📘🧵
Excited that my new book "Stable Condition: Elites' Limited Influence on Health Care Attitudes" is now available to buy.
tl;dr The Affordable Care Act (ACA) had more of an impact on Americans' lives than their political attitudes.
More 👇
1/
🚨🖥️🖥️🚨
Diana Mutz and I are excited to publicly release the 2012-2020 Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics panel:
10 waves of survey questions about politics (esp. trade, immigration, prejudice, media) from a population-based panel.
One idea I wish political science would steal from medical journals is case reports.
There are so many interesting/anomalous cases & examples that merit a brief write-up--but don't need a long theoretical prelude (or maybe speak to a bunch of theoretical questions at once).
I've lived in Philadelphia long enough to know that the city doesn't exactly expect or take compliments well, but this by
@NateSilver538
is still noted, appreciated, & (most importantly) spot-on.
Wanted to post a few reactions to the (as always) thoughtful
@ezraklein
piece on
@davidshor
, messaging, & "popularism."
tl;dr I think this debate puts a lot more on messaging than it can reasonably carry.
1/
🚨📜📜🚨
With D Coffey,
@Daniel_J_Galvin
, G Gamm
@jahenderson0
, J Paddock, J Phillips & E Schickler I am excited to announce the public release of around 2K American state party platforms 1846-2017.
They are available in .txt format via
@HarvardDV
here:
Releasing new paper using 2007-2016 nat'l panel; shows White Americans' 2012 views of Black Americans strongly predict switching to/away from Trump in 2016, even accounting for 2012 party, vote, etc. Also predict backing Trump in GOP primaries. SSRN:
🚨 New article out 🚨
Excited that my new article "Not by Turnout Alone: Measuring the Sources of Electoral Change, 2012-2016" with
@seth_j_hill
& Greg Huber is out today in
@ScienceAdvances
:
Thrilled that my book "The Increasingly United States" has been released--you can buy it at Amazon now: . Thrilled, too, to see
@leedrutman
's reflections on it via Vox:
Excited to post a new paper with
@ProfHansNoel
now forthcoming in
@apsrjournal
.
"Trump and the Shifting Meaning of `Conservative': Using Activists' Pairwise Comparisons to Measure Politicians' Perceived Ideologies."
Brief 🧵 1/
URL:
#polisciresearch
This year, APSA Political Psychology section's Robert Lane best book award is shared by Ashley Jardina's "White Identity Politics" and Markus Prior's "Hooked." Congratulations to both authors!
Thanks so much to the committee of
@ykrupnikov
,
@bnbakker
, and
@thomasjwood
Here's a new
#polisciresearch
working paper & a 🧵.
We all know about 1/6 and the threat to American democracy that crystalized that day.
Were there *changes* in American public opinion in the years before that foreshadowed the threat?
Not really.
My latest
@FiveThirtyEight
piece with
@ProfHansNoel
is now up:
We use
@YouGovAmerica
surveys of political activists in 2016, 2021 to show how Trump is redefining what it means to be "conservative"--even among political activists.
1/
Writing
@538politics
, I detail new polisci research on voter ID laws. tl;dr 1) ID laws vary in provisions, implementation 2) turnout effects=limited but detectable 3) disparate impact on Black, Latino, elderly, D voters 4) short-run effects!=long-run
I used to find it frustrating, both as a reviewer or author, when reviewers suggest citations to add. I assumed reviewers were rent-seeking (asking authors to cite them).
I'm now more sympathetic--and more worried that the literature in political behavior is too fragmented.
1
Now that proud owner of a game-changing book--the amazing run of research on state/local politics in the U.S. continues. Congrats to
@DevinCaughey
and
@cwarshaw
.
Monday's
@nytimes
polls raised a key question: when citizens say they'll back one Democrat (or Republican) in a general election but not another when surveyed well before the election, how accurate do they prove to be? Our long-running panel survey provides answers from 2016: 1/6
New Times/Siena polls show Trump highly competitive in the six closest states carried by the president in '16:
Biden+2, Biden 46 to Trump 45
Even, Sanders 45, Trump 45
Trump+2, Trump 46, Warren 44
2016 result in these states was Trump+2, 48 to 46
👋NEW 📜🧵
With
@ylelkes
& Sam Wolken, I'm excited to release a new paper "The Rise of and Demand for Identity-Oriented Media Coverage."
