This past year may end up being remembered as the year that we discovered that the NSA and telecommunications companies were gathering enormous troves of personal data on us and using it for … well, we don’t quite know what yet.
But on the less nefarious side, 2013 was also the year that saw the public release of several groundbreaking datasets that allow scholars and researchers to better study American politics. They are enabling those interested in understanding politics to move away from conjecture, hunches, and narratives, and toward actual empirical measurement. CONT.
Seth Masket (U. of Denver), Pacific Standard