PapaBigears

There were some good comments on my earlier negative ads zombie post, and Phil Arena has also posted a reply.  Let me make a few more observations. At least one commenter wonders how I can claim that there is any zombie at work here.  After all, I note that the literature on negative advertising certainly […]

For more, see Michael Tesler’s post at Model Politics.

Political Scientist Josh Putnam, who blogs at Frontloading Headquarters and who may know more about delegate selection than anyone, was interviewed on Fresh Air.  Here’s one quote from him: The assumption going into this is that the number of delegates moving forward is going to be close to proportional to the number of votes in […]

Did the the contraception contretemps hurt Obama’s standing among Catholic voters?  Despite endless speculation about this, evidence has been in short supply. With some newly released data from YouGov, I can shed some light on this question. Here is the percent who approve of Obama among both Catholics and non-Catholics in the last 7 weeks […]

This is a guest post from political scientist Lucy Barnes, Prize Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford: ***** The recent exchange between Jonathan Chait and Veronique de Rugy over the progressivity of the U.S. tax system in comparative context, and subsequent contributions (e.g. from Brad de Long) exemplifies the widespread confusion over what tax […]

Richard Thaler: The moral here is simple. If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun. Elizabeth Addonizio, Donald Green, and James Glaser: …we set out to explore the feasibility of creating a more celebratory and community-focused atmosphere at the polls. Can the festive, social environment surrounding old-fashioned […]

Zombie politics—a play on Zombie Economics—refers to ideas about politics that have become so cemented in conventional wisdom that it is virtually impossible to dislodge them.  It doesn’t matter what the data says, or what published research says, or what this blog or any blog says.  Zombie politics means that even though the ideas are […]

A Monkey Cage reader has suggested some reply to the economics-themed valentines that Justin Wolfers summarizes here.  I made a half-hearted stab and then realized, “Hey, let’s make this a contest!”  Leave your suggestions in comments.   To get things started, here’s what I came up with in 10 minutes, including handy links to research […]

A story is here.  Some sample quotes: Ms. Harris-Perry will be the only tenured professor in the United States — and one of a very small number of African-American women — who serves as a cable news host… …In an interview that day, she recounted numerous times when she had watched political strategists on TV […]

There are many, many tales that can be told about this subject.  Here is one, from Megan Reif: After calling and showing up in person at various city and county offices in Newark on multiple occasions, it took going through back-channels on the city council in 2006 (pre-Cory Booker administration) to get Newark’s archived precinct-level […]