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In writing about the difficulties of survey nonresponse, a problem that is well known to survey researchers but perhaps not to the general newsreading public, Sasha Issenberg discusses face-to-face interviewing, which is how all the polls used to be done. As he points out, “The only researchers who stuck to knocking on doors were those […]

Jeff points me to a paper by Chandler McClellan and Erdal Tekin which begins as follows: The controversies surrounding Stand Your Ground laws have recently captured the nation’s attention. Since 2005, eighteen states have passed laws extending the right to self-defense with no duty to retreat to any place a person has a legal right […]

Jed Dougherty points me to this opinion piece by Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of art at Northwestern University, who writes: Artists are defensive these days because in May the House passed an amendment to a bill eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts. Colleagues, especially those who have received N.S.F. grants, will loathe me for […]

We’ve been bashing Thomas Frank a bit recently, so maybe it’s time for a reminder that this whole “people are voting against their interests” line is not restricted to any particular political party. Here’s Niall Ferguson writing for the BBC: It is surprisingly easy to win the support of young voters for policies that would […]

Frank Newport of Gallup reports (link from Jay Livingston): Americans become progressively less positive about economic conditions the farther away from home they look. Forty-nine percent rate economic conditions in their local area as excellent or good, but that drops to 25% when rating the U.S. economy, and to 13% when assessing the world as […]

After our discussions of psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s opinions about working-class voters (see here and here), a question arose on how to reconcile the analyses of Alan Abramowitz and Tom Edsall (showing an increase in Republican voting among low-education working white southerners), with Larry Bartels’s finding that “there has been no discernible trend in presidential voting […]

Details (and anguished scream) here. I think the problem is that Jonathan Haidt has been getting too much uncritical press treatment. At some point it’s natural for him to start believing the hype and then just spouting off on whatever. I’m a big fan of descriptive research. Causal inference is fine, but you’re gonna get […]

John quotes Seth Masket’s claim that it didn’t matter that the Republican outspent the Democrat by 7-1 in the recent governor recall election in Wisconsin. Masket writes: Walker and Barrett faced each other less than two years ago. Walker beat Barrett by five points back then, after raising $11 million to Barrett’s $6 million. That […]

This is a guest post from Alessandra Casella, an economics professor at Columbia University, and Sébastien Turban, an economics Ph.D. candidate there. Alessandra Casella’s book on Storable Votes is available here. Sébastien Turban joined the project when the manuscript was already written but contributed substantially to its final shape.  The Senate has become less efficient […]

Nick Firoozye writes: In Greece there are 10 polling companies with very different methodologies. There are some 15 parties but 3 of any major importance (ND, Pasok and Syriza). The relevant polls that were done involved one before the election, and two after. We also have the outcome of the most recent election (so we […]