I mean the race was close before the spate of stories last week. Well before the NYT story

I had 4-item modern sexism batteries in every poll for a long time but not this Maine one what is wrong with me

Nothing says "intellectual freedom" like forcing students to take mandatory conservative indoctrination classes. Shout-out to all the embarrassing academics who believe any of this was in good faith.

This is a fascist attack on higher education, an attempt to cut the financial legs out from under one of the America's truly world-leading industries out of a blinding hatred for its project and those who believe in it.

Hey state politics #SPPC2026 folks. If you’re landing at O’Hare terminal 2 around 230 and headed to the conference hotel, DM me - especially if you’re junior faculty or a grad student

Truly saddened to hear this. Her "Embroideries" is something I assign almost every year www.npr.org/2026/06/04/n...

Great thread on how to interpret our fave/unfave matrix. Also if you like to write about our polls we are always happy to comment on them. For instance, "Although this is the sort of question a pollster might knowingly include to generate media traction..." Can confirm we definitely do that.

Good Morning Maine! Our new @umlcpo.bsky.social / @today.yougov.com poll has Platner slightly leading Collins in a general election matchup, 48% to 43%. As always, lots of goodies in the poll for those of you who like to read toplines. Also, hmu if you have questions about the poll.

No joke, it would be cheaper to pay every coal miner $5m every year to not mine coal. There are only 40,000 coal miners, while the coal industry produces >$500 billion in external costs every year, including by routinely burning coal just to burn it despite it costing more ("uneconomic dispatch").

Gambling and vaping lobbyists -- as well as grifter former high-ranking Representatives of both parties -- are now shilling for prediction markets. newrepublic.com/article/2103...

The health stuff drives me batty because on the one hand his people seem to resolutely say out of pocket stuff about him all the time but also 1. His father and mother both lived to quite advanced age and 2. His diet and exercise routine would kill me.

If you can’t find a single aspect of America that is worth celebrating as a leftist, that is very much a you problem.

Oh no the character of my neighborhood

Again, for the millionth goddamn time. The polling shows superficial opposition to trans inclusive youth sports policies but almost no intensity of preference AND republicans and independents believe Dems want trans kids playing sports anyway. Just jab back and move on.

One reason you can tell these people aren’t real journalists is that they make a federal case out of having a glass jaw.

“you hijacked my meeting” is not just cause lol what a baby

Someone actually did a study a while back that showed the most effective way to get women out of TERF groups wasn’t people trying to change their minds, it was them getting literally any benign hobby, like learning other languages or taking up needlework

*deadpans into camera* Stand Up for Science or literally die.

This “CBS Old Guard” is a real thing, and it’s multi-generational. One of my professors had been a CBS Guy and half of the class was just CBS Lore. You watch old interviews with all these guys and it’s…even when they were last in ratings they were immensely proud to work there.

Faculty in cities: are you wearing full regalia to commencements on transit or just lugging around a big garment bag?

Stunned and deeply saddened to read this. I only knew him a little bit, but he was one of the kindest and most enthusiastic scholars I have ever met.

"why hasn't <terrible thing> sunk candidate x" your answer is donald trump he won anyway and he entrenched the supreme court for republicans for generations (plus, well... everything) and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle decided having your guy is more important than him being a good guy

This situation repeats in nearly every country. State capacity doesn’t come back. Let me repeat: state capacity doesn’t come back. You can look at any example of this.

Did they even *ask* M.I.A. to perform?

UW - Madison has over 500K living alumni. Our alums are fanatical about Madison & the university. I have seen exactly zero attempts to publicly mobilize this network in opposition to the federal budget cuts, foreign student restrictions, or any of the other existential threats. Again, mind-boggling.

Conservatively, you can give antiretrovirals to 1.5 million patients for a whole year for the cost of this rocket.

This is bad. Bad for researchers. Bad for science. Bad for universities. Bad for professional associations. For example: 1. Every award would be vetted by political appointees, who could overrule peer reviewers and deny the award if it doesn't advance the president's priorities. 1/🧵

i will say this repeatedly, and you can scream skill issue at me all you want. LLMs are not good at writing survey questions on novel topics. I am sure, much the way AI tools are really great at chess, you could make AI tools very good at survey design. BUT, LLMs are also very bad at chess.

For academic reasons, I play with chat bots and agents. The same way I played a few times on twitch or TikTok. It’s part of understanding the political economy. But no one is so instantly reliant on a novel technology that an entire profession is suddenly using it.

a problem for republicans is that the entire party, from the white house to legislators to campaign managers to people who make ads and clip speeches etc, are chronically online, and chronically online on X in particular. it's even worse than the bubble Dems used to get criticized for

there is a right-side censoring issue in these data, because more and more unexpected expenses can exceed $2,000.

Dunkin is mid at best.

7-layer burrito, grilled (rest in power, king.)

So uh, are there any orca scientists who are really into polling and elections? @orcabehaviorinstitute.org ?

Scoop: NSF has been quietly blocking new funds and grants to four top universities: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Dozens of proposals from PIs at these universities—and their collaborators—have been stuck at the Office of Award Management awaiting finalization for months.

Turns out I'm not the only one spotting "economic nihilism" as a root cause.

Much like cannabis and psychedelic use characterizes "California sober," consumption of potato, egg, and cheese breakfast tacos characterizes "Texas vegan."

It becomes a lot less presumptuous if your lifetime university give is over five figures and you strongly hint that you’re good for more.

If the internet spends the entire year re-litigating *every* primary I’m going back to polling about barbecue and grocery chains.

It seems so long ago now but Trump started the second term popular and probably could have set the economy on autopilot and bent MORE institutions to his will

This is also why MAGA Republicans are winning primaries. The energy on the right is with the extremists.

Hey just a reminder that @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social also reports on things like the Mayor on crossing the picket line, and actually mentions it in the headline www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Ken Paxton is a lot like the University of Southern California. You could just *make up* a scandal and not only would it be true, it would also be worse than you could imagine. This is not to diss the *alumni* of USC or the many good people who work there. But you all know what I'm talking about.

Unlike North Carolina or Georgia, Republicans cannot triage Texas. Abandoning Texas would cause a revolt among conservatives (and Trump) and seeing them lose to a guy they see as an out-of-touch woke weirdo from Round Rock would cause an existential crisis.

crime was at an all time high in 1990 and people were losing their shit over towel-stepping.

my core belief is that no government or government official should have an NDA and upon candidacy for public office or acceptance of a nomination to a government position it should void samesaid NDA.

time series ftw.

the whole Kean situation would be egregious for anyone but it’s helpful added context that this man was already notorious for years of dodging town halls, interviews, public appearances and constituent engagement

Feel like its bad that federal officials believe they can act with impunity in assaulting a United States Senator. Late stage empire shit. www.nj.com/news/2026/05...