring elites competing for power without advancing the living standards of most Americans. The past suggests that our choices are either a mostly unchallenged elite who moderate how much of the economic pie they capture or a prolonged conflict over power among overproduced elites.
Before primary voters get input, local party leaders recruit and select candidates to run for office. Their views produce and limit voters' choices. Even if voters might support candidates from diverse occupations or ethnicities, those candidates might never run if party leaders tap someone else. Michael Miller finds that county party chairs have different preferences than primary voters and party activists. They are very concerned with local ties and fear that their voters won’t support Black or Latino candidates. They are critical to giving voters choices, even in places where partisan competition is weak, but their strategic discrimination constrains the candidate pool.
Why does the federal government budget under pressure in high-stakes showdowns like the debt ceiling deadline, especially when Republicans control Congress under Democratic presidents? And why do the imposed spending constraints not last? On this special edition, Matt Grossmann talks to Joshua Huder of Georgetown University for a deep dive into the context and history for the debt ceiling showdown. Rather than review the day-to-day dynamics of the current struggle, they review what has happened under previous standoffs and agreements, why Republicans take budgeting to the brink, and the legacy of the Budget Control Act from the last time they won.
Government administrators often write complex and interacting rules that make it harder to access public programs to improve health and social welfare. They impose compliance, learning, and psychological costs on the people that these programs are trying to help. Donald Moynihan and Pamela Herd have launched a renewed recognition of the barriers that program beneficiaries face and documented how many burdens are knowingly implemented to undermine government success.
Republicans and Democrats dislike and misunderstand each other and anti-democratic attitudes are on the rise. But some strategies are effective for reducing polarization and animosity. Robb Willer tested 25 short interventions like videos and informational messages from across the scholarly and practitioner community, finding that many reduced partisan animosity and some reduced support for antidemocratic practices. The effects lasted and provided some ideas for real-world tactics to tackle polarization. The results offer some good news for a change.
Donald Trump is facing numerous legal challenges for misconduct, but it does not appear to be hurting him with Republican voters. Members of Congress like George Santos are also brushing off mounting scandals, using them to raise money. Have candidates grown immune from scandal, even one after another? Brian Hamel finds that scandals traditionally hurt incumbents with voters but helped them with donors. But the rise of nationalized polarized campaigns has meant they no longer hurt at the ballot box. Mandi Bates Bailey finds that scandals can hurt candidates with voters, but multiple scandals don’t hurt them any more than one scandal. Voters can only process so much that they hear about a candidate and only some voters will prioritize that information over partisanship.
Black voters saved Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary. They are the firm base of the Democratic coalition, despite a diversity of backgrounds and opinions, but some have shown signs of openness to Donald Trump. How do Black voters select candidates? And when and why do they prioritize descriptive representation? Julian Wamble finds that Black voters seek strong signals that politicians will prioritize the group’s interest over their personal interest, particularly from historic sacrifice. We discuss his research on how candidates can demonstrate social ties, political connections, and personal sacrifice to Black voters and whether those strategies trade off with candidate appeals to white voters.
Republican governors like Ron DeSantis have elevated critiques about racial and gender politics in schools and universities to the center of American politics, quickly transforming both K-12 and higher education policy debates. What are schools and universities actually doing and why have critiques of critical race theory and educators gained such political power now. Carson Byrd finds that universities are not achieving racial equality but have still become the place for conservatives to react against cultural change. Jonathan Collins finds that critical race theory has become an effective bogeyman despite wide public support for teaching about racism in public schools. Both reflect on how these debates quickly became the center of our culture wars and merged K-12 and university politics.
As the U.S. diversifies, political representation is not keeping pace. But that doesn’t mean we can blame the voters. Black and Hispanic candidates do win elections when they run and generate support from their parties. In fact, it could be that apprehension about how voters would react is what is holding back political representation. Eric Gonzalez Juenke finds that non-white candidates that barely win primary elections over white candidates do at least as well in general elections as white candidates who barely win—if not even better. Minority candidates can win, in either party and even in districts without large minority populations.
Democrats are dramatically shaking up the presidential nomination system, dislodging Iowa and New Hampshire to enshrine a new calendar. How much difference will this make? Does it portend a new reformed era, or will invisible primary coordination still rule before anyone starts voting? Josh Putnam is a practicing political scientist who watches the rules changes closer than anyone, finding a complicated dance between national parties, state parties, candidates, and state laws. He also understands how the rules fit into the dynamics that govern who wins nominations and who gains and loses power among party factions. For those gearing up for 2024, this is a must-listen conversation.
Congress is hiring more communications staff than ever, trying to influence the public debate and keep up with the social media conversation. Does their public communication match their policy agenda? Lindsey Cormack has tracked congressional emails for 14 years, while Annelise Russell has analyzed congressional tweets. They’ve found differences across parties and genders but say watching what legislators say online provides early clues to changes in their priorities and attitudes. Watching their language can help identify factions and provide a preview of the new Congress.
Do polarized politics leave anyone left in the middle? Anthony Fowler finds that most Americans’ political views fall between the opinions of Democratic and Republican elites. And that’s not because they don’t understand politics in the same way. Most Americans’ views fall into the ideological continuum from left to right; they’re just somewhere in the middle. These moderates matter for election outcomes. While they participate a bit less, they are the consequential swing voters. Fowler also finds that selecting candidates on policy grounds could matter more to voters than the power of partisan identity. We may not be giving voters enough credit.
President Biden’s first two years with a narrow Democratic Congress brought big ambitions and substantial new policy. As we now shift to a Republican House, how should we put Biden’s first two years in context? To help, Matt Grossmann talks with Casey Dominguez of the University of San Diego, who has wide ranging expertise on presidents, Congress, and the political parties. Her work has covered presidential honeymoons, judging presidents on their own terms, and how parties decide primary elections. She’s a big picture thinker about the state of each political party and the role of political science in understanding current events.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is producing a firestorm of controversy, especially among journalists, political professionals, and academics. But how did Twitter become the preferred platform for journalists to interact with politicos and professors, the key conduit for research and opinion to make their way to media coverage, and the center of elite discourse?This week, I talk to Shannon McGregor of the University of North Carolina, the key expert on the role of Twitter in political journalism and campaigning. She finds that journalists treat Twitter as content to be redeployed for narratives and exemplars of public opinion, even if it is not representative of the broader society. We talk about the role of Twitter on the Left and Right, the implication of Musk’s policy changes, and the reasons we all have such a love/hate relationship with the platform.
Democrats and Republicans are electing new leaders for their parties in the U.S. House and Senate, as a new era begins with the replacement of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. How much did Pelosi change Congress? How are new leaders likely to corral their factions and set a new tone? Matthew Green finds that many of the dynamics of party factions and leadership elections remain consistent, but there are novel situations, including the simultaneous transition of three top House Democratic leaders and demands for caucus rules changes in the Speaker election. We also evaluate this congress and anticipate divided government.
Many Americans are now voting before Election Day. Does early voting and voting by mail increase turnout or help one party? Does early voting data allow us to predict election results in advance? Michael McDonald says yes. He is the foremost tracker of early voting and turnout data. We review the results of the 2022 election and early voting in the last three elections and also discuss the new normal of high turnout and the effects of this redistricting cycle.
Democrats did far better than expected in the 2022 midterm election, especially in swing states and districts. Do the early results provide new data on the effects of campaign messaging and careful candidates? Can Democrats overcome structural disadvantages by campaigning on popular issues? David Shor argues that campaign effects, especially from moderate popular candidates, help explain the outcome, whereas appeals to turnout and changes in electoral composition do not. The conversation also covers what can and cannot be learned with immediate data and how to use both political science and practitioner data to understand the effects of campaign strategy.
People who are pro-choice on abortion also tend to be against the death penalty. But are those beliefs internally connected? Would changing one belief change the other? And do all of our views add up to a coherent belief system? Mark Brandt finds that beliefs that tend to go together in the society as a whole don’t necessarily map onto how we see them fitting together in our own heads. And the internal relationships between our ideas can be better used to predict the dynamics of opinion change. We do have coherent belief systems, but they may not match our societal divisions.
We seem to have become partisan animals, with Republican or Democratic identification now tied to all of our other social identities and political attitudes. In the height of the campaign season, Americans start to define ourselves based on our partisan side, changing our views to reinforce our identity. Emily West finds that partisan identity is heightened as Election Day approaches and can be made more or less salient in experiments. When partisan identity is brought to the top of the mind, Republicans become more racially resentful--matching their party norm. But induced partisan identity does not explain affective polarization. We don’t seem to hate each other because partisanship is part of our identity. So ideological considerations and other factors still matter for producing and sustaining opposition to the other party and our own partisan identity. It all tends to be self-reinforcing, but there are times and interactions that can dampen the cycle.
