John Sides

Chris Blattman links to this paper by Gwyneth McClendon, a Ph.D. student in political science at Princeton.  She writes: In this paper, I discuss a field experiment in which 1294 South African local politicians were each contacted by a fictitious constituent, whose name signaled either co-ethnicity with the politician or out-group membership. The constituent raised […]

Steve Kornacki has a suggestion: In other words, those who just want her to go away should consider a Palin presidential campaign an investment: You’d have to deal with a few weeks (or maybe even months) of saturation coverage, but there’d be a good chance it would all end with Palin’s presence in our lives […]

Social science has established a real beachhead in contemporary political campaigns.  Sasha Isssenberg’s forthcoming book, The Victory Lab, tells the story (see also this).  Here is a passage from his interview with David Leonhardt about an excerpt from the book called “Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America.” As the […]

This Politico story is making the rounds: Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. Let’s tackle three questions. 1) Why […]

Part of Drew Westen’s piece suggested that Obama should have followed the example of FDR: In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the […]

In a series of four posts, I have been trying to push a three-pronged argument about the political and electoral impact of the debt ceiling debate, with some broader implications for elections generally.  Reading the recent reactions of Christopher Shea at the Wall Street Journal and M.S. at The Economist, I realize that I need […]

In response to my post describing increasing opposition to adultery, I got a lot of feedback via comments and other emails.  The question I asked was why opposition to adultery has been increasing.  Here are some notions: The overall trend is not due to trends among specific subgroups.  Paul Musgrave’s follow-up post shows that it’s […]

The new economic numbers and the trend in presidential approval bring us to this point: Barack Obama is on the cusp of becoming the underdog in the 2012 election.  The outcome of the debt ceiling debate will not change this.  In fact, the outcome is likely to make things even worse for Obama.  A default […]

Tired of talking about the debt ceiling?  Let’s talk about sex.  A few weeks ago, a Ross Douthat column about gay marriage included this statistic: In the mid-1970s, only 51 percent of well-educated Americans agreed that adultery was always wrong. I thought for sure this was wrong (51% seemed far too low).  Douthat’s column did […]

Robert Reich writes that: R’s are winning the big one—framing Am’s core problem as big government rather than the shrinking middle class & growing plutocracy. That’s true, but not for the reasons Reich may think.  Yes, some Democratic and Republican politicians, including Obama, appear to agree that government spending should decrease.  But that’s not because […]