Andrew Gelman

About an hour ago, we received the following email from the communications director of University of California Television: Thought you might be interested in this short video commentary featuring UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy Dean Henry E. Brady on why it’s so important for average citizens to participate in political polls. The video […]

Sander Daniels sends along this press release: Thumbtack.com surveyed 6,022 small businesses across the United States. The survey asked questions about the friendliness of states towards small business and about small business finances, such as: “In general, how would you rate your state’s support of small business owners?” “Would you discourage or encourage someone from […]

Brendan Nyhan writes: “people are missing the forest for the trees in focusing on swing states, swing demos, etc. Large deviations from expected outcomes are likely to get pushed back toward fundamentals by the campaign – in this case, GOP and GOP-leaning independent women returning to Romney who are currently saying they don’t support him…” […]

Could somebody remind me—-I have so much difficulty keeping track . . . poker and Nascar are all-American, but feed caps and PBR are inauthentic, they’re just for hipsters, right? I have a feeling that poker was inauthentic a few years ago, but now that the fad has peaked, poker-playing is normal again. How about […]

Andrew Sullivan asks whether California will be the next state to abandon the death penalty. This reminds me of something I noticed a few years ago: capital punishment remains popular—-a clear majority of American support the death penalty for people convicted of murder—-its supporters are on the defensive. Death-penalty opponents, while in the minority, seem […]

A colleague pointed me to this feature article about political scientist James Fowler. According to reporter Delle Willett, “He’s been invited to the Microsoft CEO Summit, having dinner at Bill Gates’ house with him, Warren Buffet and 100 other CEOs around the country. . . . President Obama’s campaign recently invited Fowler to help with […]

Nicholas Lemann recently published a judicious review of several books on inequality in the New Yorker. Along these lines, I wanted to point out two links: 1. My comments on Charles Murray’s recent book. I argue that he has some interesting points but makes two big mistakes: (a) He focuses on upper-class liberals but ignores […]

In class we were talking about the Bafumi and Herron work on simultaneously estimating ideal points of voters and congressmembers. One of the challenges in interpreting this sort of work is that survey responses are different from vote choices. Anyway, we were discussing all this, and Lucas mentioned this paper where they addressed some of […]

I see in the paper that Sen. Lugar of Indiana is facing the possibility of involuntary retirement. As a political scientist, I’m in favor of more primary challenges—-I don’t see why anybody should be getting a free ride. The real question, though, is why would Lugar want another six years in congress, given that he’s […]

As the saying goes, everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. Or, to put in political terms, people want lower taxes and more government services—with the gap filled, presumably, with a mixture of borrowed funds and savings realized by cutting government waste. In their 2009 book “Class War? What Americans Really […]