As voters are inundated with campaign advertising and news coverage, can they learn key information through all the noise? Joshua Kalla tests hundreds of messages on thousands of voters in the 2020 presidential election, finding that voters can be persuaded, especially with specific information about Biden. Kevin DeLuca finds that more high quality candidates, like those endorsed by newspapers, are still winning at high rates. Despite strong partisanship, voters do learn from campaigns and are willing to shift their votes in response to what they learn.
Public opinion polls often show large majorities in favor of hypothetical changes in public policy, such as universal background checks for gun purchases. But when voters have the opportunity to enact those changes in ballot measure initiative campaigns, the results are usually much closer. Jonathan Robinson finds that state public opinion is related to initiative voting results, but large majorities are substantially reduced. Part of the reason is status quo bias: the electoral context makes it clear that voters are being asked to change current law. Robinson is a political practitioner engaged in scholarship, who merges the perspectives of both worlds. As co-author of a major report on voter turnout and vote swings in 2020, he also looks ahead to 2022.
In the 2022 primary elections, many incumbent legislators have lost their seats to more extreme candidates, and Trump-endorsed newcomers are winning races against established professionals. Both are the culmination of ongoing trends. Rachel Porter finds that primary electorates, especially on the Republican side, are far more extreme than general electorates. And primary voters have increasingly been preferring amateur candidates over experienced politicians, partially because those candidates can now raise early national money. While that can mean more diversity in the candidate pool, it may also drive congressional dysfunction.
Federalism is supposed to allow policy to vary with local opinion and circumstances. But American politics has nationalized, with many seeing states as arenas for national political debates among partisan networks rather than opportunities for state-specific solutions. And states are even fighting about the basic ground rules of democracy. Jacob Grumbach finds that nationalization made state policy respond more to party control, with legislators responding to activist donors over public opinion, states copying electorally successful policies only from states controlled by the same party, & Republican states causing democratic backsliding.
The polls were off more than usual in the last presidential election and the polling industry is suffering from low response rates, mode changes, and unrepresentative samples. But G. Elliott Morris finds that polling has long been vital for democracy and has mostly been improving over time. Pollsters have always had to adapt to new challenges and are doing so again. Given the benefits for prediction and for the knowledge of scholars and political leaders, we have to get it as close to right as we can. That starts with acknowledging the difficulties and lowering our expectations for precision.
A diverse young generation is ready to change our politics and culture, but our congressional leadership and presidential options remain geriatric. It's not just the normal politics of aging: the baby boomer generation has maintained extraordinary power and influence throughout its life course. Kevin Munger finds that generational conflict is inevitable as the baby boomers retire but maintain their political influence against much more diverse, less religious, and more liberal rising generations. The institutions boomers built are losing credibility, but we should not expect their power to wane.
Declining response rates for polls mean we must rely on the shrinking minority of Americans that agree to be interviewed to represent the broader public. Josh Clinton finds that Democrats were more likely to agree to be interviewed than Republicans or Independents in 2020. Common corrections could not compensate, as the partisans who do respond aren’t representative of those who don’t. Amnon Cavari finds that the people who refuse to participate in polls are less educated and less interested in politics. This means our measures of polarization overestimate partisan differences by speaking only to the highly engaged. We rely on public opinion surveys, but small response biases can paint a misleading picture.
Guests: Josh Clinton, Vanderbilt University; Amnon Cavari, Reichman University Studies: “Reluctant Republicans, Eager Democrats?” and “Survey Nonresponse and Mass Polarization.”
A leaked Supreme Court opinion suggests that Roe v. Wade may be overturned this summer, forthrightly moving abortion policymaking to the states. The states have played an important role in bringing about the decision, setting the stage for the fights to come. Now abortion bills are moving from symbolic politics to real consequences. Rebecca Kreitzer discusses her long work on abortion politics, including the role of women representatives, interest groups, and public opinion, helping us understand how we got here and prepare for what’s to come.
Women are underrepresented in American political institutions, despite the positive track record of women in office and the willingness of voters to support women candidates. Gender differences in political ambition originate in childhood and are difficult to counteract. Mirya Holman finds that girls tend to think of politicians as men and politics as a man’s world—and those perceptions build over time to reduce intended political involvement. In this conversational addition, Holman also talks about her experience as a leader in the field of gender and politics research and the efforts to achieve gender parity in research and practice.
American public policy includes a lot of economistic thinking. Policy analysts weigh costs and benefits, use economic projections and models, and try to calculate the value of almost everything. That may not have been inevitable. Elizabeth Popp Berman finds that a revolution in applied microeconomics brought about a shift in bureaucratic agencies, which led to self-reinforcing requests for more economics trainees and economistic ideas, with governments increasingly asking for a particular form of economic analysis that limited the scope of government action. This economic revolution explains how the Democratic Party moved rightward, foreclosing further left economic alternatives by changing the language and criteria for policymaking.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seems likely to be confirmed for the Supreme Court, fulfilling President Biden's campaign promise to elevate the first Black woman to the Court. At her nomination hearings, Judge Jackson faced the usual reception colored by partisanship as well as her race and gender. What did we learn from those hearings? Katelyn Stauffer finds that previous nominations of Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor helped soften opposition from ideological opponents among those who shared the nominee’s racial or gender identity. Jessica Schoenherr finds that senators use nomination hearings to represent their constituents, with different postures by same- and opposition-party senators depending on their control over the impending vote. We talk about whether Judge Jackson’s hearings were a charade and the role of descriptive representation in how political leaders and the Court are perceived.
Guest: Erica Frantz, Michigan State University
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows how the incentives and views of dangerous leaders drive world events. The efficacy of the international community's response depends on how regimes like Russia's work. Erica Frantz finds that personalist regimes like Russia are more likely to initiate conflicts and suffer from misperceptions in a close inner circle. Putin’s actions follow authoritarian patterns elsewhere. This conversational edition features research and commentary on the war, the sanctions, the behavior of other regimes like China, the global implications of the rise in personalist authoritarianism, and the direction of research on harder-to-observe countries.
Guests: Adam Zelizer, the University of Chicago; Christian Fong, University of Michigan Studies: “Is Position Taking Contagious?”; “Expertise, Networks, and Interpersonal Influence in Congress.”
Policymaking seems dominated by polarized views and misinformation. But what if legislators are willing to listen to and share expertise on policy issues? Adam Zelizer provides informative briefings to state legislators on pending bills and finds that they listen, increasing their co-sponsorship of those bills and bringing along their office mates, as information spreads from one lawmaker to the next. Christian Fong finds that when legislators are assigned to new committees in the middle of a term, the legislators they usually work with start voting with them more often on bills in that committee’s issue area. Lawmakers take cues from the most informed legislators. They may be doing the best they can with limited knowledge and a lot on their plate.
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Public opinion tends to move in the opposite direction of policy. But how does the public learn that policy is changing, enabling their adjustment? And does a polarized and inattentive public still react together in response to policy? Stuart Soroka and Christopher Wlezien, the key developers and testers of the thermostatic model, find that television and newspaper coverage provides a good signal of which way national policy is heading. And the public as a whole, not just the most informed or a shrinking middle, receive that signal and respond by adjusting their preferences--favoring more spending when it declines and less when it increases. The result is that they tend to think each side goes too far moving policy in their preferred ideological direction. That’s frustrating to policymakers, but it may represent democracy in action.
Advanced democracies are backsliding. Can we count on the public to save them? Democratic principles may be widely shared, but that does not mean citizens respond as we might hope. Christopher Claassen finds that publics around the world react against advances in liberal democracy by becoming less favorable toward democracy but become more supportive of democracy when it declines. Sara Wallace Goodman finds that citizens in the U.S. and Europe share strong notions of democratic citizenship but only people on some partisan sides respond to threats from polarization and foreign interference. Cross-national research on the scope and dynamics of public support for democracy can help us understand and connect our dilemmas at home and abroad.
Do Democrats and Republicans hate each other? Perhaps that only applies to a small proportion of Americans, but they get all the attention because they are the loudest, regularly posting on social media. Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan find that journalists overestimate polarization because they hear from the politically obsessed, who co-inhabit bubbles where politics is always central. For most Americans, partisanship is a relatively unimportant identity. What looks like dislike for the other party is actually disdain for politicians and people who are constantly talking about politics.
Inflation is high, and President Biden's approval is low. News stories are focused on the rising prices at the pump, upsetting voters. But don't blame the media for the poor performance of the president's party. Laurel Harbridge-Yong finds that increasing gas prices hurt presidential approval, regardless of media coverage. Eric Merkley finds that media coverage of inflation—and the economy more generally—is more favorable for Democratic presidents than Republicans. The media is hyping short-term negative changes in inflation, but that is normal. And the results for Biden, like other presidents, will be negative.