Conditionally accepted
@AJPS_Editor
URL:
1/
Just argued on a panel that an immediate move to single payer health care system would be very difficult politically.
A doctor & co-panelist's reply to discredit my claims & political science generally? Political science failed to predict the fall of the USSR.
🤦♂️
Where does prejudice against African Americans originate? Seth Goldman & I have paper showing that White Americans who went to high school in places with larger Black populations report more prejudice decades later. Now conditionally accepted
@The_JOP
:
I have been reacting to the crisis of the last week more as a citizen than as a social scientist.
But I do think that the tragic events in DC have reinforced for me just how vital my social science training is in understanding what is unfolding.
Just posted a new working paper, co-authored w/ S. Washington, on racial prejudice during the first two years of Trump's presidency. Using a population-based panel of White Americans, we find avg. prejudice declined or else held steady 2016-18: 1/2
Last month, I tried to survey infrequent voters here in Pennsylvania via Facebook.
* started with a list of 10K registered voters
* successfully served ads to 1.2K via Facebook inviting them to take the poll
* 48 clicked
* 6 completed the survey
In part, this is important because it suggests that if we want to understand 1/6 or anti-democratic efforts, we can't just look at general population polls. We've got to focus on the much smaller group of elites who mobilize people & the activists who answer those calls.
/end
📢📢📢📢📢
Political science colleagues, let's use
#polisciresearch
to announce new working papers, articles, and books. That was the winner of the poll.
Also,
@PSfindings
will retweet any political science finding if the tweet includes their hashtag.
Please RT thanks.
@sgadarian
@smotus
"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'"
This news is absolutely thrilling. Cathartic even. Congratulations to Prof./Dean Gay and
@Harvard
.
Between undergrad & my PhD, I was
@Harvard
9 years. This is my best Harvard news ever.
I try to keep my feed to facts about politics, but if you'll permit me 1 anecdote...
1/
Among Dems, Pres. Biden is perceived as quite liberal.
Striking that VP Kamala Harris was perceived as the most liberal of all 114 politicians--more so than Sens. Sanders, Warren.
Suggests that politicians' gender, racial backgrounds + media coverage shape perceptions.
6/
"All Politics Is National Because All Media Is National"--my latest
@538politics
piece (here: ). Drawn from a key chapter of my new book, "The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized" (here: )
Really excited to have these experiments I conducted with
@johnmsides
, Jack Citrin published in
@The_JOP
: . Substantive take-home: in 7 experiments over 11 years, changing perceptions of numbers of immigrants doesn't influence immigration attitudes. 1/3
Excited to share a new working paper that Bansak, Hainmueller, Yamamoto & I have on conjoint survey experiments & causal inference. Paper shows that the Average Marginal Component Effect has a straightforward interpretation as a change in vote shares:
Excited that my paper on ACA's Medicaid expansion () with K. Parish will be published by Public Opinion Quarterly. 538 write-up here: . Core result: low-income residents of Medicaid expansion states become more supportive of ACA.
Excited my paper "The Activation of Prejudice and Presidential Voting: Panel Evidence from the 2016 U.S. Election" has been conditionally accepted by
@PolBehavior
. Paper draws on 13-wave Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics 2007-18 panel. 1/10
With deep & sincere thanks to the committee (Howard Lavine, Deborah Schildkraut & Loren Collingwood), it is my deep honor to announce that Don Kinder, the Philip E. Converse Professor at the U. of Michigan, has won the APSA Pol. Psychology Section Career Achievement Award
This award is only handed out every other year, people. You won't get another chance to nominate someone til 2021! Career Achievement Award, Political Psychology,
With citizens' perceptions of the economy in the news, I wanted to re-up my article with
@eunjikim_media
&
@soojongkim_1
.
tl;dr: Public opinion tends to track real-world economic conditions--and the tone of media coverage *lags* public opinion.
