John Sides

Erik Nisbet and colleagues had a survey in the field when bin Laden was killed.  Comparing those interviewed before and after his death—and controlling for any differences between these two groupsin terms of demographics and other factors—they find: Americans found Muslims living in the United States more threatening after bin Laden’s death, positive perceptions of […]

Andrew Sullivan: Murdoch followed up his 1992 coup with a switch from Tories to Labour six weeks before Tony Blair’s landslide 1997 victory. Can anyone believe “it was the Sun wot won it”? Please. It was Blair wot won it – and the Murdoch press made a shrewd decision to throw in its lot with […]

About 10 days ago, Kevin Drum put up this chart, saying: Via YouGov, here is all of modern American politics explained in a single handy chart. Enjoy. In a July 15-17 poll, Gallup found that the majority of Americans of every partisan stripe, including 57% of Republicans, want a debt ceiling compromise: Of course, were […]

A reporter asks: One rationale for a major deficit reduction deal, according to President Obama and his advisers, is the potential to boost the political prospects of liberal initiatives in the long term.  As Obama more or less said at today’s press conference, he thinks that once the deficit issue is “put to rest,” voters […]

Over the weekend, Marc Ambinder tweeted: Ponderable: if Obama signs a grand-bargain-style debt deal, does it remove from the table govt spending as a 2012 issue? Here is how I see it. Scenario #1: There is no deal. Assume there is no deal and then assume, as Geithner and others have warned, that there are […]

Based on data from the 2011 Citizen Political Ambition Study – a new, national survey of nearly 4,000 “potential candidates” for all levels of office – we provide the first thorough analysis of the manner in which traditional family arrangements affect the initial decision to run for office. Despite a substantial gender gap in political […]

Nate Silver answers this question in the affirmative: The Republican Party is dependent, to an extent unprecedented in recent political history, on a single ideological group. That group, of course, is conservatives. He shows that, among voters who voted for a Republican House candidate, the percentage who were conservative increased from 58% in 2008 to […]

We received this via email, with the subject line “The first worldwide Anti-PowerPoint-Party founded (APPP)”: The APPP sees itself as the advocate of approximately 250 million citizens worldwide, who, every month, are obliged to be present during boring presentations in companies, and who have not been represented in politics until now. The movement regards the […]

Howard Schuman asks: Why is it that public opinion has so little effect on the specific issue of requiring police permits to buy a gun? His answer involves responses to this question, which was asked of respondents in a 1978 poll and then again in 2011: Would you favor a law which would require a […]

This paper investigates the role of Fourth of July celebrations in shaping political views and behavior in the United States. We study the impact of Fourth of July during childhood on partisanship and participation later in life. Our method uses daily precipitation data from 1920-1990 to proxy for exogenous variation in participation on Fourth of […]