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Americans’ views on race are polarizing based on our partisan sides. But that does not mean our views on race are the factor driving our political decisions. Our political views may be changing our racial attitudes—and even our racial identities. Andrew Engelhardt finds that whites’ prior partisanship often predicts changes in their racial resentment and racial group feelings more than prior racial attitudes predict changes in partisanship. Alexander Agadjanian finds that some Americans changed their racial identities in alignment with their 2016 presidential vote, switching from Hispanic or mixed race to white when shifting to Trump. Race remains central to our politics, but the relationship is more complex than we may assume.
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Democrats in Congress are working to pass federal support for universal pre-kindergarten and highly subsidized childcare without Republican support. But the policies will require bipartisan states to sign on in the first few years and a later federal government to extend the temporary policies. Will these initiatives be as polarizing as Obamacare or is this a popular policy destined to grow? Rachel VanSickle-Ward finds wide bipartisan public support for childcare policies and worker pay, despite elite polarization. Michael Little finds that Republican states took longer to adopt public pre-K, but that the vast majority eventually provided state funding. They both say to expect early partisanship but broad gains in early childhood education and the care economy.
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Many new mayors were just elected. Will they bring best practices in management or more attention to racial inequities ? Julia Payson finds that mayors’ public service motivation and managerial skills matter more than their backgrounds. Luisa Godinez Puig finds that mayors are divided by partisanship in how they think about racial inequality, but tend to articulate dialog-based solutions rather than structural reforms. They both say local politics are important for real problem solving, even though mayoral elections get less attention.
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Democrats are deciding how to trim their reconciliation bill, considering expiring programs, means testing eligibility, and using tax credits rather than spending. To make these new social programs last after Democrats lose power, today's program design decisions are critical. Eric Patashnik finds that sustainable programs require incentivizing actors to see reforms through and not letting policy opponents re-organize to win at later stages. Stuart Kasdin finds that using the tax code and entitlements can increase program survivability, but that health and social welfare programs have a harder time surviving. They both say the policy battle isn’t over after a policy passes and its design matters to what lasts.
Photo Credit: Joseph Chan via Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/Q--730ajUcQ
Will Congress pass Biden’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation package? Is there hope for criminal justice or immigration reform, or will the Senate filibuster block the rest of Biden’s agenda? And can Biden play a role in uniting Democrats on a path forward, even as the impending legislation highlights deep divisions within the party?
In this special conversational edition of the Science of Politics podcast, Matt Grossmann and Matt Glassman (Senior Fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University) discuss the status of the Biden agenda in Congress. They talk reconciliation, infrastructure, and spending, tying it into congressional procedure and how the agenda might progress or be derailed over the next few months as tensions between moderate and progressive Democrats come to a head and fiscal crises loom.
Photo Credit: Samuel Schroth via Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/gvauGFoXQ7c
Lawyers control the American court system, stock the administration, and even dominate our legislatures. They designed the institutions to ensure they’d continue to run the show. But today they face a political challenge because lawyers are far more liberal than elected officials or citizens. Conservative politicians are fighting back and making gains. Adam Bonica and Maya Sen find increasing polarization in the federal courts and strategic conflict between lawyers and conservative politicians in the states. But lawyers still pass legislation to benefit themselves and organize the judiciary to bar other entrants. It's no accident the U.S. stands out as a highly litigious society and legalistic state.
Fewer Americans are identifying as Christians and more have no religious affiliation. How will secular Americans transform politics? Ryan Burge tracks the decline in mainline protestants and the rise of Americans with no particular religious identity. He says they are part of a broader anti-institutional trend in American life, with only atheists and agnostics sticking out as the political subset. John C. Green finds a rise in avowed secularists who are motivated by politics and changing the face of the Democratic party. But these secularists don’t represent everyone who lacks a tie to organized religion.
For a special edition celebrating the 100th episode of the Science of Politics, Matt talks with Ezra Klein about how well political science informs American politics and public policy. They discuss how political science has changed in the age of Twitter and the era of Trump and the roles of scholars and journalists using research in debates on climate, COVID, and race.
Economic inequality is high and rising, but Americans aren’t clamoring for government action to address it. Nathan Kelly finds that rising economic inequality, rather than making the public favor redistribution, actually helps Republicans electorally and leads to policies that further entrench it and away from policies to combat it. Meghan Condon finds that Americans react to inequality by comparing themselves with those who have less, rather than to the rich, imaging themselves better off than others who they think don’t work as hard. They both say rising inequality does not make it easier to address through political action.
Do Democrats and Republicans now hate the other side with no way to breakthrough? Or can we tone down our social divides with shared values? Jon Kingzette finds that negative perceptions of the other party are driven mostly by ideological differences and are targeted at the politicians in the party rather than ordinary citizens. We may not be so tribal after all. Jan Voelkel finds that liberal candidates can earn support by framing their policies with conservative values. We can gain support by signaling that we have more in common than it appears.
Congressional action now seems to be mostly about building partisan floor majorities, with committees doing more grandstanding and less legislating. But there is still a lot of action in committees, especially in distributing goods to states and districts. Jonathan Lewallen finds that congressional committees are holding fewer legislative hearings over time, due to centralized lawmaking powers. But Leah Rosenstiel finds that committee members still change policy to benefit their states. They both say committees and constituencies still matter, even in our hyperpartisan age.
Most of the politics voters see are national and presidential. Local television news can help Americans learn about state and local politics, but it is threatened by nationalization. Daniel Moskowitz finds that local TV news helps citizens learn more about their governors and senators, encouraging split-ticket voting. But Joshua McCrain finds that Sinclair broadcasting group has bought up local stations, increasing coverage of national politics and moving rightward. Local news coverage is in decline but offers one of the major remaining bulwarks against nationalization and polarization.
Americans love to hate Congress and legislators often seem to ignore public views. But it turns out constituents do judge their representatives on the policies they develop and pass. Carlos Algara finds that public approval of congress is responsive to the ideological views of the majority party, making it risky to stray too far from voters. And legislators in both parties react to voter opinions, but in distinct ways. Adam Cayton finds that Republican voters judge their legislators more on their symbolic ideology whereas Democrats judge their members based on issue positions. Legislators in each party behave accordingly, responding to their constituents' ideologies or policy views.
Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory were implicated in the January 6th storming of the Capitol. Former supporters have even been elected to Congress. Is conspiracy thinking on the rise? Has it taken over the Republican Party? Joseph Uscinski finds little evidence that conspiracy theory beliefs are rising due to Trump or the pandemic. Instead, Trump mobilized the long conspiracy-minded. Adam Enders finds that we are prone to noticing conspiracy theories on the political right, but conspiracy beliefs do not align with the political right or left. They are part of a separate anti-institutional dimension of public opinion. New conspiracies echo those of the past, drawing the same types of Americans.
Democrats have full control of government but the Senate filibuster is blocking large agenda items. How likely is reform and what would it look like? What does the filibuster's resilience say about the role of partisanship in policymaking? Sarah Binder of George Washington University and the Brookings Institution has long been tracking the filibuster and attempts at reform. She sets the record straight on a special conversational edition.
Biden is abruptly shifting immigration and refugee policies from Trump, facing new blowback. Are public views rooted in anti-Latino racism or a broader American ethos? Mark Ramirez finds that anti-Latino attitudes are pervasive because Latinos are stereotyped as not living up to American values; these attitudes predict policy opinions and helped elect Donald Trump. But Matthew Wright finds Americans’ mixed immigration attitudes are built on norms of assimilation and the rule of law. Providing counter-stereotypical information can reduce prejudices’ role in opinions. They both say anti-immigration opinions combine prejudices and values because immigrants are stereotyped as inconsistent with assimilation and legality.
Advocates and legislators often want to generate media attention for their preferred legislation, but that does not help pass bills in Congress. Mary Layton Atkinson finds that media coverage focuses on legislation with partisan conflict and emphasizes process over policy substance. That tells voters that Congress is dysfunctional and full of extremists, reducing support for policy change. John Lovett finds that media coverage leads to more intervention by backbencher legislators, creating a spiral of increasing salience that makes it harder for leadership to pass bills. Congressional media coverage turns off the public with stories of conflict-ridden sausage making that disrupt internal consensus-building.
Some Republican voters supported the January 6th storming of the capitol, raising fears that the U.S. will continue to escalate violent extremism, moving everyday partisans toward endorsement of violence against their political opponents. Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason find that partisanship leads a sizeable minority of Americans to support violence or wish harm on the other party’s leaders and followers, especially after they lose elections. Drawing on survey experiments and history back to the American Civil War, they show the importance of messages in moving us over the brink or back from it.
