NO MATTER WHERE you situate yourself on the political spectrum, don’t try to deny that the 2016 US presidential election made you go “whaaaaaaat?” This isn’t a judgment; if you believe Michael Wolff’s book, even Donald Trump didn’t think Donald Trump was going to be president. Partially that’s because of […] Read more »
Election polling errors across time and space
Are election polling misses becoming more prevalent? Are they more likely in some contexts than others? Here we undertake an over-time and cross-national assessment of prediction errors in pre-election polls. Our analysis draws on more than 30,000 national polls from 351 general elections in 45 countries between 1942 and 2017. […] Read more »
The Putin Generation: Young Russians are Vladimir Putin’s biggest fans
… Today’s Russian young adults have no memory of life before Putin, who first took power as their president 18 years ago. Some have taken to the streets in protest, but social scientists say many more have grown to accept him. Polls show that Putin enjoys greater support among youth […] Read more »
What Americans Think of Other Countries — and Vice Versa
Americans have high opinions of certain countries whose citizens, in turn, have low approval of U.S. leadership. These lopsided sentiments have become more pronounced amid major declines in approval of U.S. leadership in 2017. In what countries is the discrepancy greatest? Later, find out Americans’ true feelings on trade — […] Read more »
U.S. Leadership Image Suffers Most Among Friendly Nations
After Donald Trump’s election, U.S. allies and adversaries scrambled to evaluate whether his unorthodox rhetoric foreshadowed substantive shifts in U.S. foreign policy. The “America First” agenda raised questions about his administration’s willingness to defend and promote the liberal world order that the U.S. had instrumentally shaped since 1945. Reflecting this […] Read more »
Inside the Free Fall in U.S. Leadership Ratings in 2017
Ratings of U.S. leadership fell in nearly every part of the world in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, dragging median approval to a record-low 30%. Curious about the true depth of a “Trump effect” on U.S. leadership ratings, we created a model to estimate the change in the […] Read more »