PapaBigears

This is a guest post by Georgetown political scientist Jonathan Ladd. ***** Recently Jay Rosen and Ezra Klein discussed the causes of declining trust in the media. In my recent book, Why Americans Hate the Media and Why It Matters, I explore the causes and consequences of declining media trust. I agree with much of […]

Gallup Editor Frank Newport interviews political scientist Chris Wlezien on this subject here.  Obama’s has an edge on 5 of the 6.

Cranky Reader: Sides, you are not only a moron, but a liar. Me: You again?  Last time you were insulting me for predicting that Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee.  How’d that work out for you? CR: Don’t change the subject.  You said you weren’t an election forecaster, and now you are involved in […]

Of course, Democrats and Republicans are becoming increasingly polarized in their views of Romney.  From Gallup: This trend will likely continue. Most interesting is the recent partisan polarization in views of the economy.  Again, from Gallup: In September 2011, Democrats and Republicans were 24 points apart on the economic confidence index.  Now they are 53 […]

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Steve Pearlstein: There is a vigorous academic debate over whether negative advertising depresses or increases voter turnout. I suspect it does both, depressing turnout among moderates and independents while stimulating it at the ideological extremes. In that process, what has changed is the composition of the turnout rather than its overall level. From the Lau, […]

Molly Ball asks whether Obama is “in trouble with young voters.”  She draws on a March poll of young people that finds a 7-point difference between Obama and a generic Republican, a much smaller margin than between Obama and McCain in 2008.   After acknowledging the shortcomings of the poll (e.g., no Obama-Romney match-up), she writes: […]

It’s in the OED: Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish. Also (usu. mildly derogatory): implying that another person has said or done something foolish. The best part is when it was first used: not by Homer […]

Republicans are largely of the view that presidents can do a lot about gas prices, while Democrats are convinced market prices are beyond the power of presidents to control. Or so it is in 2012. In May 2006, when the CBS News Poll asked this exact question as gas prices spiked during the Bush administration, […]

Of the 505 people who completed the survey on a computer, only 2 people cheated by looking the answers up on-line.  That’s less than one-half of one percent of the respondents.  This hardly qualifies as an alarming finding.  Or as reason for “word” to spread of cheating on political surveys.  Plenty of people had a […]