Violent right-wing extremism again came to America's attention in the Capitol insurrection, including organized militia groups and white supremacists. How did these movements build support, radicalize, and evolve out of the alt-right? Sam Jackson tracks the growth of the militia movement and its involvement in right-wing politics, helping to explain the involvement of former military and law enforcement in the Capitol riot. George Hawley finds that online white nationalists were effectively hobbled by law enforcement after Charlottesville, but that their imagery and tactics live on in some of the right-wing extremism that followed. They both see the capitol insurrection as an amalgam of right-wing supporters with different motives.
Will Trump do lasting damage to American democratic institutions? He has repeatedly broken norms during his presidency and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. How much is the US undergoing democratic backsliding and what did his presidency reveal about the strength and limits of our institutions? Brendan Nyhan is an organizer of Bright Line Watch, an effort to survey experts and the public to track the erosion of democratic norms under Trump. He finds significant signs of weakness but acknowledges the many future unknowns. In this special year-end conversational edition, we review the damage and the evidence.
President-elect Joe Biden is choosing his cabinet, prioritizing government experience and diversity. President Trump instead appointed corporate executives and left many positions unfilled. But maybe the differences are not as stark as they first appear. Christina Kinane finds that presidents can manage vacancies and use interim appointments to guide agencies toward more or less policymaking. Trump did stand out, but Biden will likely use similar tools. And his appointments might not be immune from corporate influence. Timothy Gill finds that cabinet secretaries still mostly come from the corporate elite and return to the corporate sector afterwards. Even Democratic presidents are often drawing from a similar pool of elites. Both say Biden will bring change, but also see stable structural factors guiding his appointments.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Trump shrunk Democrats’ advantage with Latino voters this year. Why do Latino voters usually support Democratic candidates by large margins and why did they swing toward Trump in 2020? Gabriel Sanchez finds that Latino voters were highly engaged this year but less focused on immigration, meaning traditional divisions on the economy were more salient. Latinos strongly supported Democrats in the last two elections, so Republicans had room to gain. Giovanni Castro finds that Latino national origin groups that emigrated from countries governed by right-wing leaders often identify with Democrats, whereas those fleeing countries governed by the left are more likely to be Republicans. That might explain why associating Democrats with socialism mattered this year. They both see a lot of diversity in the Latino electorate.
2021 will feature closely divided Congress and a new president. Will Congress compromise to get anything done? Frances Lee finds that majority parties in Congress still achieve about half their agenda—no more or less than usual. When they fail, it’s just as likely due to intra-party conflict than to the opposition party. And when they succeed, it’s almost always from backing down on the most controversial elements or pursuing uncontroversial compromises. Jennifer Wolak finds that voters still like compromise and reward politicians who compromise, both in principle and in practice. By clarifying our differences, the campaign actually alerts voters that we don’t all agree and need to compromise. A lot of policymaking voters like is still happening, but it gets less media attention because it’s not a partisan war.
Photo by Julio Obscura under CC by 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
What can the 2020 election teach us about polling and politics? On the afternoon after Election Day, Matt Grossmann hosts the first-ever live edition of the Science of Politics podcast with G. Elliott Morris, data journalist at The Economist to discuss where exactly the models went wrong (and what they got right). Together, they review early results, compare them to the polls and models, and start thinking about how the results should revise our theories and models of American voting and elections.
Photo credit: Screenshot from the
Interest groups on both sides were ready for battle when President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court. As Republicans vote to confirm her, how will voters respond? Jonathan Kastellec finds that interest groups have polarized the debate: starting earlier in nomination battles, with groups now fighting over nominee ideology rather than qualifications. Alex Badas finds that Supreme Court nominations have become a voting issue, but that Republican voters still prioritize them more.
As Election Day approaches, Trump intimidation efforts are increasing and Americans in both parties are worried that the other side could use unfair tactics to sway the election. Why does the public fail to serve as a check on anti-democratic practices? Matt Graham finds that only a small fraction of voters prioritize democratic principles over partisan and ideological interests. And by increasing ideological differences, polarization has hurt democracy’s valuation. Larry Bartels finds that large numbers of Republicans countenance anti-democratic moves. And it’s not based on their support for Trump, but their broader ethnic antagonism. They both say we should worry about American democratic backsliding among elites because public support for democracy won't save us.
Photo Credit: Donald Trump / Public domain
National politics gets all the attention, but many important decisions--from police reform to housing development to tackling inequality--are made by local governments. Which voices are heard in local decision-making? Jesse Rhodes finds that local elected officials are ideologically much closer to White residents in their communities than Black or Latino residents and more conservative than the people they represent. Sarah Anzia finds that organized groups like police unions and local chambers of commerce influence local policy across the board. They both say that local policy choices follow the loudest voices of the repeat participators.
The Republican Party runs populist culturally conservative campaigns, but its policymaking mainly benefits the already well-off. In a time of rising economic inequality, how do they get away with that? Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson find that Republicans have to ramp up the outrage stoking due to their lack of broad policy appeals. The Republican Party’s economic positioning is internationally extreme and threatens to undermine US democracy. In this conversational edition, we assess plutocratic populism and its consequences.
Today, Black Americans are the strongest Democratic constituency and White Southerners are the strongest Republican group—but it used to be the other way around. The usual story places 1960s civil rights policymaking at the center of the switch, but an important prior history in the North and the South made it possible. Keneshia Grant finds that the Great Migration north changed the Democratic Party because Black voters became pivotal in Democratic cities like New York, Chicago, and Detroit, leading politicians to respond, including new Black elected officials. Boris Heersink finds that Southern Republican state parties became battles between racially mixed and lily-white factions, mostly for control of patronage due to national convention influence. The lily-white takeovers enabled early Republican gains in the South.These trends predated national civil rights policymaking and help explain how we reached today’s divided regional and racial politics.
Billions of dollars in donations will flow to candidates this year. Citizens suspect all that money buys the donors' influence. But just how different are donors’ views in each party from those of citizens? Neil Malhotra finds that Republican donors are more conservative than Republican citizens on economic issues but Democratic donors are more liberal on social issues. Both parties’ donors are more pro-globalization than their voters. So which do the candidates follow: the donors or the voters? Jordan Kujala finds that donors make candidates more inconsistent with their electorates and increase polarization in both parties.
Photo: Michael Vadon / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
The Supreme Court finished its term with a flood of momentous decisions, tacking to the center with Chief Justice John Roberts crafting most of the majorities and the Court agreeing with public opinion nearly all of the time. Is the Court worried about its public non-partisan stature? And does it need to be? Alison Higgins Merrill finds that support for the Supreme Court is high but declining, partially in response to ideological trends. Michael Nelson finds that public support for the Supreme Court is relatively stable and most people’s negative reactions to decisions don’t last. They both discuss what we can learn from Roberts and the Court this term.
Protests over police brutality have gripped the nation. But how do racial minorities in highly policed communities think about political action and mobilize to fight unfairness, when they are facing force and indignities that often lead to withdrawal? Vesla Weaver finds complicated but negative attitudes toward police. Overpolicied communities are often motivated for change, though not always traditional politics. Hannah Walker finds that criminal justice experience can mobilize people if they perceive external unfairness, including in the immigration enforcement system and overpolicing.
Republicans lost control of the House in 2018 and now could lose the Senate this year. Their fortunes seem tied to Trump and his agenda, but new research suggests they would be better off trying to distinguish themselves from him and his policies. Sarah Treul finds that votes to repeal Obamacare cost Republicans seats in Congress in 2018. They did not listen to their constituents at Town Hall meetings and the repeal effort resulted in lower vote share. Andrew Ballard finds that Trump endorsed a lot of Members of Congress in 2018 but it actually hurt those endorsees, stimulating the opposition more than the supporters.
Protests are heating up over police brutality in the middle of a presidential election year. Can protests change election outcomes or the future of the parties? New research suggests that protests do leave their mark--and the Trump protest era has been quite active. Daniel Gillion finds that liberal protests help Democrats win elections, stimulating new campaign contributions, public support, and candidacies, and increasing their vote share. Michael Heaney finds that protests respond to the party of the president and can help the party out of power organize and voice its concerns. They both say we should not underestimate the power of street protests, even for conventional political outcomes.
Joe Biden is about to select his vice-presidential running mate, having pledged to choose a woman. Will the pick change his chance of victory or the future of the Democratic Party? New research suggests running mates may not have the direct influence that most expect—but they do send strong signals about presidential candidates and their parties. Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko find that vice presidential nominees do not have home state or regional effects and do not seem to help attract affiliated social groups like women. But popular running mates can rub off on nominees’ popularity and change how the voters see them ideologically. William Adler and Julia Azari find that running mates are a party decision; parties try to balance their ideological coalitions, with a variety of inputs from public and elite co-partisans. Biden's pick will help define the candidate and his party.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore under CC by SA 2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/8571338180
President Trump has consolidated Republican support in Congress and the wider party network, despite a lot of initial concerns. Whatever became of the Never Trump movement that arose in the 2016 campaign? And who, if anyone, is still resisting Trump within the Republican Party? Steven Teles and Robert Saldin find that public intellectuals and foreign policy elites were more willing to take on Trump than lawyers and economists, but all of the movement mattered for the campaign and the administration. Karyn Amira and Jordan Ragusa find that, in Congress, conservatives and establishment Republicans are more likely to vote with Trump, while women and the electorally vulnerable are less likely to do so, but his high support caps long-term polarization. They all see it as difficult for Republicans to move on from Trump.
