Blog: The Monkey Cage

Last month, I learned about a publication that has been quickly gaining popularity, the Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine (JNRBM). Published, presumably, by a gang of dour curmudgeons who hate everything, JNRBM openly welcomes the data that other journals won’t touch because it doesn’t fit the unspoken rule that all articles must end on […]

This is a guest post by political scientists Stephen Benedict Dyson and Jeremy Pressman. ***** In an article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Michael Cohen and Micah Zenko rightfully draw attention to the way in which threats to U.S. national security appear overblown today. But because they understandably focus on demonstrating the relative […]

Two different people pointed me to this discussion of a claim of fraud in primary elections. I can’t even figure out what they’re claiming, so I won’t even try to evaluate the claims. If nothing else, it’s an interesting example of intensity of beliefs. It’s probably a good thing that people can put this sort […]

At the Monkey Cage, we tend to talk about specific political science research findings But it’s at the least plausibly useful to link to political scientists who build out from their research to engage in more general kinds of public debate. To that end, I’ll try to do some occasional posts with links to recent […]

A famous map by Charles Joseph Minard illustrates the plight of Napoleon’s Army during the 1812 invasion of Russia. At each point of the map, the strength of Napoleon’s army is depicted by the width of a bar showing the movement of Napoleon’s troops. At the beginning of the campaign, this bar is several inches […]

…should there be a two-way race for the Senate seat (and that’s by no means a sure thing), Republicans will need a candidate who can run as a Snowe Republican. The currents of 2010 affect their ability to field such a candidate. That’s U. of Maine political scientist Amy Fried in this post.  See also […]

Why does protest that starts in one country sometime spread to other countries? This is the question that motivates Cornell University political scientitsts Valerie Bunce and David Patel’s contribution to the most recent newsletter of the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) (and likely is keeping many, many political leaders around […]

Simon Jackman has a post up at Model Politics examining the role of social conservatism in the GOP primary.  Via email, Lynn Vavreck sends these thoughts: Note how much closer Romney’s supporters are to voters in general on these moral issues (relative to Santorum’s).  On most of these things, Santorum’s voters are extremely isolated.  If […]

That’s the title of Lynn Vavreck’s and my latest post at Model Politics.  We compare Obama, Romney and Santorum in terms of how voters perceive their personal wealth and their concern for the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy.  Here is one key graph: And here’s the takeaway: …compared to Romney, Santorum appears to […]