1/
👋 New Working Paper 🧵
When pollsters or researchers use online samples to study Black voters, who exactly are they reaching?
W. Halm, M. Huerta, J. Torres & I compare multiple surveys during Philadelphia's 2023 Dem. mayoral primary to find out.
1/
If I told you about a political candidate's level of support based on a poll of 3 or 4 people, you would laugh me out of the room.
Yet somehow, in fields where the Law of Large Numbers is widely know, we still use <4 reviewers to judge manuscripts' fitness for journals.
Fascinating experiment in top scientific conference shows the large part of randomness in peer review:
Submitted papers went to 2 review committees.
👉50% of acceptance decisions were different!
👇 Correlation between the 2 review scores was only 0.55.
The survey of incoming Harvard students below certainly reinforces this
@Nate_Cohn
point from this recent NYT piece that it's selection, not any indoctrination:
If I am reading this right, among incoming Harvard undergrads, support for the Green Party candidate in 2020 (6.7%) edged out support for Donald Trump (6.3%)--while Biden had 87%.
With Yotam Margalit &
@solo_omer
, I'm excited to publicly post a new article, forthcoming
@BJPolS
:
"Personal Economic Shocks and Public Opposition to Unauthorized Immigration"
Brief 🧵
Excited that my article "Using Conjoint Experiments to Analyze Election Outcomes: The Essential Role of the Average Marginal Component Effect" with K. Bansak, J. Hainmueller, and T. Yamamoto has now been published in
@polanalysis
.
Here's a quick 🧵...
So at least as a description of these panelists, and at least in 2016, it's clear that general election match-ups send meaningful signals even many months out. When voters say they'll back one candidate but not another from the same party, they often mean it. 6/6
With
@ProfHansNoel
, I've been doing research that may shed some light on divides within the Senate GOP.
In 2016, we asked groups of 500 GOP and 500 Dem activists via YouGov to tell us who in a pair of senators was more conservative in 3 online surveys throughout the year.
1/
Thought 1: This is hilarious, will be a perfect introductory slide for my data science class in R. Thought 2: Who are you kidding? Students will chuckle mildly to be polite but think professor is a big dork. Thought 3: This is the perfect introduction for my data science class.
Another challenge is deeper.
We insist on theoretical novelty; the very structure of articles assumes papers should make progress theoretically & empirically.
That provides strong incentives to overstate theoretical novelty & reinscribe older ideas in new language.
4/
Excited that my
@The_JOP
article with
@cherylrkaiser
&
@EfrenPoliPsy
, "The Surprising Stability of Asian Americans’ and Latinos’ Partisan Identities in the Early Trump Era," is now published & posted.
Check it out here:
I come to Twitter partly to see new papers in political science, but new papers are something like 1% of my Twitter feed. Is there a hashtag for new political science papers already? If not, it'd be a game-changer (maybe just for me)... What's a good hashtag--
#newpolisci
?
My co-authored article with S. Washington "The Rise of Trump, the Fall of Prejudice? Tracking White Americans’ Racial Attitudes 2008-2018 via a Panel Survey" is now published in Public Opinion Quarterly.
URL:
@PSfindings
#polisciresearch
[1/n]
Does Trump have a strong base that's vital to his success? Absolutely.
Is that base of support "with little precedent in politics", as per the
@nytimes
?
A figure from my
@BJPolS
article on Trump & Obama favorability telling a different story.
Election analysis aside, I just want to say that as the son of a doctor who treated AIDS patients in NYC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the success of an openly gay candidate is kind of a BFD.
But I also think political elites shouldn't overstate their capacity to move public opinion through policy.
The principal lens through which to evaluate most policies: does it accomplish its goal as a policy?
10/
Over 2020, I've teamed up with
@Civiqs
to track PA residents' views of politics, COVID-19, and much else. The goal of these online surveys is to track the same people over time , so they are *not* optimized for the current PA electorate. But the trends may be instructive.