Studies: "Never Trump"; “Adversaries of Allies?” Interviews: Steven Teles, Johns Hopkins; Robert Saldin, University of Montana; Karyn Amira and Jordan Ragusa, College of Charleston
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore under CC by SA 2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/39815511914
Donald Trump is trying to link the COVID-19 pandemic to fear of immigration. There is precedent for linking infectious disease to that issue and winning elections as a result. When an Ebola outbreak came to U.S. public attention just before the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans were able to use it to their political advantage. Claire Adida finds that Republican politicians successfully raised fear of immigration by politicizing Ebola. Filipe Campante finds that local Ebola outbreaks gave Republicans an electoral advantage by changing immigration attitudes. They both see big differences this time, even though Republicans are trying to repeat the success.
Many African-Americans see themselves as conservatives and hold conservative policy positions. But Black voters overwhelmingly identify as Democrats and vote for Democratic candidates. Why can't Republicans increase their Black voter support despite rising conservatism? Ismail White and Chryl Laird find that African-Americans live in segregated social networks that enforce a norm of Democratic voting. Black voters are more supportive of Republicans when they do not feel social pressure. Tasha Philpot finds that Black conservatism is meaningful and influential in policy views, but that Black partisanship is based more on shared group identity. Black voters have varied ideologies, but agree on the concerns most important to vote choice. They agree that Black partisanship challenges our ideas about ideological polarization.
Photo Credit: Public Domain, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/photos-and-video/2012-photos
The COVID-19 coronavirus has upended American’s lives and heightened our anxieties. That’s likely to have a lot of political consequences. How do Americans respond to imminent threats and how does our anxiety change how we seek information, who we trust, and what policies we support? Bethany Albertson and Shana Gadarian find that Americans seek information, trust the experts, and seek protective policies in response to public health threats like infectious disease. But our biases increase and our instincts are often to blame outsiders. We explore research on anxiety in response to threats on a special conversational edition of the Science of Politics.
How did concerns about Hillary Clinton dominate voters' concerns in 2016, despite the scandal- & gaffe-prone campaign of Donald Trump? Did media coverage and social sharing doom Clinton? And can we expect a similar pattern in 2020? Jonathan Ladd finds that citizens heard a succession of negative things about Trump, but remembered the one big scandal about Clinton: her emails. Hal Roberts finds that conservative media produced and shared harmful stories about Clinton, while Democrats mostly followed mainstream and less partisan news sources. They both see important implications for the 2020 campaign ahead.
Michael Bloomberg is setting records for television advertising spending in the 2020 presidential primaries and we expect more records in the general election. The last two cycles have seen Democrats out-advertise Republicans, but how many votes did it earn them? Erika Franklin Fowler and Michael Franz find that the 2018 cycle was still dominated by television advertising focused on health care, a big change from 2016's personal attacks on Donald Trump. The go-to experts from the Wesleyan Media Project show we're now seeing more advertising, more negativity, and more outside groups. They expect more of the same in 2020.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore under CC by SA 2.0. https://flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/48603879096/
Americans have lost faith in our political and community institutions. Our leaders are increasingly performing for the crowd, rather than improving the institutions they inhabit. Eitan Hersch finds that Americans say they are spending time on politics, when they are just watching from the sidelines and commenting online. Yuval Levin finds that even those with power in Congress, universities, and media outlets are using our institutions as interchangeable platforms for publicity seeking, when they should be acting on their responsibilities. Both say it is time to stop pretending we are powerless and work to rebuild our institutions through painstaking local action.
Photo Credit: Shealah Craighead [Public domain]
Americans dislike the two major parties, which are fighting more and compromising less. But Does that open the way for the rise of third parties and the huge institutional changes necessary to bring it about? Lee Drutman finds that a new multi-party system is the only way out of our cycle of polarization and democratic decay. He sees opportunities on the horizon, favoring the adoption of ranked choice voting in larger, multi-member House districts. But Jack Santucci finds that the two parties have to face real third-party threats before they’re willing to reform away their advantages, focusing on the local reforms that have been tried in American history.
The emerging consensus is that Donald Trump won the 2016 election by divisively appealing to voters’ views on race and immigration. But Justin Grimmer and Will Marble find that Trump gained votes over Romney among low-education white voters, largely independents and moderates, who had centrist views on race and immigration. In contrast, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck find that the 2016 campaign activated voters’ attitudes on race, immigration, and identity, making them more important in driving voter decisions. A large all-star panel reviews the central debate over the 2016 election and its implications for the 2020 campaign ahead.
2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage. Christina Wolbrecht of Notre Dame and Kevin Corder of Western Michigan take the opportunity to review women's vote turnout and choice over time, tracking gender differences and similarities. They find that women increasingly vote at higher rates than men and vote more for Democrats. They show that scholars and commentators have changed their views of women voters over time, often using stereotypes and using men's voting as the baseline. We talk about the history and what's ahead for gender and voting in this election year.
Photo Credit: Public Domain.
Black turnout was down in 2016, costing Hillary Clinton pivotal votes and raising questions about whether post-Obama Democrats can mobilize Black voters. We know President Trump is angering and mobilizing a lot of White Democrats but that may not translate the same way for Black voters. Davin Phoenix finds that Black Americans express less anger than White Americans and anger does not stimulate them as much to participate in politics. Christopher Towler finds that African-Americans who strongly disliked Trump did turn out at Obama-level rates; but not everyone feels that strongly. Both say Black turnout is hardly destined to rebound in 2020, especially if Democrats don't change their strategy.
Photo: Phil Roeder under CC BY 2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tabor-roeder/43105749360
Republican and Democratic politicians offer very different agendas and proposals, but do they translate into real differences in outcomes? John Holbein finds that party control of government does not have any near-term impact across dozens of social and economic outcomes. But Jacob Grumbach finds that recent party control is associated with big changes in policy in some issue areas, sometimes producing real differences in directly-related outcomes like health insurance rates. Parties influence policy and some related outcomes, but perhaps not enough to declare one party better at improving well being.
Photo Credit: Julio Obscura under CC By 2.0 Generic.
Although the 2020 presidential candidates are investing huge shares of their time and resources in Iowa and New Hampshire, new research suggests early-state momentum may not matter much in our nationalized presidential race. John Sides finds that Donald Trump dominated media coverage well before election results in 2016, crowding out his opponents. Marc Trussler finds that state election victories didn’t seem to cause bigger-than-normal shifts in polls in 2016, with any campaign day just as likely to see an influential media event. Momentum may be dying with the growth of pre-primary media coverage and an earlier cementing of candidate coalitions.
Photo credit: Excel23 under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PeteButtigieg2020SBI.jpg
The House is moving toward impeachment. What are the electoral risks for Democrats in pursuit and Republicans in defense of President Trump? We learn from research on the role of the impeachment of Bill Clinton on the 1998 and 2000 elections and compare how things look today for Trump. Gary Jacobson finds that other factors overwhelmed impeachment in congressional elections, but a few Republicans may have been hurt. Irwin Morris finds that parties can work to protect their members who vote against their constituents’ opinions on impeachment. Both are expecting near-party-line votes this time with limited electoral effects, given polarized public opinion that is unlikely to move.
Most policymaking occurs in federal agencies, rather than Congress, and interest groups know that’s where the action is. That’s led many to fear that agencies are captured by regulated industries and can’t make good policy. But Rachel Augustine Potter finds that agencies strategically propose complicated rules and design short rulemaking periods when they are facing interest group pressure, avoiding pressure from lobbyists and other branches of government. Maraam Dwidar finds that agencies do change their rules in response to the interest group comments, but especially if they come from coalitions representing organizationally diverse constituents. Big data text analysis now helps scholars see bureaucrats in action.
Republicans have gained a lot of electoral ground in the states, while building an impressive infrastructure of conservative organizations to push policy rightward. But have they succeeded? Alex Hertel-Fernandez finds that organizations of conservative legislators, advocacy groups, and think tanks jointly shifted state policy and neutered their political opponents. But Matt Grossmann finds that despite major gains in the states, Republicans did not transform the size or scope of state government or counteract liberal social trends. Where they did have influence, the results on the ground were limited. These studies pinpoint both the strengths and limits of the conservative ascendency in the states.
Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-four-person-with-flag-of-united-states-background-1046398/
Americans mistrust services provided by the public sector, even though they increasingly rely on government programs. Amy Lerman finds that citizens perceive public services as inefficient and lower quality, causing them to misperceive good services as private and opt out of public services. Suzanne Mettler finds that Americans increasingly rely on government for their income. But because programs are hidden, their views of government don’t become more positive even if they directly benefit. Both agree government is facing a reputation crisis, even where it is succeeding.
Studies: Good Enough for Government Work and The Government-Citizen Disconnect Interviews: Amy Lerman, University of California, Berkeley; Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University
Photo Credit: Sage Ross under CC by 3.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Libertarian_Party_(United_States)#/media/File:Tea_Party_Protest,_Hartford,_Connecticut,_15_April_2009_-_031.jpg
When and why do presidential debates change voter views? How, if at all, did they help Donald Trump last time? Ethan Porter finds that the post-debate commentary changes voter views as much as the debate itself, with Fox and MSNBC viewers getting quite different impressions--but not enough to change who they support. Patrick Stewart finds that candidates go for applause lines and laughs to reach voters and create meme-worthy moments, which are reflected in the in-person audience reaction. This season of debates might also produce a television star, but voters' initial instincts may be hard to change.
Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Republican_Presidential_debate_2016_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg
Conventional wisdom holds that Trump won the 2016 election by appealing to voters left behind in Obama's economy and may win re-election based on a stronger economy in 2020. But new research casts doubt on both stories. Sean Freeder finds that the effect of economic performance on the president's re-election has been declining since the 1980s because citizens both misperceive the economy and selectively credit the president to match their partisan bias. Robert Griffin finds that 2016 Trump supporters were actually better off than Clinton supporters, especially racial minorities, once you minimize the effect of partisan bias. And real economic distress may still hurt Trump in 2020.
Our geographic divides are central to contemporary politics, including the election of Donald Trump. Election maps show dense liberal cities in a sea of sparsely-populated Red, advantaging Republicans in our geographic electoral system. Why are Democrats concentrating in cities? Jonathan Rodden finds increasingly concentrated left parties around the world, disadvantaging liberal cities. It started with unionized industrial railroad hubs but accelerated with the changing cultural values of the party’s new coalitions. Will Wilkinson finds urban and rural areas are becoming economically and psychologically distinct, with cities concentrating those open to new experience and working in the technology-driven economy and rural areas retaining those averse to social and economic change.
Studies: "Why Cities Lose" and "The Density Divide"
Interviews: Jonathan Rodden, Stanford University; Will Wilkinson, Niskanen Center
Photo used is in the public domain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#/media/File:United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county,_2016.svg
White liberals are quickly moving leftward on racial issues in what has been called “The Great Awokening.” Zach Goldberg finds that white liberals are greatly increasing their perceptions of discrimination, their tolerance of academic identity politics, and their support for immigration and affirmative action, coaxed along by rising liberalism in social and online media. But Emily Wager finds that in diverse states, rising economic inequality is making the public more conservative on economic policy, as whites feel less connected to the people of their state. Like the international pattern, it may be hard to simultaneously advance diversity and liberal social welfare.
Studies: “America’s White Saviors" and “People Like Us?”
Interviews: Emily Wager, University of North Carolina; Zach Goldberg, Georgia State University Photo credit: Lorie Shaull from Washington, United States [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]
Despite a broad field of qualified women and minority candidates, two white men are now leading the Democratic presidential field. Even after supporting women for Congress, why are Democrats shying away this time? Neil Visalvanich finds that neither party discriminates against women or minority candidates in congressional races, with Democratic Party donors actually favoring white women. But that may not apply to this year’s presidential race. Seth Masket finds that, when told that Hillary Clinton lost due to a focus on identity politics, white women are more likely to support men running on an economics message than women running on discrimination.
Studies: "The Party’s Primary Preferences" and "You Had Better Mention All of Them”
Interviews: Neil Visalvanich, Durham University; Seth Masket, University of Denver
Photo: Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore under CC by SA 2.0.https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/47687273722
Atop Democratic primary polls, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are re-igniting a debate about whether moderates are more electable. Are voters pushing the candidates to the extremes or just looking for moderate alternatives? Andrew Hall finds that moderate candidates are more likely to win general elections, but that they are running for office less often than extremists. The benefits of office are declining and the costs are increasing, especially for potential moderates. But Stephen Utych finds that moderates are far less advantaged in general elections over extremists than they used to be. Partisan polarization means voters increasingly treat politicians in each party as interchangeable, lowering the costs of nominating extremists. Either way, voters are not the main cause of polarization.
Studies: "Who Wants to Run" and "Man Bites Blue Dog"
Interviews: Andrew Hall, Stanford University; Stephen Utych, Boise State University
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore under CC by SA 2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/19197596204
Obamacare substantially increased American health coverage, but now some states and the Trump administration are acting to curtail benefits. Do Obamacare exchanges and Medicaid help stimulate new voters or even help Democrats win? Jamila Michener finds that Medicaid mobilizes voters, but only if it is well-administered and effective. States, counties, and even neighborhoods matter to how beneficiaries react. Vlad Kogan finds that, while Medicaid and Obamacare generally helped Democrats, a last-minute sticker price hike in 2016 moved votes to Trump. Democrats were able to win votes with new policy, but Republicans also win votes by undermining it.
Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tea_Party_rally-_sign_about_how_Obama_lies_will_kill_grandmothers_(4430071537).jpg
Expensive housing in major cities is holding back the American economy because new housing developments commonly spark a big “Not In My Backyard” local backlash. Why can’t new housing overcome the resistance? Katherine Einstein finds that the people who show up to planning meetings where projects are discussed are very unrepresentative. They take advantage of reviews and restrictions to oppose or limit housing development. Michael Hankinson finds that renters, not just homeowners, often oppose new housing development in their neighborhood. Citizens recognize the need for supply but still don’t want affordable housing in their area.
Photo credit: Marco Raaphorst by CC by 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/raaphorst/9757222035
The Green New Deal has focused renewed attention on policy to address Climate Change, but also raised concerns about how to pass and sustain energy policy in a polarized system. Economists say the obvious solution is pricing carbon, but Barry Rabe finds that carbon tax and cap-and-trade policies have faced big hurdles in passage, implementation, and sustainability. Leah Stokes finds that other policies like tax credits and renewable portfolio standards have proved popular after initially passing without much notice. But fighting fossil fuel companies for any sustainable climate policy remains an uphill battle.
Senate Democrats [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
The college admissions scandal finds the rich still buying their way into elite colleges, drawing attention to the role of college in perpetuating inequality. But university education remains a source of social mobility and increasing group equality in America. Deondra Rose finds that federal higher education policy empowered women to become majorities of college graduates and voters. Yet recent trends in the economics of higher education have been less positive. Brendan Cantwell finds that inequalities between colleges are increasing, leaving poor students to pay the price in higher tuition and loans. Policy is central to higher education's roles in both equalizing opportunity and undermining mobility.
Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/steel-gate-of-brown-brick-building-159490/
Studies: "White Identity Politics" and "Whitshift"
Interviews: Ashley Jardina, Duke University; Eric Kaufman, Birkbeck College
Racial change is making some Americans fear the decline of White majorities, helping Donald Trump and making immigration increasingly salient. Negative views of racial minorities play a key political role, but what about positive feelings toward white identity? Ashley Jardina finds that white identity drove opposition to Obama and support for Trump. White identity also leads to immigration opposition, but it increases support for entitlement programs rather than decreasing support for welfare. Eric Kaufman finds that the impending end of white majorities across Western countries is increasing support for far-right alternatives, with nativists finding an outlet for views they were forbidden to express by rising progressive norms.
Philanthropic foundations are getting more criticism as we learn how their efforts shape our politics. But that impact has a long history, including pivotal roles in the Civil Rights Movement and the California farmworker movement. It turns out the money often comes with quite a few strings attached. Megan Ming Francis finds that philanthropy shifted the NAACP from its early focus on lynching and mob violence to its education-focused litigation. Erica Kohl-Arenas finds that foundations repeatedly encouraged the farmworker movement to pursue non-profit services over radical politics. Both say foundations still shape what social movements can pursue and what gets left off the table.
Amazon’s headquarters decisions are drawing attention to economic development incentive programs designed to bring businesses and jobs to states and localities, while local opposition in New York drew attention to their role in inequality. Why do states and localities continue to offer them, despite academic research showing they are ineffective? Nathan Jensen finds that voters reward politicians who offer (even unnecessary) incentives, meaning they keep on offering bigger checks. Cynthia Rogers finds that state incentives increase the gaps between the rich and the poor, but they remain an ever-popular tool.
Studies: “Incentives to Pander: How Politicians Use Corporate Welfare for Political Gain" and "Income Inequality and Economic Development Incentives in US States.”
