John Sides

Alex Tabarrok quotes MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: It is undeniably the case that racist Americans are almost entirely in one political coalition and not the other. He then summarizes several survey items and finds that both Democrats and Republicans express attitudes that are not favorable to blacks.  He concludes: It is undeniable that some Americans are […]

Well, that didn’t take long.  Already Republican politicos are “fretting over Paul Ryan,” reports Politico.  I don’t place much stock in that.  Just as I wouldn’t expect Ryan to help the ticket that much—vice-presidential nominees rarely do—I wouldn’t expect him to hurt the ticket either.  After all, the Obama campaign was already going to paint […]

Romney advisor Ed Gillespie: The fact is, we’re going to go on offense here. Because the president has raided the Medicare trust fund to the tune of $716 billion to pay for a massive expansion of government known as Obamacare. This will be an uphill battle for the GOP, for two reasons. First, Democrats are […]

(This post is co-authored with Lynn Vavreck, featuring data from our forthcoming book.) With Mitt Romney having picked Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, we can shed some light on these questions: What do people know about Ryan?  And what do they think of him? A series of polls done by YouGov for […]

One theory of why Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate is that Romney needs to build enthusiasm among conservatives—a.k.a. mobilize the Republican base.   As one journalist said to me via email: But based on what Ryan, himself, and others close to him have said, I think the theory is a base-mobilization one. […]

This is a guest post from University of California, Berkeley political scientist Eric Schickler. ***** There are many good things about journalists and other political observers using concepts and measures from political science as they analyze contemporary politics.  But an example this weekend from Nate Silver, the excellent analyst of polls and related matters, offers […]

Bryon York reports: Romney aides believe strongly that this race will play out like the 1980 campaign, in which President Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan for much of the race until Reagan broke through just before the election. As Jonathan Chait noted, 1980 is a poor comparison with 2012 for many reasons.  One is simply […]

Back in January, Lynn Vavreck, Joshua Tucker, and I asked this question: what would happen if people knew more specific details about Mitt Romney’s income and tax rate?  We conducted a simple experiment the exposed people to information about these topics.  In this post, I will report on a new iteration of this experiment, which […]

Between now and the election, Castle Pines resident Crista Huff plans to distribute as many as 20,000 American flag bumper stickers — she’s already handed out more than 7,500 of them — in an attempt to exert “subliminal seduction” on Colorado voters and swing the state’s electoral votes toward Republican Mitt Romney. She’s basing her […]