Today, the European Central (ECB) bank opened its loan windows to Europe’s commercial banks, lending some 800 banks nearly 530 billion euros at just one percent interest. It’s the second such rescue operation since Mario Draghi became ECB chief in December, when Europe’s central bank pumped out over 489 billion Euros. This policy is an […]
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Primary election fraud rumor
Two different people pointed me to this discussion of a claim of fraud in primary elections. I can’t even figure out what they’re claiming, so I won’t even try to evaluate the claims. If nothing else, it’s an interesting example of intensity of beliefs. It’s probably a good thing that people can put this sort […]
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Political scientists in public debate
At the Monkey Cage, we tend to talk about specific political science research findings But it’s at the least plausibly useful to link to political scientists who build out from their research to engage in more general kinds of public debate. To that end, I’ll try to do some occasional posts with links to recent […]
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The Death March of the Moderates
A famous map by Charles Joseph Minard illustrates the plight of Napoleon’s Army during the 1812 invasion of Russia. At each point of the map, the strength of Napoleon’s army is depicted by the width of a bar showing the movement of Napoleon’s troops. At the beginning of the campaign, this bar is several inches […]
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The Snowe Retirement
…should there be a two-way race for the Senate seat (and that’s by no means a sure thing), Republicans will need a candidate who can run as a Snowe Republican. The currents of 2010 affect their ability to field such a candidate. That’s U. of Maine political scientist Amy Fried in this post. See also […]
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Cross-National Diffusion of Protest
Why does protest that starts in one country sometime spread to other countries? This is the question that motivates Cornell University political scientitsts Valerie Bunce and David Patel’s contribution to the most recent newsletter of the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) (and likely is keeping many, many political leaders around […]
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Social Conservatives in the GOP Primary
Simon Jackman has a post up at Model Politics examining the role of social conservatism in the GOP primary. Via email, Lynn Vavreck sends these thoughts: Note how much closer Romney’s supporters are to voters in general on these moral issues (relative to Santorum’s).  On most of these things, Santorum’s voters are extremely isolated.  If […]
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Does Romney’s Wealth Pay Dividends for Santorum?
That’s the title of Lynn Vavreck’s and my latest post at Model Politics. We compare Obama, Romney and Santorum in terms of how voters perceive their personal wealth and their concern for the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy. Here is one key graph: And here’s the takeaway: …compared to Romney, Santorum appears to […]