Interviews: Nathan Jensen, University of Texas and Niskanen Center; Cynthia Rogers, University of Oklahoma
Photo Credit: Thierry Ehrmann under CC By 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/home_of_chaos/37909812316
Online politics and social media are being blamed for a lot lately, from the spread of misinformation to the rise of incivility. But we also want online media to reach young people and increase participation. Although early studies showed limited effects, the latest efforts show the online world is impacting the offline. Jamie Settle finds that Facebook increases our negative views of the other party--not because we talk a lot about politics, but because we think lots of social media posts reveal our friends’ politics and come to see them as caricatures. Katherine Haenschen finds that online banner and video ads can encourage young people to vote in local elections, perhaps reaching new voters. Online media has benefits and risks for our politics.
Studies: “Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America” and “Mobilizing Millennial Voters with Targeted Internet Advertisements.” Interviews: Jamie Settle, William and Mary; Katherine Haenschen, Virginia Tech
Anthony Quintano from Honolulu, HI, United States [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41118893354).jpg
A new, young, and more diverse cast of House members has come to Washington. Will they represent racial minorities, women, and young people more than other members? James Curry finds that older members of Congress are more likely to introduce bills on lower-profile senior issues, meaning the disproportionately elderly Congress may give Seniors a leg up in policymaking. Kenneth Lowande finds that women, racial minorities, and veterans serving in Congress are all more likely to intervene on behalf of those groups in the federal bureaucracy. Diversity of background does lead to real differences in legislating and constituency service.
Donald Trump has repeatedly emphasized the threat from international trade, especially from China. But did Chinese trade help raise the salience of his concerns or even help elect him? Trade may matter even if views on trade don’t drive the public, because trade shocks also affect citizens’ cultural and racial views. James Bisbee finds that citizens living close to businesses affected by Chinese import competition developed more negative attitudes about trade, immigration, & US global leadership. Francesco Ruggieri finds that Chinese import competition did not change attitudes on trade, but did consistently help Republican candidates since 2008 by increasing negative views of racial and religious minorities.
Photo Credit: Cliff under CC BY 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/3550720936
We are heading into divided party government in Washington after an unproductive unified Republican period. Will a Democratic House bring even less productivity and more government shutdowns? We use the history of Congress and US state governments for an updated look at what party divisions between the legislative and executive branches bring us in terms of policy output. Patricia Kirkland finds that divided government at the state level increases the chance of budget delays that can lead to shutdowns. But she says some states are perennially late and others that face disastrous outcomes for impasse do get their work done. Benjamin Schneer finds that divided government historically does reduce the number of major landmark laws passed by Congress, but only by a few each term. There are also huge differences across time and presidencies, regardless of partisanship. But both confirm the conventional wisdom that divided government will not help improve our governance.
Studies: “Is Divided Government a Cause of Legislative Delay?” and “Divided Government and Significant Legislation: A History of Congress from 1789 to 2010.”
Interviews: Patricia Kirkland of Princeton University; Benjamin Schneer, Harvard University
Our homes are racially segregated--and not by accident. Jessica Trounstine finds that cities actively created segregation through zoning and urban renewal, worsening their public services. As soon as segregation was threatened, white homeowners fled to the suburbs. Chloe Thurston finds that the federal government decided to subsidize the private mortgage market, rather than focus on public housing. But advocacy groups for racial minorities, women, and the poor did make some progress addressing discrimination behind the scenes. Local and federal policy produced our unique American housing market, including pitfalls that are still with us today.
The rich have more tools to influence politics and policy than the rest of Americans, but what about the poorest citizens? In an age of increasing economic inequality, who, if anyone, represents their views and their interests in Congress? Kris Miler finds that Members of Congress in high poverty districts are not the champions of the poor. Instead, Democratic women and minorities from urban districts tend to introduce bills about poverty but have trouble getting them passed, leaving the poor without effective representation even in times of rising poverty. Christopher Ellis finds that Members of Congress are usually more responsive to the opinions of the rich than the poor in their districts, but moderates and Democrats in competitive districts with unions do represent the opinions of the poor. Low-income constituents are only sometimes visible and have a hard time holding their representatives accountable.
What are the implications of the 2018 election results? Julia Azari and Rachel Bitecofer are two political scientists who followed it closely and know how it compares to prior cycles. Azari is an election analyst and party scholar who finds that politicians claim electoral mandates for action based on the results of elections. We talk about early interpretations of 2018 as a referendum on Trump and why we simplify election results with stories. Bitecofer is an election analyst and a forecaster of the 2018 election who finds that demographics and partisanship are now destiny. We talk about why negative partisanship makes election results easier to foresee as partisans choose clear sides but shift turnout.
Photo: Erik Hersman under CC BY 2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/3004595893
Republicans are now a lot more religious than Democrats, but they may not mean our religious views drive our politics. Instead, people may be choosing their religious or secular affiliations, communities, and beliefs on the basis of their partisanship. Michele Margolis finds that young adults tend to move away from religion, but only Republicans and Black Democrats come back when they start a family—leading to a big over-time decline in religion among White Democrats. But what is replacing religion for Democrats? David Campbell finds that an aversion to the religious right makes Democrats adopt secular identities and principles. Both say we should expect continued religious and political polarization, as secular and Democratic identities become more closely aligned.
Photo Credit: Ninian Reid under CC BY 2.0. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninian_reid/34105097982
How TV and Service Projects Impact What Americans Believe About Inequality by Niskanen Center
Are the Democrats becoming a more ideological party while the Republicans emphasize social identity? The one year anniversary special edition of the podcast experiments with a more conversational format to discuss party change. Matt Grossmann is joined by his Asymmetric Politics co-author, Boston College political scientist David Hopkins. They discuss how much, and in what direction, the parties are changing. They both see more change on the Democratic side, but no decline in asymmetry.
As politicians polarize, Americans are also sorting into clearer partisan camps who dislike the other side. What reinforces that cycle? Perhaps both our social relationships and our increasingly unequal society. Tobias Konizter finds that Americans are increasingly selecting spouses based on partisanship and then passing on our political views to our children. But John Kuk finds that economic inequality is increasingly tied to divisions on social and racial issues, which in turn are driving dislike of the other party. Our social ties, resources, and racial views are all dividing us into two partisan sides.
The Tea Party that arose in 2009 seemed initially focused on bailouts, health care, and taxes. But new research suggests that concerns about cultural change and distrust of distant elites, the same themes that drove Trump supporters, were also central to the Tea Party—not just in the electorate but among activists and even for aligned Members of Congress. Bryan Gervais finds that Tea Partiers in Congress veered rightward on racial concerns and pioneered the social media incivility now associated with President Trump. Rachel Blum finds that the activist network of the Tea Party worked as a party within the Republican Party to reorient its ideology to focus on cultural threats.
Alex Hanson from Ames, Iowa [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
Citizens have views on policy issues but are often ignorant about the specific stances of politicians and interest groups. How do they match their issue positions to candidates and causes and how well do their choices line up with their professed views? Cheryl Boudreau finds that low-information voters can utilize everything from party endorsements to voter guides to match their views to a candidate. But Nicholas Hass finds the policy views people articulate in surveys are not the same as how they act in the political arena. Not everyone backs up their expressed view once donation dollars are at stake.
We already know that Brett Kavanaugh will be a strong conservative on the Supreme Court, just like Neil Gorsuch, but not because of confirmation hearing vetting. Both were handpicked by the Federalist Society network, giving conservatives the assurances they need and making liberals want to ask tough questions that may not get answered. Amanda Hollis-Brusky finds that the Federalist Society engineered a conservative counterrevolution through scholarly exchange and a farm system for future justices. But Paul Collins, Jr. finds that nominees do often share their views on settled law during the hearings; it was Gorsuch who stood out as much less forthcoming. Preview what Kavanaugh will say at his hearings and understand why he can avoid saying much.
State and local politics are losing ground to national politics in the minds of Americans. What do we learn from nationalized coverage and what do we increasingly ignore? Daniel Hopkins finds that we are losing state and local knowledge and voting increasingly along party lines, as we move from local to national media sources. Kerri Malita finds that even nationalized political coverage may not inform us, focusing on polls and candidate visits rather than policy issues. Find out if we can recover local issues and concerns in our nationalized era.
From Russian trolls to racist rhetoric, Facebook has been blamed for the divisive 2016 presidential election. Does Facebook direct users to diverse information or to fake news and ads that misinform, making us hate the other side? Michael Beam finds that Facebook users actually saw more information from the other political side in 2016; he finds no evidence that Facebook polarized our attitudes. But Young Mie Kim finds 2016 Facebook users saw lots of divisive misinformation from untraceable groups via ads. Facebook may just be the latest scapegoat for our polarized politics, but its stream of information is making it hard to sort fact from fiction.