1/N
As someone who is constantly managing the professional demands of email and Slack--and Twitter!--I found this
@ezraklein
podcast really thought-provoking.
1/2
Relatedly, my perception (which may be common to lots of academics at different points in time) is that political behavior has a crisis of overproduction, in that we write more papers that we can collectively read.
Anyhow, I should get back to reviewing manuscripts...
6/
Academic journals' automated emails have serious mood swings.
Just 4 weeks ago: "hey, we humbly ask that maybe you do this review? Asking because you are AMAZING."
Now, super serious: "you are at risk of violating a solemn commitment you made, jeopardizing the whole field."
My
@PolBehavior
article "The Exaggerated Life of Death Panels: The Limited but Real Influence of Elite Rhetoric in the 2009–2010 Health Care Debate" is now in print; demonstrates the overall stability of words Americans use to justify their ACA opinions.
My new article "Local demographic changes and US presidential voting, 2012 to 2016" with
@seth_j_hill
and Gregory Huber is now out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
@PNASNews
1/n
On the 12th anniversary of the ACA's enactment & the day that North Carolina legislators approved Medicaid expansion, just a teaser for my new book "Stable Condition: Elites' Limited Influence on Health Care Attitudes."
Proper 🧵to follow soon...
This
@monkeycageblog
characterization of Christian Nationalism mirrors what my research has shown for anti-Black prejudice--it's both declining and becoming more integrated with political behavior.
See this
@PolBehavior
:
Cool: finishing a book that took years to write (). Cooler: having it featured in the
@NewYorker
alongside work by
@LilyMasonPhD
(). Coolest: reading
@Yascha_Mounk
's story about how he came to write it. 👇
Today, I published my first
@newyorker
article. It’s about how divided the United States are—and what that might do to our future. I hope you read it.
But if you’ll indulge me, I'd also like to say a few personal words about what this means to me.
1/n
A new book that couldn't be more timely or important--
@blumrm
's book about the Tea Party is out, and I'm really excited to read it.
The book uses a range of methods to understand the Tea Party as a faction within the GOP.
I think gerrymandering is a major threat.
While Congressional gerrymandering is deeply worrisome, at least the partisan biases are to some extent offsetting.
At the state level, there's no such countervailing force--a majority can gerrymander the entire legislature.
That many political observers overstate the power of messaging is a drum I've been banging for a long time:
Especially ironic to blame messaging after an election which seems to reinforce how differently politics looks to those not plugged in 24/7.
Or put differently: I'm not really sure there was much Democrats could do about what happened here. Trump completely dominated American life for the last four years, people knew what they thought of it, and it's hard to believe there were magic words to undo it
With Twitter maybe blowing up, perhaps it's time for political scientists to think about what a social media site optimized to our main use cases would look like?
I myself care more about new papers than seeing the most recent posts...
With polling in the headlines, Tori Gorton & I have revised our paper, "On the Internet, No One Knows You’re an Activist: Patterns of Participation and Response in an Online, Opt-in Survey Panel."
tl;dr Survey participation is itself a political behavior.
I reviewed Ezra Klein's new book "Why We're Polarized" for
@monkeycageblog
@washingtonpost
. For many years,
@ezraklein
has been a pioneer in engaging with political & social science, and in a very small way, I'm honored to return the favor. 1/n
🏆The Doris A. Graber Outstanding Book Award
for the most outstanding book in the field of political communication published in the past decade goes to:
Daniel J. Hopkins (
@dhopkins1776
), The Increasingly United States...
I worry--and I am very curious if others do, too; maybe not?--that we wind up with a literature of valuable but unintegrated findings & core concepts that remain contested & imprecise.
5/
Were local demographic changes associated with shifts toward the GOP between 2012, 2016 presidential elections? Using precinct-level data from six states,
@seth_j_hill
, Gregory Huber, and I find that the answer is no. New working paper here:
My article with Seth Goldman "Past Place, Present Prejudice: The Impact of Adolescent Racial Context on White Racial Attitudes" is now available online in
@The_JOP
: 1/6
Posted a revision of my paper with S. Washington "The Rise of Trump, the Fall of Prejudice? Tracking White Americans' Racial Attitudes 2008-2018 via a Panel Survey." tl;dr: White Americans' expressed prejudice dropped after Trump's pol. emergence
So, what does that mean for policy?
