Seth Masket

Remember how California switched to a top-two nomination system in 2012, ostensibly to lessen the role of parties? Well, as detailed here previously, the parties responded to that system by endorsing candidates prior to the primary, conveying to voters who the preferred Democrats and Republicans are. And it turns out those endorsements are pretty important, […]

Long after the start of the Civil War, President Lincoln continued to believe that the Confederacy was home to a large population of Unionists, particularly in East Tennessee and western North Carolina. In the fall of 1861 he privately outlined a campaign to liberate these loyalists by seizing the Cumberland Gap, a passage through the […]

I’ve been meaning to post about the release of Boris Shor and Nolan McCarty’s state legislative data. With ideal points of every state legislator in the country over the past two decades, this is one of the most important datasets on state politics, legislatures, and parties to be released in a long, long time. Anyway, […]

Actual NYT quote: The Congress of yore might conjure images of spittoons and old male politicians with briefcases, but the 113th has ushered in a historic number of women — 20 in the Senate, and 81 in the House — and with them a historic number of handbags. Actual WaPo quote: It may say more […]

There is general agreement among party scholars that political parties are somehow active in many nomination contests. Although rules or customs usually prevent the parties from officially taking sides in a primary, party leaders nonetheless find ways to give advantages to their preferred candidates and to pressure others out of the contest. But how? In […]

Some candidates are thinking of running against Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper next year. Does that spell danger for him? Republicans seem to think so: At least five candidates are officially challenging Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2014 and another three are mulling whether to jump in the race. That so many are choosing to challenge the […]

The good folks at Handsome Atlas have scanned the entirety of the 1880 Statistical Atlas of the United States, and look what’s in there: No, that’s not from David Leip. That’s a very detailed, county-level map of the 1880 presidential election results, published in 1889. (The abstract contains similar maps of earlier elections, as well.) […]

The Colorado state legislature adjourned for the year earlier in the week after passing a series of bills setting regulations for the legal sale of marijuana within the state. It was a pretty amazing moment, really. And even in a pretty divided legislature, members worked together across party lines to come up with some sensible […]

Last week, Maureen Dowd criticized President Obama for failing to convince Republican senators to support gun regulation. Obama’s White House, she claimed, should be run more like Andrew Shepherd’s White House in “The American President,” Aaron Sorkin’s 1995 romantic comedy. No, really, she said that: The White House should have created a war room full […]