Are Americans losing faith in democracy as our norms erode? Lee Drutman finds that support for democracy remains high, but Democrats and Republicans are increasingly polarized around authoritarian impulses, as Republicans follow Donald Trump's lead. David Adler finds that people who place themselves in the middle of the ideological spectrum are the most skeptical of democracy, in Europe and the United States. Find out if support for strong man leadership is growing on the American Right and if our politics are becoming more like those in Europe.
Public debate on genetic research often assumes that conservatives will prefer genetic explanations for human differences, while liberals will point to environmental factors—perhaps exacerbating political divides on race. But Stephen Schneider finds that conservatives prefer explanations based on personal choice; attributing individual differences to genetics is associated with liberalism and higher tolerance. But when asked to explain racial group differences, Elizabeth Suhay finds that conservatives are attracted to genetic explanations if they are exposed to media messages on genetics and race. Both say people choose their political views first and then select the explanations that fit them.
Unions recently took some hits in Republican states, but now teachers’ strikes are pushing back and winning. Can unions still be influential in Red America, when they are mostly in the public sector? And are they out to defend their own interests or to play a broader social role? Laura Bucci finds that despite declines, unions still help reduce inequality across states—through policy and the labor market. But Daniel DiSalvo finds public sector unions are also leaving states with burdensome legacy costs, with even Republicans capitulating. In both cases, labor unions are still influencing our politics and economy even after big declines in the private sector. Arizona Education Association [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
Many say California Republicans’ anti-immigration ballot initiatives in the 1990s lost them the Latino vote and set the party on the road to ruin. Is Trump leading national Republicans down the same failed path? Iris Hui finds that the propositions were not the tipping point, with Republicans starting to lose ground beforehand and feeling the brunt of their shifts only with the next generation. Joshua Zingher finds that California Republicans did lose Latinos without gaining whites, but he says anti-immigration politics in Arizona provides Republicans with a better national model: they gained white voters faster than they lost latinos. Western state politics provides a glimpse of the national future.
We’re increasing defense spending and launching military strikes—and we’re putting it all on the national credit card. That may be no coincidence. Sarah Kreps finds that Americans are more supportive of wars when they are financed through debt rather than taxes. Across the world, Matt DiGiuseppe finds that a nation's creditworthiness leads to more military spending, especially in response to threats. Military power and conflict used to be financed by taxes, limiting democracies' appetites--but now that accountability has been lost.
White racial attitudes play a strong role in voter attitudes from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, but whites think it’s black voters who decide based on race. Darren Davis finds a racial double standard, where racially resentful whites think blacks vote based on race alone. Randall Swain finds Trump benefited from white racial stereotypes and attracted those unconcerned about police use of force against blacks. Both say racial attitudes increasingly divide the American electorate.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_and_Donald_Trump.jpg
Public opinion and political parties are dividing across states, but is public policy following these differences, with conservative publics and majority Republican parties enacting more conservative policies? Christopher Warshaw finds shifts in state public opinion are reflected in policy, but not always through majority parties. Mark Richardson finds that majority state parties still need to win over centrist legislators and governors to pass charter school and abortion policies. Both find signs of life in statehouse democracy.
Democrats and Republicans are sorting ideologically and socially and we’re developing more negative opinions of one another. Are we dividing into two irreconcilable tribes—or just tuning out both parties? Liliana Mason talks about new research showing our partisan identity is stronger when our ethnic, religious, and ideological identities are strong and linked to our party’s predominant groups. But John Barry Ryan says many citizens dislike both parties and want to tune out of politics, hating the other party only a bit more than their own.
Trust in government is low and declining after another polarized election and in a polarizing administration. We're frustrated, even angry, but maybe we still hold some underlying pride in our government. Steven Webster finds that anger decreases trust, whether it's directed toward the candidates or life in general. But Stephen Nicholson says we still hold implicit trust in government that can be drawn upon in a crisis. We discuss the two sides of trust in government.
2017 saw protest movements return with a vengeance, as millions protested Donald Trump at marches for women, science, immigration, & more. But will that translate into public opinion shifts or electoral mobilization in 2018? Dana Fisher finds a lot of cross-over in concerns and participation across a year of big protests and signs it is translating into electoral mobilization. Nazita Lajevardi finds that protests and news coverage surrounding Trump's immigration executive order moved public views against the policy.
2016 brought a lot of change in presidential primaries, but mostly continuity in House and Senate primaries. How will the candidates gain party support and win votes in this year's crowded primary season? Hans Hassell says party elites and donors continue to decide the vast majority of primaries by clearing the field and providing support. Robert Boatright says the story of primaries as ideological battles contributing to polarization is way oversold. Neither sees 2018 breaking the historical mold.
The U.S. has a long history of spending through the tax code, limiting revenue to provide benefits. But Congress just passed a major tax cut that limited some tax deductions, kept others, and expanded the child tax credit. How do the latest Republican efforts fit historical patterns? Christopher Faricy's recent article finds that Republicans usually limit credits and expand deductions, whereas Democrats do the reverse. Yet Joshua McCabe's research finds that the child tax credit is historically a Republican policy; but its targeting is limited by a debate focused on tax relief rather than income supplementation. Both say the latest law could limit the value and political salience of major tax deductions.
The filibuster effectively means 60 votes are usually required to take action in the Senate. But Senate majorities can make or change rules to get around it. In 2017, Republicans went "nuclear" on Supreme Court nominations and used reconciliation rules to pass tax cuts (but chose not to limit the scope of the Byrd Rule). New books by Molly Reynolds and James Wallner explain when Senate majority parties use procedures to get around the filibuster. Reynolds finds parties follow their electoral and policy preferences but Wallner finds that minority party threatened retaliation can deter change. Matt talks to both about the future prospects for the filibuster and the ways around it.
In many U.S. cities, Latinos and Asians are gaining population share in previously White- or Black-dominated areas. But the vast majority of cities still have white mayors, even those with majority-minority populations. So when do racial minorities gain representation and do they ally to support the same candidates? Paru Shah finds that majority-white and majority-black cities have resisted representation for new immigrant populations. Andrea Benjamin finds that Blacks and Latinos do sometimes vote for the same candidates, but their alliances depend on elite endorsements and racial cues. The results shed light on racial politics in our diversifying nation.
After every mass shooting, partisans retreat to their respective corners on gun control. The National Rifle Association, and the gun owners it represents, are critical forces in our politics, but they may be winning only with Republican voters and in Republican states. Matt Grossmann talks to Mark Joslyn about new research showing gun owners are moving further apart politically from non-gun-owners, with each developing a partisan culture. He also talks to Jay Barth about a new study showing that Obama's elections and NRA influence have accelerated gun policy adoption in the U.S. states, with Republican states deregulation guns and Democratic states regulating them.
In its first few years, the House Freedom Caucus has helped take down a Speaker, choose another, and set the course of the health care debate in Congress. Matt Grossmann talks to Ruth Bloch Rubin about new research comparing them to other intra-party factions over a century of Congressional history, finding that they combine the strategies of their predecessors. He also talks to Andrew Clarke about a new study showing that the Freedom Caucus is more electorally dependent on Trump and gains more face time with him. The new research may explain why centrist and liberal groups have not been as effective.
Despite increasing scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, the parties are growing increasingly divided. Matt Grossmann talks to Megan Mulling about new research on climate polarization, the factors that influence climate opinion, and how to manage the partisan divide. He also talks to Graham Dixon about a new experiment showing that highlighting free-market ideas alleviates conservative skepticism about climate change. The new research suggests we should skip the science debate and go right to the policy debate.
Photo Credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-holding-banner-2561628/
Democratic women make up three times the share of their congressional caucus as Republican women. Matt Grossmann talks to Danielle Thomsen about her new research on how the donor networks in each party help produce this divide. He also talks to Heather Ondercin about her new research showing that the gap among officeholders may be producing the big gender gap among voters, with women increasingly seeing the Democrats as their party and men exiting the party for the same reason.
Political Research Digest features up-and-coming researchers delivering fresh insights on the big trends driving American politics and policy today. In 15 minutes, you’ll get beyond punditry to data-driven understanding.
Each episode goes in-depth on one hot topic in the news with two researchers who have just published relevant empirical studies. Hear about their new discoveries and get the broader context that’s lost in the daily news shuffle.
Topics covered include the influence of cable news, the gender gap in voting, and why our national discussion of climate change is so polarized. Grossmann and guests explain what we do and don’t know and why it matters as they knock down common myths and make cutting-edge research accessible to political professionals.
Political Research Digest is hosted by political scientist Matt Grossmann of Michigan State University and provided by the Niskanen Center, a Washington think tank dedicated to improving policy and advancing liberty.
Today's episode explores the studies "Bias in Cable News" and "No Need to Watch." The guests are Gregory Martin of Emory University, and Audrey McClain of Temple University