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We are delighted to welcome the following guest post from Johannes Urpelainen, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, on the recent climate negotiations in Durban. Johannes is a very prolific scholar who writes on issues of international institutions and the environment. He also writes a blog on climate politics. **** In recent […]

“Record High Anti-Incumbent Sentiment,” Gallup reports.  Here’s a graph: Well, we went through this in 2010, and the reelection rate of incumbents was still 87%—a little lower than in most elections since 1970, but hardly low. In 2012, I’m even less convinced that anti-incumbency sentiment will actually get incumbents out of office.   What happened in […]

For those interested in a quick primer on recent developments in Russia, here’s a guide to our posts today: Andrew Little on applications to Russia of theories of non-competitive elections Sam Greene on how Putinism has come to violate Russia’s non-interference social contract Regina Smyth on the dangers of over-simplifying Russian politics Konstantin Sonin on […]

Finally (at least for today), we present the following response to the Russian parliamentary elections from Andrew Little, a Ph.D. candidate at NYU who is writing a dissertation on noncompetitive elections. In response to my queries, Andrew offered the following six points in response to the 2011 Russian elections: 1. Noncompetitive elections—those where the ultimate […]

Our next report on the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections comes from Konstantin Sonin of the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia. These comments originally appeared at Free Policy Briefs. ******* Days before December 4, prospects of electoral democracy in Russia looked bleak. Consolidation of the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since 1999, […]

Conservatives hate him because he’s a liberal Democrat, liberals hate him because he’s a Wall Street leech. The funny thing is, if Corzine had stayed on in the Senate, he’d probably be an extremely well-respected figure, deferred to by his colleagues and the press as an expert on how to fix the financial mess. Corzine’s […]

Our next Russian election post comes from Sam Greene of the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia. ************** If we want to start to understand the meaning and potential consequences of what has been happening in Russia since (and, indeed, somewhat before) the Duma elections on December 4, I think we need to ask one […]

Our next election report comes from Regina Smyth of Indiana University, who is currently spending the year in Moscow, Russia. ************* Long before polling began in Russia’s December parliamentary election, it was clear that the uneventful contest that the Kremlin hoped for was not going as planned. In a rare misstep, the Kremlin’s political strategists […]

Jonathan Livengood writes: I was reading a couple of your papers on voting (http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rational_final6.pdf and http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/probdecisive2.pdf), and I wondered whether the results apply when people vote for third-party candidates. In part, I was wondering what it would mean in your model for a third-party vote to be decisive. Is it rational (and under what conditions) […]

Ron Paul is a hot search term in Iowa. Is this a sign of strong support, or that no one knows who he is?