📄 New WP version out - full overhaul! The Politics of Evidence Selection (w/ @jesperasring.bsky.social ) Comments welcome! 🔗 osf.io/preprints/so...

It's official: An American Problem (our book on the Voting Rights Act, preclearance, and the effects of Shelby County) will be coming out next year with Princeton University Press. As the VRA faces continued threats, we're hopeful it will offer insight into why the it's is so vitally important

My response to the NYT’s “moderate to win” argument: The data shows the strategy is tapped out. Being seen as moderate by voters doesn’t boost votes, replacing every progressive with moderates would net 0 seats, and the graveyard of defeated D incumbents if full of moderates, not progressives.

How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality? Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):

This seems important in a world where so many countries are turning against immigration: "A structural estimation of a model of endogenous growth and migrations suggests the increased immigration to the US since 1965 may have increased innovation and wages by 5%."

Do high workloads force bureaucrats to discriminate? In a published paper at the @thejop.bsky.social, I challenge the dominant explanation of discrimination in public service delivery. Surprisingly, I find that bureaucrats are able to handle substantial workloads without discriminating.

Our article “Unsuccessful Candidates Are More Concerned About Electoral Fairness than Election Winners” is now online @thejop.bsky.social Using RDD and elite survey data from Denmark, we show that losing candidates express greater concern about electoral fairness. 🔗 doi.org/10.1086/734240

Economic crises tend to favour the right. Voters tend to assign greater importance to issues owned by the right. When center-right parties preside over a crisis, voters often drift further rightward to nationalist parties rather than defect to the left onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A new @ajpseditor.bsky.social paper claims that building *any* public housing costs the largest incumbent party in 🇩🇪 municipalities around 0.5 % pts. I don't think this estimate is right. Alternative estimation strategies suggests effects that are between eight and forty times smaller (1/n)

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand: $678M raised through those spam tactics $282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies. $11M to actual campaigns (1.6%) The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

🧵Introducing the Trump Action Tracker website! Today I’m launching www.trumpactiontracker.info - a live, searchable list of authoritarian‑style actions from Trump’s second term (over 740 actions so far). 1/14

Analyzing scientists' biographies during the baby boom, we find that mothers have a unique life cycle pattern of productivity. Children reduce the productivity of mothers but not fathers, with important implications for promotions and participation. buff.ly/39WbYRH

@robmickey.bsky.social & @dziblatt.bsky.social let me post the working paper Why doesn't police reform work? Because police depts can't credibly commit to their end of the bargain (doing more/better/riskier work in exchange for more $) www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/35o94...

Local reactions to wolf attacks in Germany are not powerful enough to influence the election decisions of many voters www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Democratic Tea Party is happening. But one key difference from the GOP Tea Party is the lack of a Fox News and big money to coordinate it. The Tea Party had a real grassroots element (sorry it's true), but coordination by media & Koch money was crucial web.stanford.edu/~gjmartin/pa...

I’m currently building a dataset on police forces around the globe. No other country has a force quite like ICE (w/ broad enforcement powers, tactical gear, immigration focus); the most apt comparisons are to secret police in authoritarian regimes rather than border/immigration forces elsewhere.

If the GOP reconciliation bill passes, ICE gets through FY2029: - $45 billion for detention, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion - $14.4 billion for transportation and removal, on top of the current annual budget of $750 million - $8 billion for hiring/retention - Billions more.

The Trump admin in a nutshell; in order to justify their own mistake, they’re going to release a violent felon with five deportations so he can testify against the guy with no criminal record they mistakenly deported. In other words, the story is always more important than the principle.

Did some quick math and i think this would represent one of the most dramatic and rapid expansions of prisons/policing/paramilitary forces in world history.

Can we say we are living in a police state now?

If you're still at #EPSA2025 today: Catch our Panel P13-S315: Politicians & Representation 🕐 13:10–14:50 📍 Room -1.A.05 Featuring: @jacklucas.bsky.social, @mathisbr.bsky.social, John Griffin, @mafaldapratas.bsky.social I’m presenting our study on evidence selection by politicians👇

Very excited to share a new preprint. @jesperasring.bsky.social and I study how politicians engage with evidence in the real world. Link: osf.io/8zv9s

To help researchers navigate social desirability bias, this study assesses commonly-used approaches and offers practical guidance on selecting the most suitable tools for different contexts, from Bursztyn, Haaland, Röver, and Roth https://www.nber.org/papers/w33920

Super interesting – and may I say "funny" – design. Well worth the read!

