Blog: The Monkey Cage

The Harvard-affiliated historian writes: It’s a paradox. The economy is in the doldrums. Yet the incumbent is ahead in the polls. According to a huge body of research by political scientists, this is not supposed to happen. On the other side of the Atlantic, it hardly ever does. But in America today, the law of […]

The following is a guest post from political scientist Sam Greene, the director of the Center for the Study of New Media & Society at the New Economic School in Moscow, Russia. ****** It is rare that observers of politics get a clear view of how and why a policy decision is made. Such clarity is […]

The following is a guest post by Princeton political scientist Amaney Jamal, the author of Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy at All? ****** A 14 minute amateurish youtube video disparaging the Prophet Mohammad has led to rather hysterical riots in both Libya and Egypt. While we’re told that the riots in […]

The kerfuffle over “red lines” maps into some recent debates about how international crises work in an interesting way. Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and other Israeli officials are upset that the Obama administration is not setting clear “red lines” defining at what point the U.S. would attack Iran to try […]

I don’t think Ferguson is just about the money. By now, he must have enough to buy all the BMWs he could possibly want. To say that Ferguson needs another 50K is like saying that I need to publish in another scientific journal. No, I think what Ferguson is looking for (as am I, in […]

Although it is true that whites without college degrees are more likely to view African Americans as “lazy” or to express racial resentment, analyses of data from nationally-representative surveys indicate that whites who hold negative racial beliefs are twice as likely to oppose welfare if they have college degrees than if they do not. Put […]

This is a guest post from University of Virginia political scientist Eric Patashnik. ***** The United States Preventative Services Task Force on Monday issued a report advising healthy women who do not have symptoms against receiving routine screening tests for ovarian cancer. According to the expert panel, the screenings are not effective in lowering the […]

What is the current state the Presidential race?  The answer depends on who you think is likely to vote, a point Mark Blumenthal makes over at Pollster today.  And the gap between registered voters and likely voters can be sizable: in the latest ABC News/Washington Post survey, President Obama’s six-point lead among registered voters becomes […]

Friday’s disappointing jobs report has already generated a lot of speculation about how it might impact the election in November.  See, for example, this piece by Helene Cooper and Annie Lowrey, which quotes both Andy and me. My basic take is that the jobs report won’t shift the dynamics of this election very much.  Here […]

Niall Ferguson at The Daily Beast yesterday: It’s a paradox. The economy is in the doldrums. Yet the incumbent is ahead in the polls. According to a huge body of research by political scientists, this is not supposed to happen. On the other side of the Atlantic, it hardly ever does. But in America today, […]