we're really, really good at luge tho

SCHLAPP: Who wants to see impeachment hearings? CPAC CROWD: *cheers* SCHLAPP: No. That was the wrong answer.

𝓱𝓮'𝓼 𝓻𝓾𝓷𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰

I’m presenting this paper ⬇️ in Berlin at the “Democracy and Identities” workshop organized by @tabouchadi.bsky.social & @markuskollberg.bsky.social to conclude our Einstein Research Group project 🥺

I've seen enough. The "No" camp won the Italian referendum. The substance of the vote is (in my view) relatively minor and hard for voters to understand, so the result can be read primarily as a political blow for Meloni's government.

Projections from real votes cast in the Italian referendum result suggest a narrow "No" victory (~53-47).

Italy's constitutional referendum: polls closed 5 minutes ago. Three exit polls with identical results (hedging much?) suggest a very close contest. Opinio/Rai Exit Poll: Yes 47-51% No 49-53% Tecnè/Mediaset Exit Poll: Yes 47-51% No 49-53% SWG/La7 Exit Poll: Yes 47-51% No 49-53%

The founder of Lega died yesterday. His (early) thoughts on alliances with post-fascists: "Never, never, never. We in Lega are those who continue the fight for liberation of the partisans, [...] Never with the fascists, never with the grandchildren of the fascists." www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WUB...

I’m sure the Electoral Commission will come up with harsh, unforgiving penalty for this, going all the way to - gasp - a slap on the wrist.

Proportional Representation: 10/10 Not a Presidential System: 9/10

⁉️ Are anti-immigration people really "sexually modern"? No ⁉️ Are people more supportive of anti-immigration platforms when these also include progressive positions on gender and sexuality? Also no I explore these questions w/ 🇬🇧🇩🇪 original survey data (+ a conjoint in 🇩🇪) 👉 osf.io/preprints/so...

In spite of everything that has followed, blowing up the JCPOA remains the most destructive Trump policy in the long run (matched only by PEPFAR cuts).

A cool thing about the effective number of parties is that you can compute it using a simple physics simulation. As particles collide, the ratio of *all collisions* to *collisions of the same colour* converges on the effective number of parties.

Timothy Snyder's Rule number 1 in "20 Rules on Tyranny" is "Do not obey in advance". I'd take his advice over the vacuous hand-wringing of HE admins.

New version of our paper (w/ @tzkli.bsky.social) on estimating pre-trends placebos in regression imputation DiD! 3 big changes!

Incredible. They just memed a voter trend into existence.

I'm very excited to see our paper on group appeals finally formatted and published online with the JoP! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

Humiliating women is the single* thing Trump has been 100% consistent, 100% reliable throughout his life and career. *okay, maybe one of the two things.

how are you integrating the endless promises of AI in your productivity workflow

Two-party system update Reform UK 23% (-1) GRN 21% (+4) LAB 16%(-2) CON 16%(-2) LDEM 14% news.sky.com/story/greens...

🚨 New WP w/ @leonardocarella.bsky.social on OSF doi.org/10.31235/osf... We usually think that social identities precede preferences We show the reverse is also true: people update their social identities to match their immigration preferences Focus: class identity in 🇬🇧 + Christian identity in 🇮🇹

Farewell.

They want January 6 in Britain. They're actively rooting for it.

UK media have primed voter with the sort of illiberal politics - attacks on courts, electoral integrity, human rights, freedom of association, right to protest - that radical right parties took decades to normalise elsewhere. When Reform UK gets a majority, backsliding will be a walk in the park.

A (comparative) word of caution on rushing to see in the Greens' rise the mirror image of Reform UK's. Radical Right > largest Mainstream Right in 🇦🇹🇨🇿🇫🇷🇮🇹🇵🇱🇳🇱🇷🇴🇨🇭🇸🇪 Greens > Mainstream Left in... err, nowhere I can think of, in Europe. Within-bloc realignment on the Right is much larger than on the Left.