New preprint w. @rsenninger.bsky.social Sharing evidence on immigration with parliamentary candidates, we find that politicians from extreme parties - especially those on the far right - select evidence that aligns with their party's priorities

🚨New WP 🚨 The US plays a dominant role in informing policy worldwide. We show how its expertise shapes global policymaking — but also discuss how political pressures, shifting funding, and challenges to science could put this position at risk. Much more in the paper. Full thread below 👇

Just published in @jpube.bsky.social: "Gulags, crime, and elite violence: Origins and consequences of the Russian mafia" By Jakub Lonsky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky

LAPD when they think nobody is watching

Here's the one chart you need to see: - Abrego Garcia deported - SCOTUS ruling gets press - News coverage shot up - Google search traffic shot up - Trump approval fell down and then - News media moved on - Trump immigration approval went back up Exactly as predicted by the survey experiment.

From our new issue: "Elite Cues and Noncompliance" by Zachary P. Dickson (@zachdickson.bsky.social‬‬) and Sara B. Hobolt (@sarahobolt.bsky.social‬). #APSRNewIssue www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Vi har gennemgået, hvad Israels ministre og talspersoner har sagt om landets nye plan for Gaza. Her er den korte version: Planen er at tvinge Gazas over 2 mio. beboere ned på et område mindre end Ærø 1/9

Men are extremely keen to explain to me that Britain *needs* a domestic steel production plant and doesn't necessarily *need* universities. Okay. Steel contributed about £1.7bn to the UK economy in 2024. Universities contributed more than £200bn.

"We find some evidence that published papers with greater connectivity subsequently receive fewer citations." In short, the publication game is a bit of a rigged game. At least at one particular journal. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

🚨 New publication 🚨 : Happy to share that my paper, "Losing Touch: The Rhetorical Cost of Governing" is now forthcoming at @cpsjournal.bsky.social. Short 🧵 about the paper here 👇 1/10

The Democratic Party’s age problem isn’t just bad, it’s much worse than Republicans’. Half of registered Democratic voters are under 50, yet half their senators are over 67. Despite claiming to represent the future, party leadership systematically blocks younger voices from gaining power.

When politicians use simple language, citizens understand more and see them as less elite. New paper with @danbischof.bsky.social out in @thejop.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1086/736693

House GOP just unveiled $4 Trillion in tax cuts - overwhelmingly for the wealthy - in a country that already leads the developed world in inequality. Look at where the US stands right now: Top 1%: 20% of income CEO pay: 354x workers Child poverty: 21% And they want to make it worse. On purpose.🧵⬇️

In Denmark, most intergenerational mobility variation is due to family location choices and random factors. Urban areas promote greater upward mobility than rural ones. New research brief from @durlauf.bsky.social (@harrissocial.bsky.social)and co-authors. #EconSky ow.ly/rw9q50UnGnR

Interested in debates about how to measure democracy and/or the use of observable and judgmental indicators? Then check out this piece.

🚨 New book alert! Policy Preparation Inside the European Commission is out with OUP @oxfordacademic.bsky.social It’s about the behind-the-scenes stage of EU policymaking that shapes everything—yet rarely gets the spotlight: how the Commission prepares its proposals. Link: doi.org/10.1093/9780...

🚨 Very excited that our paper on *Rulers on the Road* has been cond. accepted at the AJPS @ajpseditor.bsky.social. We analyze emperors' strategies of itinerant rule in the Holy Roman Empire 919-1519. Fun working with @claranw.bsky.social, @andrejkokkonen.bsky.social & Jørgen Møller shorturl.at/Spm7z

Online radicalisation of elites is a significant and yet poorly understood aspect of contemporary politics.

Denmark and Norway killed for status. Status and recognition, not security or wealth, drove them to war. New article out — full thread below🧵

Even established authoritarian regimes consider arresting defiant judges an extreme tactic—a serious escalation usually reserved for after one-party rule is firmly entrenched. Seeing a judge arrested in the US today should alarm everyone who values democratic governance. This cannot be allowed. 🧵

It shouldn't matter if Trump’s victims have criminal records. If we only defend the “innocent,” the fascists will argue that their victim “was no angel.” An anti-fascist rhetoric that carves out exceptions for imperfect victims is a gift to our opponents. New from me for @us.theguardian.com: