PapaBigears

Taken together, only a small fraction of the public has a rough sense of economic growth over the last 50 years, at least as reported by standard government statistics. Since the economy generally does well in election years, citizens will regularly encounter strong economic news from government agencies, such as the personal income numbers above. […]

Well, that didn’t take long.  Already Republican politicos are “fretting over Paul Ryan,” reports Politico.  I don’t place much stock in that.  Just as I wouldn’t expect Ryan to help the ticket that much—vice-presidential nominees rarely do—I wouldn’t expect him to hurt the ticket either.  After all, the Obama campaign was already going to paint […]

This week we welcome guest-blogger Martin Gilens of Princeton.  He is the author of the recently published Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America, which Larry has already noted and which has been getting some media attention.  See also Gilens’s essay in The Boston Review, as well as the responses, and an […]

One theory of why Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate is that Romney needs to build enthusiasm among conservatives—a.k.a. mobilize the Republican base.   As one journalist said to me via email: But based on what Ryan, himself, and others close to him have said, I think the theory is a base-mobilization one. […]

(This post is co-authored with Lynn Vavreck, featuring data from our forthcoming book.) With Mitt Romney having picked Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, we can shed some light on these questions: What do people know about Ryan?  And what do they think of him? A series of polls done by YouGov for […]

Bryon York reports: Romney aides believe strongly that this race will play out like the 1980 campaign, in which President Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan for much of the race until Reagan broke through just before the election. As Jonathan Chait noted, 1980 is a poor comparison with 2012 for many reasons.  One is simply […]

From a new survey of social psychologists: Just over 37 percent of those surveyed said that, given equally qualified candidates for a job, they would support the hiring of a liberal candidate over a conservative candidate. Smaller percentages agreed that a “conservative perspective” would negatively influence their odds of supporting a paper for inclusion in […]

Back in January, Lynn Vavreck, Joshua Tucker, and I asked this question: what would happen if people knew more specific details about Mitt Romney’s income and tax rate?  We conducted a simple experiment the exposed people to information about these topics.  In this post, I will report on a new iteration of this experiment, which […]

This is a guest post by Jason MacDonald.  For more on limitation riders, see his research here (ungated).  In addition, see the new issue of “Extension of Remarks,” the newsletter of the American Political Science Association’s Legislative Studies Section. ***** As is well known within the political science community, the U.S. House included language, the […]

From PPP: Shades of Godfather’s Pizza.