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My newest post at 538 looks at how beating expectations in Iowa drives media attention to candidates, which in turn helps them in New Hampshire. Here’s the graph:  More at the post.

The following is a guest post from Caitlin Talmadge, a political scientist at George Washington University: The past week has seen rising tensions between Iran and the United States over the narrow waterway known as the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 90% of the Persian Gulf’s oil is exported each day. Iran’s vice president […]

This is a guest post from Tobin Grant: Most early analysis noted that Romney received around the same percentage of the caucus vote and number of votes as he did four years ago. During the punditry last night, some even suggested that Romney attracted the same voters except those that died in the interim. Polling […]

This is a guest post by Charles Stewart III: There has been a lot of interest in how the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus results compare with 2008, but in a non-systematic, or at least inefficient, way.  A good example of a an inefficient comparison method was watching John King late Tuesday night on CNN rapidly […]

The team at Oh My Gov made these predictions the day of the Iowa caucuses: If Iowa Republican caucus-goers follow the trend shown in Facebook fans, then Romney will be the clear winner with Paul having a strong second place showing. Gingrich and Santorum will battle for third. This is consistent with recent Iowa polling […]

The Forum’s December issue, Governing through the Senate, is now available on-line.  It offers eleven short, accessible pieces on the state of the Senate.   An overview of the issue appears below: The Senate is often the institutional pivot for political conflict in the United States, so this issue of The Forum focuses on ‘governing through […]

President Obama today will give a recess appointment to Richard Cordray to serve as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established under Dodd-Frank.  With Senate Republicans vowing to oppose any nominee absent structural reform of the CFPB, a Republican filibuster last month blocked the Senate from securing cloture on Cordray’s nomination.  Because recess […]

As part of our continuing relationship with section newsletters of the American Political Science Association, we present the next contribution from the editors of the Political Economy Section newsletter, Scott Gehlbach and Lisa Martin: Motivated by recent events in the Mideast and elsewhere, the current issue of the Political Economist looks at autocracies: how they […]

The Pizza Ranch in Altoona, Iowa sits amidst a long series of strip malls. At 5 pm on Caucus Eve, and hour before Santorum appears, Carl Cameron is the first person you encounter inside-deeply tanned with pancake make-up, talking seriously into his microphone. The second is a man selling Santorum buttons. 3 for $10. It’s […]