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The subject of my new post at 538 is whether retail politics—that is, presidential candidate travel to and appearances in crucial states—matters.  I also discuss whether local political outlets are inherently more favorable to candidates than national media.  Coincidentally, Jeff Zeleny’s new piece in the NY Times discusses the decline in certain kinds of retail […]

US troops are leaving Iraq, in the absence of an extension of the agreement with that nation to maintain a military presence there. But the 2002 congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq remains in effect. An effort by Rand Paul (R-KY) to repeal that authorization (thus requiring the president to receive renewed […]

Courtesy of Gallup.

While most studies find little evidence that race mattered a great deal in the 2008 election, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz finds in a working paper that racial animus cost Obama a very large proportion of the national vote. The key difference between his study and others is that he constructs measures of racial attitudes based on google […]

Sad news from Scott Mainwaring: This afternoon, Guillermo O’Donnell passed away after a 4-month battle with cancer. Guillermo was the founding academic director of the Kellogg Institute and one of the most influential and creative political scientists in the world from 1973 until his death. Guillermo was known for his courageous stances against authoritarian regimes […]

3 Quarks Daily are holding a competition for best blogpost in politics and the social sciences, with Stephen Walt judging, and a $1,000 prize for the winner. Details below. Feel free to nominate one of our posts if you feel so moved; but feel equally or more free to nominate posts by less-well known blogs […]

Scott Page at University of Michigan is offering a free graded course on ‘thinking with models.’ We live in a complex world with diverse people, firms, and governments whose behaviors aggregate to produce novel, unexpected phenomena. We see political uprisings, market crashes, and a never ending array of social trends. How do we make sense […]

The general election for president is predictable from the fundamentals (for individuals and at the aggregate level), primaries not so much. Presidential general election campaigns have several distinct features that distinguish them from most other elections: 1. Two major candidates; 2. The candidates clearly differ in their political ideologies and in their positions on economic […]

Taking a break from forecasting the US Presidential elections, we are pleased to welcome back David Jandura, a graduate student at Georgetown University, with the following guest post on forecasting the Egyptian elections: Although it is difficult to predict many aspects of Egypt’s parliamentary election, most observers assume that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party will win […]