The family separation policy, the “travel ban,” the threat of a government shutdown if Congress doesn’t fund a border wall: Both as candidate and now as president, Donald Trump has consistently made his opposition to immigration the center of his politics. Of course, he’s not the only politician to do […] Read more »
5 facts about how the U.S. and its allies see North Korea
Eyes turn to Singapore this week as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un prepare to meet for the first time. While previous communication between the two leaders was marked by hostility, the meeting came about following North Korea’s more recent promises to suspend missile tests and […] Read more »
Australia is obsessed with opinion polls. Why do we take them so seriously?
The only thing more dispiriting than opinion polls may be writing about how dispiriting, even corrupting, they are to our politics, but let’s give it a go. Monday morning was a heart-sinking moment. Two front pages of daily newspapers, two opinion polls, multiple earnest columns interpreting what these single surveys […] Read more »
World Polling: Every other country surveyed would have voted for Clinton, except Russia
Pollfish did some polls around the world. We have not had time to model and post-stratify them, so these are just raw polling results. But, Pollfish did ask a few validation questions, demographics and local party identification, and the data is reasonably representative. Every other country surveyed would have voted […] Read more »
Is Facebook a site of political engagement for young people?
… The Civic Network project systematically compared young people’s use of social media for civic and political engagement in Australia, the USA and UK, using: in-person focus groups with affinity groups of student activists; online surveys of over 3600 young people aged 16-29, using original measures of political participation and […] Read more »
Which Country Is America’s Strongest Ally? For Republicans, It’s Australia
On Thursday, many Americans woke up to a possible diplomatic rift with Australia, after the news that President Trump and the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, exchanged harsh words over a refugee agreement. It was all the more remarkable because a new survey — taken in the days before their […] Read more »