My own variant of popularism would start with this: don't do unpopular things.
The ACA's individual mandate seemed in 2010 like a policy necessity. It wound up being a political albatross.
9/
But that's about a presidential campaign's broad theme.
In competitive environments with both sides messaging, evidence that messaging can demonstrably move public opinion is far more limited.
5/
The UCLA school of parties says parties -> coalitions of policy demanders. If so, messaging = a means to an end (changing policy).
Why, then, all the heat around messaging? It's almost like messaging itself is the policy demanded by Dem. party.
3/
Kennedy's retirement raises many questions including the role of SCOTUS vacancies in shaping voting. In our October 2016 ISCAP panel wave, we asked voters to explain in their own words why they backed the pres. candidate they did. Just under 2% mentioned SCOTUS.
📜📜New paper 📜📜
Tori Gorton & I are excited to release a new paper conditionally accepted
@AJPS_Editor
.
"Unsubscribed and Undemanding: Partisanship and the Minimal Effects of a Field Experiment Encouraging Local News Consumption"
Here's a 🧵...
📺 New working paper 📺
With the Fox News-Dominion trial pending,
@ylelkes
, Sam Wolken & I are releasing a new short working paper:
"Increased Fox News Viewership Is Not Associated with Heightened Anti-Black Prejudice"
1/
The chief value of surveys comes not from trial heats (we get to see whom voters back on election day) but other topics.
We're a diverse country of 330m; we choose between 2 parties every 2 years.
Surveys are key to give voice to public opinion on other issues at other times.
With thanks to
@BJPolS
, I have a new article: "Stable Views in a Time of Tumult: Assessing Trends in US Public Opinion, 2007-20."
Here's a 🧵on the paper. It asks: "were there warning signs in public opinion that an anti-democratic attack like 1/6 was brewing?"
Not really.
Excited to post new chp. on conjoint experiments to appear in Cambridge Handbook of Advances in Experimental Political Science, co-authored with K. Bansak, J. Hainmueller, & T. Yamamoto. Goal: provide accessible introduction to conjoint experiments. 1/4
The IC2S2 organizing team is thrilled to launch the website and post the call for abstracts and tutorials for the 2024 conference, to be held here at Penn July 17-20.
* Tutorial proposals due January 19th, 2024
* Abstracts due February 24th, 2024
APSA Political Psychology Section's Distinguished Junior Scholar Awards go to Tyler Reny (
@tylerreny
) and Joshua Kerzter. Congratulations to both, and thanks to the committee of Profs. J. Junn, A. Coppock (
@aecoppock
), A. Valenzuela (
@AliAValenzuela
), and C. Johnston.
The Trumpiest part of the Republican Party is not in D.C. Our look at how local and state GOP officials in particular are the ones pushing the party's direction and preventing any break from Trump and Trumpism.
Some thoughts related to the NYT polls...
1) Yes, it's💯 true that head-to-head polls aren't traditionally very predictive this far out, but there are only elections every 4 years, and much of the existing evidence comes from less polarized times.
Philadelphia has 7 at-large City Council seats with a requirement no one party hold > 5. This year, the Working Families Party contested 2 seats. Though there is plenty of vote left to count, it looks to me like the WFP candidates are narrowly edging out the GOP right now.
Last but not least (and maybe most): 1 of the core questions underpinning this messaging debate is about racial divisions--how/how much should Dems talk about race?
I won't pretend to have definitive answers, but I'll put some thoughts in a separate thread before long.
fin/
And guess what? Even if you do manage to persuade people on one issue, the likely spillover effects are very limited. So on the next issue, you are back to square one.
6/
The AZ GOP's censures raise questions about polarization, nationalization, state political parties.
Eric Schickler, David Azizi & I tackle those questions in a new paper analyzing 1,783 state party platforms 1918-2017:
Here's a 🧵.
#polisciresearch