… For the past 10 years, we have researched the connection between terrorist threat and public opinion. In our book, “Democracy at Risk,” and in our more recent work, we argue that public attitudes and evaluations shift in at least three politically relevant ways when terrorist threat is more prominent […] Read more »
Paris Attacks Will Keep Obama and Democrats Playing Defense
I say it repeatedly: Events matter. And for President Barack Obama, the terror attacks in Paris present a no-win political situation, at least until other, compelling news changes the subject. That is not to say the president, the Democratic Party or the likely Democratic 2016 nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will […] Read more »
NBC Online Poll: A Majority of Americans Oppose Accepting Syrian Refugees
In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, more than half of the nation’s governors have declared they will not accept new Syrian refugees into their states, and a new poll shows that a majority of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s plans to accept increased numbers of Syrian refugees. […] Read more »
Bloomberg Poll: Most Americans Oppose Syrian Refugee Resettlement
Most Americans want the U.S. to stop letting in Syrian refugees amid fears of terrorist infiltrations after the Paris attacks, siding with Republican presidential candidates, governors, and lawmakers who want to freeze the Obama administration’s resettlement program. CONT. Margaret Talev, Bloomberg Politics Read more »
U.S. Public Uneasy With ISIS Strategy Even Before Paris Attacks
The terrorist attacks in Paris last week have renewed criticism of President Obama for his strategy in fighting the Islamic State. But a New York Times/CBS News poll released just before the attacks found that Americans were already unhappy with the president’s approach to the radical Islamist group, also known […] Read more »
Why the massacre in Paris might not help Europe’s far right
… Psychologists and political scientists have documented a link between terrorist attacks and public antipathy toward immigrants and minorities, but the nature of the connection depends on economic, demographic and political factors — which vary from country to country and from tragedy to tragedy. It is difficult to generalize, said […] Read more »