… For the study, to be released Tuesday, they tracked personal political contributions for more than 3,500 chief executives that occupied the corner office anytime from 2000 to 2017. The period covers a two-term Republican presidency, a two-term Democratic presidency and the start of President Trump’s time in office — […] Read more »
Who’s Taking Up Obama’s Mantle In 2020?
Since leaving office, former President Barack Obama has experienced a boost in public opinion, and his post-presidency approval rating is especially strong among Democrats. That popularity could make him a powerful surrogate on the 2020 campaign trail, and he has been meeting with many of the Democrats who are or […] Read more »
Sidney Verba, Innovative Scholar of Democracies, Dies at 86
Sidney Verba, whose pioneering research comparing political behavior among the world’s democracies became a classic book among students of politics, died on March 4 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. … Not all of the book’s conclusions proved correct, however. “As education spread, we, and many other scholars of that […] Read more »
No Hate Left Behind
A recent survey asked Republicans and Democrats whether they agreed with the statement that members of the opposition party “are not just worse for politics — they are downright evil.” The answers, published in January in a paper, “Lethal Mass Partisanship,” were startling, but maybe they shouldn’t have been. CONT. […] Read more »
Trump supporters and opponents are increasingly divided on whether constitutional principles are under threat
Is the Trump presidency a threat to constitutional democracy? … Americans largely agree on which principles of democracy matter most, but they are deeply divided over whether these principles are being violated or upheld. These divides have grown deeper in the past two years — leaving only a few principles […] Read more »
Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval
The relationship between the economy and presidential approval is one of the largest and deepest literatures in political science. Scholars have debated between objective and subjective economic indicators, retrospective and prospective evaluations, and what factors moderate the relationship between the two, but their symbiosis has rarely been in doubt. The […] Read more »