The Federal Election Commission, which regulates campaign finance, has lost another member. But the FEC has actually been without a quorum for months, leaving the agency unable to do much of its work.

The FEC is currently down to 3 of 6 commissioners. I've collected as many FEC votes as possible + scaled them. The data back up that Lindenbaum is pretty moderate in historical terms. Two others (Trainor, Broussard) are more polarized. Trump (illegally) fired Weintraub, who was left-most Dem.

Maine Senate since 1954. Graph summarizes town-level regressions by cycle, controlling for partisan enrollment, population, and county effects. Not much to see pre-2020, but high Dem towns in 2020 bolted at a larger rate from Collins. Dem voters are ready. Can the pty take adv? Model fit below.

President Trump Issues Dangerous Executive Order That Would Shift to Presidency More Power Over the Conduct of Federal Elections and Potentially Disenfranchise Millions of Voters electionlawblog.org?p=149153

Great news!! In ‘23, I co-taught a course on the Ethics of AI. A central insight from that class: AI developers need students versed in the liberal arts to pressure them to think about the moral, political, ethical, and environmental implications of their models. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/t...

Maine has a close relationship w/Canada, and I'm working on measuring French-Canadian influence in Maine politics. Here are county-level ranks using available Census data back to 1910. Same four counties have historically had the most French ancestry. (Measuring this is not easy!)

Congrats to Bowdoin Women’s basketball for their NESCAC Championship. Packed gym. Epic comeback! An “instant classic”!

“Why don't you wear a suit? You're at the highest level in this country's office & you refuse to wear a suit. A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the office.”

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

Interested in evidence of polarization in Maine? The graph looks at just enrolled Dems and Reps by year and cong dist (using current CD boundaries). Since about 2008, CD1 has become more Dem and CD2 has become more Rep. Not a surprise, perhaps, except that the chg is very recent.

Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon.

🧵My statement in response to Trump illegally attempting to fire Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chair Ellen Weintraub: In claiming to fire a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, the president violates the law, the separation of powers and generations of Supreme Court precedent. 1/

Working on a project measuring party registration in Maine towns back to 1954. Here is the statewide % of registered Dems (looking only at Dems and Republicans). Big change from 1954 to late 1970s. (Been fun collaborating w/ Dave Emery and Chris Potholm).

Ending 2024 by rereading Mary Oliver

My hottest take for the end of the year is that it is immensely more satisfying to cross things off a to-do list written on paper than any electronic equivalent.

Our new analysis shows that total online political advertising on Google and Meta alone topped $1.35 billion this election cycle.

TV advertising in 2024 presidential race was close to dead even. Our quick take on political advertising in this year's campaign. With @efranklinfowler.bsky.social and @mikefranz.bsky.social

I love tracking House & Senate forecasts. Thanks to Inside Elections (& @rubashkin.bsky.social) for keeping their regular House & Senate ratings open to see. Here is how Sen election ratings changed over 2024. Lots of stability, though TX moved in Dem direction. Select House races in comments.

Lots of talk abt the election outcome & its alignment w/certain fundamentals...i.e., "Biden is unpopular and so GOP should clearly benefit." Yes, but some of these fundamentals are themselves out of alignment w/known economic & political factors. mikemfranz.com/2024/11/14/t...

💥 NEW report from WMP: Nearly $300 Million in Presidential Ad Spending Across Platforms Over Past Two Weeks. Read the full report: mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases-102... @efranklinfowler.bsky.social , @tnridout.bsky.social, and @mmfranz.bsky.social. #2024election #politicalads

Today in “campaigning can change vote choice”

💥 New tools for visualizing presidential advertising by geography! One that shows the breakdown of presidential ads by issue mentions on TV & one that shows FB & IG spending over time. ⬇️ mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/issues-oct24/ @mmfranz.bsky.social @tnridout.bsky.social @efranklinfowler.bsky.social

It's always fun to talk about political ads: www.ksfr.org/government/2...

Lots of chatter this year (as usual) about the efficacy of election forecasting models. This past summer, Andy Robinson (Bowdoin Class of '27) and I collected pre-election House and Senate ratings and compared them to the outcome. Here are the House results. Humans do a decent job.

💥 NEW report from WMP, @opensecretsdc.bsky.social, and @brennancenter.bsky.social sheds light on the scope of online ad spending this election cycle on the two largest online platforms, Google and Meta. Read more: mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/reports-1016... #2024election #politicalads

Great piece from @smotus.bsky.social. To reinforce some of this, here are correlations of the GOP prez vote across elections at the county-level (using diff starting points). The corr. of the county-level vote b/w '76 and '20 is nearly 0. Things most often change slowly, but do change.

Every time I fail to reject the null hypothesis

💥NEW from WMP: Pro-Trump Ads Declining on TV; Harris outspends Trump 16:1 on Meta & 3:1 on Google. Pro-Harris TV ads more common than pro-Trump in almost all media markets nationally. mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases-092... @efranklinfowler.bsky.social @tnridout.bsky.social @mmfranz.bsky.social

💥NEW from WMP: Dem, GOP TV ads are almost equal, but Harris is outspending Trump nearly 3:1 on Meta & Google. Airings in pres race have shifted to focus on the economy. Full report: mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases-091... @mmfranz.bsky.social @tnridout.bsky.social @efranklinfowler.bsky.social