A woman has never come closer to the presidency than Hillary Clinton did in winning the popular vote in November. Yet as women march in Washington on Saturday, many of them to protest the presidency of Donald Trump, an important obstacle to the first woman president remains: the hidden, internalized […] Read more »
Was the 2016 U.S. election democratic? Here are 7 serious shortfalls.
Since the Cold War, more and more nations have held elections that may be highly competitive — but still don’t meet the minimum standards for being free, fair and democratic. The 2016 U.S. presidential election included some of the same violations of democratic norms and procedures often found in fragile […] Read more »
Trump Shows How to Smother a Scandal: With a Bigger Story
The bar for scandal in the Trump administration keeps being raised. Every week brings potentially damaging developments that in other contexts could have generated weekslong controversies. With so many competing stories, however, they are frequently ignored or forgotten. As a result, even negative coverage can sometimes benefit President-elect Donald J. […] Read more »
Donald Trump has brought us the American style in paranoid politics
Political scientists long assumed that U.S. institutions were more open and sturdier than those in other countries. One manifestation of that robustness, the theory went, was that U.S. politics appeared largely free from troubling symptoms like conspiracy thinking. Foreigners — particularly in less-developed countries — might attribute the actions of […] Read more »
The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship
… Today, political parties are no longer just the people who are supposed to govern the way you want. They are a team to support, and a tribe to feel a part of. And the public’s view of politics is becoming more and more zero-sum: It’s about helping their team […] Read more »
Election Data and Science Lab Launches at MIT
A new enterprise dedicated to researching and improving elections based on scientific principles launches today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL) will generate, advance, and disseminate scientific knowledge in an effort to develop a comprehensive evidence base about the conduct of […] Read more »