… There is a vast and longstanding political science literature devoted to explaining the human propensity to fit opinion and even fact to partisan convenience — support for a war, for instance, tends to flip when a new party takes the White Houes — but many of the political scientists […] Read more »
Market Clarity When Campaign Feathers Fly
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine,” Benjamin Graham, the guru of value investing, once wrote about the stock market. His words seem to apply as well to prediction markets like Intrade, which set probabilities on the […] Read more »
Democrats: Is It Time To Panic?
… In the debate post-mortem, Obama’s defenders put forth a variety of explanations for the President’s underwhelming performance, beginning with Stephanie Cutters’ effort in the spin room to implicitly blame moderator Jim Lehrer for not putting a stop to Romney’ s bullying tactics. … I suspect the explanation is far […] Read more »
Debate Improvements: Using a laugh track to highlight blatant lies …
Debate Improvements: Brian McFadden, The Strip (New York Times) Read more »
Can the Debate Move the Polls?
Pollsters Bill McInturff and Fred Yang speak with Gerald F. Seib, the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Bureau Chief, about the first presidential debate. Read more »
Did past week’s events change Romney’s, Obama’s fortunes?
If you’re looking for an answer to the question of whether last week’s events — Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance in Denver and Friday’s jobs report that showed unemployment dropping to 7.8 percent — changes the trajectory of the presidential campaign, be patient and don’t rush to judgment. … One […] Read more »