It’s no secret that the state of the nation’s economy and party identification matter in most American presidential elections. Candidates know it, consultants know it, political scientists know it, and voters seem aware of the relationship, too. … In actuality, the state of the nation’s economy — growing slowly — […] Read more »
Can Elections Like Georgia’s Help Predict Future Races?
The congressional election in Georgia this week was billed as having potential national implications, as an early test of whether anti-Trump energy could fuel Democratic victory in a traditionally Republican district. It seems likely that the same will be said for scattered upcoming special elections in other states. But political […] Read more »
Racism motivated Trump voters more than authoritarianism
During the 2016 presidential campaign, many observers wondered exactly what motivated voters most: Was it income? Authoritarianism? Racial attitudes? Let the analyses begin. Last week, the widely respected 2016 American National Election Study was released, sending political scientists into a flurry of data modeling and chart making. … Below, I’ll […] Read more »
Why Americans Vote ‘Against Their Interest’: Partisanship
… “Partisan identification is bigger than anything the party does,” said Frances Lee, a professor at the University of Maryland who wrote a book on partisan polarization. Rather, it stems from something much more fundamental: people’s idea of who they are. For American voters, party affiliation is a way to […] Read more »
Conservative Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion Among American Political Elites
The conservative asymmetry of elite polarization and the right-skewed “democratic deficit”—wherein policy is more conservative than majorities prefer on average—represent significant puzzles. We argue that such breakdowns in aggregate representation can arise because politicians systematically misperceive constituency opinion. We demonstrate this argument in US states, where conservative citizens are more […] Read more »
How the New Health Care Bill Confirms the Asymmetry of the Parties
Matt Grossmann and I write a fair amount about health care in our book Asymmetric Politics because it’s a political issue that represents a particularly effective example of our main thesis: that the Democratic Party is organized as a coalition of social groups while the Republican Party is controlled by […] Read more »