Not sure what to make of this specific story, but democratic backsliding in Greece - at the hand of a manifestly pro-European, centre-right "mainstream" government - has proceeded very much under the radar. Not all threats to democracy come with Orbánist bluster. www.politico.eu/article/gree...

Kansas is sending letters to trans people telling them that their licenses will be revoked as of tomorrow and that they risk arrest for driving on a suspended license. This is pure cruelty. www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

It's not just FPTP that can't accommodate the emerging 5-to-6 party system in Britain. Scotland's MMP system could see the SNP win a single-party majority with barely a third of the vote in the proportional tier, thanks to anti-Reform coordination in the SMD tier. www.scotsman.com/news/politic...

In a new pre-print, @fraraffaelli.bsky.social and I ask: what are the effects of anti-immigration appeals that portray migrants as a threat to a native group (e.g. the working class or Christians)? TL;DR: people change their *identity* to back up their attitudes to migrants. osf.io/preprints/so...

NEW: The fifth year of Russia’s invasion is not beginning well for Moscow. Recent Ukrainian successes on the battlefield disprove Russian claims that things can only get worse for Ukraine the longer Kyiv delays surrendering to Russian demands. Read more: isw.pub/UkrWar022426

Next time you doubt you are the right person for a job, remember: Chupa Chups make toothpaste.

Slava Ukraini.

Why do I have to pretend that I'm going to print something in order to save it as a PDF. Why do I have to engage in a little ruse.

Our focus on elite depravity shouldn’t distract us from the extent of mass public-level moral decay. There’s an army of little Kristi Noems out there.

In a new pre-print, @fraraffaelli.bsky.social and I ask: what are the effects of anti-immigration appeals that portray migrants as a threat to a native group (e.g. the working class or Christians)? TL;DR: people change their *identity* to back up their attitudes to migrants. osf.io/preprints/so...

The British left must embrace the middle class: a welfare state narrowly focussed on the poor will have a narrow support base, and thus will end up being politically fragile and worse-quality for the poor too. Plus, you can't build fiscal space for higher spending by taxing the ultra-rich alone...

Alysa Liu skating to MacArthur Park suite what a camp icon

A distinctively millennial problem: My Spotify shuffle algorithm continues ending up on a particularly annoying podcast, so today I looked up the host, and yeah it’s an asshole I knew from Twitter.

We have invented all-knowing thinking machines but still no luck with a reliable wordcount generator for pdfs.

📍Democratic Resilience Syllabus 📑 I'm sharing my master’s seminar syllabus on democratic resilience. I *loved* teaching it and had great students. I hope I get to do it again some day. ❤️ If you use it or adapt the syllabus, I’d love to hear how it goes. klaudiawegschaider.com/media/democr...

This is very important work. Both in its substance and in its emphasis on asymmetric effects. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Signs that your country needs an electoral threshold

There is a good Labour MP here on BlueSky who regularly posts about their shifts in a hospital (they are a doctor by profession). You shouldn't be doing that! It is a waste of time and trust!

It is sad that British MPs' day-to-day job is a combination of social work and local government administration, as opposed to executive oversight and legislation. I don't know how this can be reversed, but the expectations it creates are bad for democracy, representation and political selection.

This past Winter Term, I taught an introductory class in Quantitative Methods at the University of Vienna. I think it went really well, so I’m sharing the course material (including editable slides and markdown files) for anyone that might be interested. ucloud.univie.ac.at/index.php/s/...

In a way, conterfactual thinking *is* arcane. Most people - including policy-makers and many who took a causal inference course in grad school and should know better - just work backwards from the conclusion they want to reach.

Some people think you just pull a lever that says “do more left-wing things” and you cash in electoral success. Starmer’s “left wing things” (union/renter rights, railways, energy) didn’t make a dent. Being the most left-wing President since LBJ didn’t work for Biden (IRA, labor, antitrust).