The 2020 presidential election just got its first notable third-party challenger. Last Tuesday, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party nine months ago and became an independent, announced he would run for president as a Libertarian. And while we won’t know whether Amash wins his new party’s nomination […] Read more »
We Should Never Have to Vote in Person Again
As the coronavirus continues to spread throughout the country, there are growing concerns about whether in-person voting can be conducted safely in the months ahead, including for the November presidential election. A huge expansion of mail voting is one way to ensure that participating in democracy won’t undermine public health. […] Read more »
Fake Claims of Fake News: Political Misinformation, Warnings, and the Tainted Truth Effect
… Our research contributes to the relatively understudied topic of the tainted truth effect. We extend social cognition research on the tainted truth effect to a political setting, where post-event misinformation and information is presented in the form of political news. We first ask, after viewing a political event, how […] Read more »
Trump Hasn’t Given Up on Divide and Conquer
This coming November, a great deal depends on whether white Democrats are becoming more liberal while white Republicans are simultaneously becoming more conservative. If white Republicans and white Democrats are moving in opposite directions, as much current research suggests, Trump will retain a constituency receptive — perhaps even more receptive […] Read more »
America Failed to Prepare for Disaster Long Before Trump Took Over
… Voters can’t evaluate what they don’t know. So voters reward the party of the president when it spends after a disaster. But they seem not to know or care at all what government does before disaster. … How can ordinary people know what causes disaster or who is preventing […] Read more »
The Weakest Modern Presidency Faces a Pandemic From the Couch
… Even prior to the current emergency, Trump had rarely been invested in the substantive responsibilities of his office and had never been able to attract sustained popular support for himself or his policies. He has presided over an executive branch whose administrative and political capacity has been constrained by […] Read more »