Media grasps at straws trying to find proof that support for Obama’s second term is faltering.
Joshua Tucker
Joshua Tucker is a professor of politics at New York University with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and New York University-Abu Dhabi. His major field is comparative politics with an emphasis on mass politics, including elections and voting, the development of partisan attachment, public-opinion formation, and political protest.
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The Voting Paradox Explained! Why People Vote…
United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, saw its popularity drop by nine points this week and then released the following online add: The tag line? “Let’s Do it Together” [h/t to Brian Whitmore, Israel Marques, and Scott Gehlbach, who wants this to be immediately nominated for most unusual campaign advertisement.]
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Speaking of Things that Aren’t Democratic…
Earlier this week, I raised the issue that there might be some tension between the sudden savior status of technocratic government and traditional notions of democratic accountability. Thus it was with great interest that I read the lead to the AP story on Italy’s likely incoming new – “TECHNOCRATIC” – Prime Minister, Mario Monti: Italy’s […]
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It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s…. Technocratic Government!
The sky is falling! The Euro is collapsing! What can we do? Look, up in the sky: it’s a bird! it’s a plane, it’s….TECHNOCRATIC GOVERNMENT! Destined to save small and large European governments alike, the sudden appearance of technocratic government as a deus ex machnia is probably raising a similar thoughts in most (especially American) […]
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Does Money Affect Election Outcomes in US Politics? A Quick Review of the Literature
Yesterday I addressed the question of whether Obama was actually having trouble raising money for his 2012 re-election campaign. This of course begs a larger question: how much does campaign spending actually affect election outcomes in US politics? I put this question to Andrew Therriault, a post-doctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University and an expert on […]
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AP Suggests Obama has a Donor Problem — What does the Empirical Evidence Have to Say?
With Nate Silver asking today whether Obama is toast in 2012, I thought it would be a good time to revisit an AP story last week about Obama’s supposed donor problem. The AP reported that: Tens of thousands of people who together gave millions of dollars to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign have gone missing […]
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Post-Election Report: Kyrgyz President
As part of our continuing series of election reports, we are pleased to welcome Matteo Fumagalli of Central European University with the following post-election report on Sunday’s Kyrgyz presidential elections. ********** Kyrgyzstan’s presidential elections, held on Sunday 30 October, resulted in an overwhelming victory for the front-runner, Almazbek Atambayev, the small Central Asian republic’s prime […]
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Quick Thoughts on Greek Referendum
The media and financial markets are abuzz over the decision of the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to hold a referendum on whether to approve the current EU bail out plan for Greece and its many conditions for reform and austerity in Greece (see for example here, here, and here). While most attention is […]
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Post-Election Report: Ireland President
In our continuing series of election reports, we are pleased to welcome the following post-election report from Theresa Reidy of University College Cork: ******************** Michael D Higgins was elected the ninth President of Ireland on Saturday, 29 October 2011 with over one million votes. Higgins was the candidate from the Labour Party, the second largest […]
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Post-Election Report: Argentina
In our continuing series of election reports, we welcome political scientists Natalia C. Del Cogliano and Mariana L. Prats with the following post-election report on last week’s Argentinian elections: ******* The fact that this report could largely have been written two months ago right after primaries were held is a reality we cannot avoid. Is […]