Americans have long been familiar with “horse race” polls that accompany elections in the United States. But since 2008, a new polling tool has gained prominence, one that not only suggests which candidate is ahead at any given moment but also estimates their probability of winning the eventual election. These […] Read more »
Empathize With Your Political Foe
Sept. 16, 2017, had the potential to be an awful day on the National Mall in Washington. It started with a rally, organized by a group of Trump supporters, called the Mother of All Rallies Patriot Unification Gathering. Counterprotesters from a group called Black Lives Matter of Greater New York […] Read more »
The Fake News Crisis That Wasn’t
The media often attributes a portion of Donald Trump’s election to fake news — as in the vintage, original meaning of that term: Macedonian teens making bank on preposterous headlines; the Islamization of Texas, Pizza-shop child-sex conspiracies, etc. Such fabrication, commentators worried, reverberated around online echo chambers so resoundingly that […] Read more »
Politics & Polls podcast: Social Research in the Digital Age
From smart phones to social media, digital technology has changed the way we live — allowing for new explorations of human behavior. Big data now enables scientists to process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable. In this episode, Professors Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang interview Matt […] Read more »
‘Fake News’: Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests
Fake news evolved from seedy internet sideshow to serious electoral threat so quickly that behavioral scientists had little time to answer basic questions about it, like who was reading what, how much real news they also consumed and whether targeted fact-checking efforts ever hit a target. … But now the […] Read more »
Why is the GOP Tax Bill So Unpopular? Maybe It’s All Relative.
Congressional Republicans have succeeded in passing a signature $1.5 trillion rewrite of the tax code, which now awaits President Donald Trump’s signature. Yet the prospect of lower taxes has not sold the public at large on the bill. Surveys find that the bill is relatively unpopular, with more people disapproving […] Read more »