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I’ve observed an interesting trend in the last few years: political commentators have started analogizing anti-intellectualism in contemporary politics with the antebellum era Know-Nothing political party. Most recently, Governor Christie did it yesterday in his rant about Congress and Sandy aid, calling out Congress as “know-nothings.” The meme is best illustrated by what Peter...
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I get the feeling that my crazy liberal relatives are going to be all over filibuster reform this weekend. That means, as a general defender of the contemporary Senate, I’m in for a spirited debate, and that’s being charitable. I have a few new thoughts down below, but first, here’s an annotated catalog of...
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In 2008 in Virgina, President Obama won 53.2% of the two-party vote share (i.e. Obama votes / (Obama votes + McCain votes)) . In 2012, he won 51.5% of the two-party vote share. Where did the  percentage point drop (1.7%) come from? Virginia has 134 counties and cities.  In 21 of those unit, Obama...
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Everyone and their crazy business-magnate uncle is jumping onto the  narrative that Sheldon Adelson and other Super-PAC magnates wasted their money because Romney lost the election. Maybe they did! But here’s five reasons you might want to be skeptical: 1. Winning isn’t everything. Nor is it the only thing. When you spend tens of...
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Here’s the simple chart I always want immediately after a House election, but that I can never find. So this year, i just built it myself. Here’s the district-level data file (2012 House election v2), which also includes some other goodies (like Cook PVI). Enjoy.
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My 25-point layman’s guide to getting your politics junkie on today: In the morning 1) Do not — under any circumstances — turn on your television prior to 6pm. This isn’t specific to the morning, but it has to be first, because it’s absolutely crucial. The only thing worse than the election night coverage on...
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Over the weekend, there was quite a firestorm of criticism and defense related to the quantitative modeling of the presidential election and the resulting forecasting, mostly centered around the work of Nate Silver at his excellent blog, FiveThirtyEight. I was genuinely shocked at how much interest the topic generated, and I very much enjoyed...
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The Saratoga Race Course opens this Friday for its 144th season. And this year, my annual pilgrimage with my childhood friends has been arranged for opening weekend. I can’t wait. Having grown up just south of Saratoga, NY, I spent endless childhood summer days sitting in the majestic track’s picnic area, and just as...
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Well then. Hello, World! I’m still, for the foreseeable future, on a blogging hiatus. If and when I do return to more regular posting, it will almost certainly be anonymously (maybe I already am!); the reality is that my blog had become too popular — which is to say “mildly popular” — to be...
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“Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.” -H.L. Mencken The quadrennial two-week General Conference of the Methodist Church is currently running. Well, then. We’ve got lots to talk about. I don’t think there’s a more quintessentially American institution of civil society than the Methodist Church. An...
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Most of this post is housekeeping, but let me make a minor Senate/filibuster point first: As I’ve written many times, those who want to reform the filibuster tend to overlook the two key problems of a filibuster-less contemporary Senate. First, it would still be malapportioned. Second, it would almost certainly function like the House,...
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Here’s Ed Kilgore, today, on the filibuster: I’m among those who really get upset when people sort of internalize the recent routine use of the filibuster by Republicans to create a de facto 60-vote requirement for doing business in the Senate, as though it came down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets. It didn’t....
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Jamelle Bouie: For years, liberals have argued that polarization his little to do with the Democratic Party—which they see as largely centrist—and everything to do with a Republican Party, which has moved far to the right since the 1970s. Recent research from political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have measured polarization and...
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I will be in Chicago for the rest of the week, attending the Midwest Political Science Association conference. Therefore, blogging might be lighter in the next few days. Or heavier. We’ll see. I would also like to take this opportunity to once again call bullshit on both the MPSA and the Chicago Cubs. If...
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Yesterday, over at The Monkey Cage, Andrew Gellman reprinted an email from a Daily Beast journalist who was asking what one thing social scientists wished most that the average voter understood. Here’s part of the email: So I’m curious: What is the one insight from political science, psychology, or behavioral economics that you most...
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Will Wilkenson: Politics makes us stupid. This is one of my recurring themes. This is the principal reason I refuse to be a partisan or ideological team player. People call me libertarian but I don’t in part because I’m not one, but mostly because I suspect that accepting any such label dings my IQ...
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Andrew Gellman argues that political scientists are too skeptical about institutional reforms: I resist what I see as the occasional habit of political scientists to report a null effect and imply from that the conclusion that various reforms don’t matter or shouldn’t be done. This comes up here with term limits for judges and...
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Nothing  — and I mean nothing — better captures the DC chattering class at its speculative worst than the Veepstakes. And that’s saying something. It’s not just that most of the speculation is baseless. And it’s not that most of it is utterly inane. It’s that, from an electoral standpoint, it just doesn’t matter....
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Previous Venn Diagrams SCOTUS Antonin Scalia, 4/4/12 John Roberts, 3/30/12 Clarence Thomas, 3/29/12 GOP CANDIDATES Michele Bachmann, 12/22/11 Newt Gingrich , 12/19/11 Jon Huntsman, Jr., 12/20/11Up Willard Mitt Romney, 12/21/11 Rick Perry, 12/23/11 Herman Cain, 12/25/11 Rick Santorum, 12/28/11 Ron Paul, 12/31/11
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One thing I didn’t delve into too deeply in my post reviewing the committee funding process was how committees spend their money. Let’s do that quickly right now. First off, you don’t have to leave your computer to check it out for yourself. You might recall that the Committee on House Administration (CHA) has...
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