Blog: The Monkey Cage

Dan Balz asked me the same 8 questions he asked to John. Here are the questions and my responses: Q1: Will the campaign be relentlessly negative to the end? A: I expect so but I’m no expert on this. Q2: Will Romney’s choice of a vice presidential running mate make any difference? A: Maybe 2% […]

Dan Balz of the Washington Post asked me and a number of others to comment on 8 questions about the current presidential campaign.  His write-up is here, quoting me on the subject of the debates.  Here is what I told Balz in response to several of the other questions. 1. Will the campaign be relentlessly […]

We welcome guest-blogger Brendan Doherty to The Monkey Cage this week.  Brendan is a political scientist at the Naval Academy and the author of the newly published book, The Rise of President’s Permanent Campaign, which is a new and important study of presidential campaign fundraising.  The book is already getting attention—e.g., here and here.  Brendan […]

Jonathan Bernstein writes: The big, urban states traditionally did very well in the electoral college. . . . New York used to be a major swing state; California also was very contested once it became large, and even Texas had a run as a competitive state with big cities for a while. For whatever reason, […]

Elder statesman of sociology Peter Berger writes: [New York mayor Michael Bloomberg] resides in his private apartment on the Upper East Side. His co-resident is a woman to whom he is not married—something that he would probably not get away with as mayor in many other American cities. In an international perspective, however, he is […]

Following up the discussions by Larry Bartels, David Brady, and myself on trends in partisanship, Chris Wlezien writes: This brought to mind my [Wlezien’s] work with Mark Kayser. Here’s the paper, which pertains to Europe and quite different trends, i.e., declining partisanship and growing (objective) economic effects on the vote. We’ve been planning to address […]

Andrew questions David Brady’s claim that “partisan preferences actually drove the perception of the economy” under George W. Bush for “the first time . . . in all of our polling data.” My analysis Andrew mentions of data from 1988 focuses on responses to a seldom-repeated set of questions about how specific economic and social conditions […]

David Brady says: The Democrats at this point, all the Democrats like Obama. Republicans don’t like Obama; next to George W. Bush he’s the greatest divider since we’ve been doing public opinion. That is, subtract the percent of his party that like him, minus the percent of the other party that doesn’t like him—so if […]

Just today I received another request to review an article! Saying No isn’t all that difficult but I don’t want to be pissing off hundreds of journal editors each year. In the discussion following my recent outburst, Philip Schrodt came up with some suggestions along the lines of reducing the number of articles that researchers […]