John Sides

This is from political scientist Michael Evans, and was originally posted to a law and courts listserv.  I thank him for sending it along: ***** I was curious about the relative number of words directed at the two sides in yesterday’s oral argument and thought the results would be of interest here. For those not […]

Ezra Klein: Either way, it seems unlikely today’s oral arguments will dislodge the justice’s conclusions. Indeed, it would seem faintly ridiculous, and possibly even irresponsible, for the justices to permit one lawyer having a particularly bad or good day before the bench to flip such a consequential case. But what do the experts think? Here […]

Last week I participated in a roundtable that on these issues, along with other GW faculty from public health and law—Sara Rosenbaum, Peter Smith, and Katherine Hayes—as well as former U.S. Senate Finance Committee staffer Mark Hayes and former House Commerce Committee Health Subcommittee Counsel Andy Schneider.  You can find a synopsis here and the […]

Brendan Nyhan concludes a great post on the Etch-a-Sketch comment by saying: We’re currently 158 days from the Republican convention, and “Etch a Sketch-gate” will likely prove to be just as inconsequential. By the time the general election rolls around, the incident will most likely be forgotten. I agree and said as much on Twitter.  […]

Paul Ryan’s budget would cut a lot of government spending.  It would cut entitlement spending.  It would cut aid to the poor, transportation, education, veterans benefits, and scientific research.  There have been plenty of responses to the budget, positive and negative.  But only a couple that I’ve seen—Jon Bernstein’s and Stan Collender’s—anticipate this potential problem: […]

Many readers will remember the book The Big Sort by Bill Bishop.  It argues that Americans are increasingly clustered in like-minded political communities.  If one categorizes a county by how its residents voted in presidential elections, as of 2004 nearly half (48%) of Americans lived in “landslide” countries where one presidential candidate got at least […]

I just wanted to highlight this New York Times article by Binyamin Applebaum about the political impact of gas prices.  It’s a very judicious take on the available evidence—one that doesn’t downplay the importance that gas prices may have to consumers, but doesn’t hype how much gas prices can affect presidents and presidential elections.  From […]

My latest post at Model Politics looks at public knowledge of three recent political events: Santorum’s statement about birth control, Obama’s call to Sandra Fluke, and Santorum’s comment about Obama’s snobbery.  The survey data show an unsurprising, but often forgotten, fact: a substantial fraction of Americans aren’t so riveted by this campaign that they know […]

A new Washington Post poll finds that the public souring a bit on Obama’s handling of the economy, while generally disapproving of Obama’s handling of gas prices.  The headline: “Gas Prices Sink Obama’s Ratings.”  Chris Cilliza and Aaron Blake follow on this: Make no mistake: The unemployment rate is a telling indicator of Obama’s chances […]