PapaBigears

Many readers will remember the book The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.  It argues that Americans are increasingly clustered in like-minded political communities.  If one categorizes a county by how its residents voted in presidential elections, as of 2004 nearly half (48%) of Americans lived in “landslide” countries where one presidential candidate got at least […]

An election means renewed attention to the competence or ignorance of Americans—e.g., here or here.  So it’s a good time to highlight a new paper on the topic by Christopher Elmendorf and David Schleicher: This paper examines what law can do to enable an electorate comprised of mostly ignorant voters to obtain meaningful representation and […]

I just wanted to highlight this New York Times article by Binyamin Applebaum about the political impact of gas prices.  It’s a very judicious take on the available evidence—one that doesn’t downplay the importance that gas prices may have to consumers, but doesn’t hype how much gas prices can affect presidents and presidential elections.  From […]

This is a guest post by Georgetown political scientist Michael Bailey. ***** Can presidents influence public opinion?  This is one of the biggest questions in political science because how we answer the question shapes what we think presidents should and will do with their time in office. Ezra Klein, channeling George Edwards, says no.  Kevin […]

A Monkey Cage reader writes: I realize that this might seem like a partisan-motivated question for the generally non-partisan Monkey Cage, but I was wondering if someone could do a post which would attempt to explain (a) why so many companies have chosen to take their advertisements from Limbaugh’s show after the Fluke Fiasco (i.e. […]

Regular readers will note that, as in 2008, I’ve been doing a lot of campaign-related blogging, both here and at Model Politics.   For once, it’s going to serve a larger purpose than this. I’m pleased to say that UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck and I will be writing a book on the 2012 election, […]

This is a guest post from political scientist and mascotologist Tobin Grant.  The image is mine. ***** Since I like being part of an NCAA bracket pool but hate to lose money, I’ve often entered a “mascot” bracket because most people let me put in for free. Consider it the worst possible bracket. Slate has […]

My latest post at Model Politics looks at public knowledge of three recent political events: Santorum’s statement about birth control, Obama’s call to Sandra Fluke, and Santorum’s comment about Obama’s snobbery.  The survey data show an unsurprising, but often forgotten, fact: a substantial fraction of Americans aren’t so riveted by this campaign that they know […]

This is a guest post from Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler. ***** In response to John’s earlier post showing Bush failed to persuade the public to go to war with Iraq, a Monkey Cage reader writes: “I have a hard time believing that presidential assertion [Iraq involvement in 9/11], filtered through staff and the […]

Ezra Klein’s new piece on presidential persuasion is stimulating a lot of debate.  I’ll have more to say.  But let me make one small point in response to Kevin Drum’s critique.  Drum writes: I also think that Ezra doesn’t really grapple with the strongest arguments on the other side. For one thing, although there are […]