Keir Starmer’s spokesperson asked for the PM's response to Nigel Farage’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of people living and working completely legally in the UK, replies that he thinks it is “unworkable” and “unfunded”. So his objection is that they’ve got their sums wrong

I'll have more to say on Reform's proposals to scrap ILR at some point but for now I'll just note this - anyone telling you this is a popular idea doesn't know the polling. Overwhelming majority of public back giving people who work and pay taxes most or all rights after 5 years or less

Incredible parallels in this Berinsky & @gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

*** NEW RESEARCH ALERT *** How do firms respond in the face of increased restrictions to hiring skilled immigrant workers? [THREAD]

Shot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

Blog post: github.com/sophieehill/... TL;DR: There are a LOT of errors/inconsistencies in the results reported in this paper (estimates outside CIs, sign errors, duplicates, asymmetric CIs). Even in the abstract itself! This suggests manual editing of results tables. Which is not good... 🧵

Abysmal idea:In times of increasing extremism in Germany & abroad, we need to strengthen the study of politics, not weaken it beyond recognition. Cologne is one of the best departments in Germany with colleagues doing world-class research on relevant topics. Hope the NRW government will think again!

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Some of the very best and most internationally renowned political scientists in Germany are at Cologne. This is a very real threat to a globally strong group.

The University of Cologne plans drastic cuts to its Political Science department, potentially abolishing the MSc in Political Science and eliminating the professorships in IR and Comparative Politics. This would severely weaken the social sciences at @unicologne.bsky.social. Petition (de/en) ⤵️

Noah Smith blog today is about the moderation stuff www.noahpinion.blog/p/moderation... It's pretty reasonable (he's an econ phd so he knows correlation ≠ causation). Prompted me to more formally write the plausible mechanisms that explain null effects of candidate ideology in the Trump era

Please share: @pavisuri.bsky.social and I are delighted to share details for the political economy of development section of @epssnet.bsky.social Belfast 2026 We welcome great work and fresh ideas! Please spread the word among interested colleagues not on here docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A bit behind schedule, but how voters moved in the year since the 2024 election. Labour facing same splintering of the last govt: a significant bloc crossing floor to primary electoral opposition, with a numerically larger chunk moving to opponents on same side of spectrum, plus many 'don't knows'.

The European Political Science Society is now accepting paper & panel proposals for its annual conference! 📢 Call for Papers: EPSS 2026 – Belfast
 🗓️ June 18–20, 2026
 📍 ICC Belfast
 📬 Deadline: Nov 7, 2025 🧵

1. Kevin Gross and I just posted a new science-of-science preprint. This one explores the looming peer review crisis. As many of you know, it's becoming significantly more difficult for journal editors to find scholars willing to serve as peer reviewers for submitted manuscripts.

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

Which Republicans support restrictive abortion laws? The most extreme abortion policies aren't popular with GOP donors, voters, or rich individuals – but are pushed by a small and influential group within the party. Read more from Barber et al. in POQ now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

The Portuguese far right party CH has been growing spectacularly, shattering views of the country as immune to this phenomenon. This has prompted a discussion about where their votes come from. Some thoughts on this, prompted by newly released survey data:

🚨 We're hiring! Join our CSES Team @gesis.org Cologne as a Senior Researcher. If you’re into comparative electoral research and love diving into data, this is your moment. Come shape global democracy with us! 🌍📊 www.gesis.org/en/institute...

📣 Postdoc (75 %, 3 yrs) at @unigreifswald.bsky.social — start autumn 2025 on perhaps Germany’s most beautiful campus. Know someone with a PhD (or nearly done) in Political Science? ⬇️ #PolSci #Postdoc

Great piece by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com on why Europe needs to get serious about air-con www.ft.com/content/50f6...

New paper alert! 📣 @chrisblattman.bsky.social, Arthur Yu, and I reexamine the autocratic growth penalty—the finding that autocracies systematically underperform democracies in economic growth. TL;DR, the penalty is concentrated in personalist, not institutionalized autocracies. Details👇 1/X

Online first: "School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support" by @nspmartin.bsky.social @ralphscott.bsky.social & @rolandkappe.bsky.social doi.org/10.1080/0140... Part of the Special Issue "Cleavage Politics in Western Democracies"

Can banning political ideologies protect democracy? 🛡️🆚🗣️ Our (w. @valentimvicente.bsky.social) paper finds: punishing individuals might backfire. We study a West German policy banning "extreme left" individuals from working for the state. #Democracy #PoliticalScience 🧵 url: osf.io/usqdb_v2

#jobs #stellenangebote #GESISjobs #jobfairy #PhDJobs #SurveyResearch #SocialSciences #AcademicJobs #DataPreparation GESIS is hiring a PhD candidate in Data Preparation to join the #FReDA family panel team in Cologne or Mannheim! 👉 Start: Sept 2025 👉 Apply by July 24 🔗 gesis.org/en/institu...#jobs#stellenangebote

New article out in World Politcs. We analyze how different groups react to varying programs of social democratic parties. We find less trade-offs than often assumed. Generally, more left-progressive programs increase support among social democratic potentials muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

My column in the latest edition of @bylinetimes.bsky.social is on the myth of Morgan McSweeney's strategic mastery subscribe.bylinetimes.com/edition/75/t...

If you're looking for a weekend read, I think our study on who is turning their backs on Labour and why is quite interesting: yougov.co.uk/politics/art... But to add some extra notes...🧵

@wzb.bsky.social is searching for new director for the study of democracy These are extraordinary senior positions; tenured wth funding to establish a new dept & pursue big agendas www.wzb.eu/en/jobs/dire... 🚨Please share widely! #Polisky @epssnet.bsky.social @ecpr.bsky.social @apsa.bsky.social

Yesterday EPSS was founded, today we answer members’ questions. A 🧵 1. Who formed EPSS? EPSS was founded by a supermajority vote of the EPSA Council, made up of 3 EPSAL shareholders & 9 elected, appointed, or ex officio members. 1/

NYC percentage foreign born from census data. You can see the effect of the 1924 Immigration and Nationality Act which was an explicitly white supremacist restriction on immigration. Then in 1964, immigration was opened again with family migration at the core.

How Britain would vote, a year since the 2024 election: Our new study of 17,000 Britons breaks down current voting intention by factors such as age, gender, education, past vote, and more 👇 yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Counterpoint: new Public First research shows every UK resident working adult (on a full time equivalent basis) is £466 a year better off on average as a result of international students. So let’s just publicise that instead of levying them www.publicfirst.co.uk/calculating-...

The immigration system in a nutshell - a Brazilian sex offender allowed to stay here, but the small children of a professor and a nurse who are here legally are ordered to be deported without their parents

A definition of White British which, aside from everything else, includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles.

🚨 WP w/ @acalacino.bsky.social & @hayleypring.bsky.social It’s been a turbulent decade of globalization backlash. Populist projects wanna take back control everywhere. Focusing on the case of oil and Brexit, we offer a story of the danger of this narrative and concrete merits of multilateralism: 🧵

I've been doing some new research on educational polarization. This is the proportion of the Democratic Party's votes that comes each educational category in presidential elections between 2012 and 2024. It is pretty difficult to oversell how much the party has changed in a short period. 1/3

"Each extension or renewal of a visa can cost up to almost £2,000, in addition to the £1,035 annual NHS surcharge that migrants need to pay." It's worth noting that the NHS surcharge was £200 in 2018; since then, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, it has been increased year after year.

🚨NEW PAPER: Why are Members of Congress so extreme? We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇

How the 6.8m 2024 Conservatives currently say they'd vote: Conservative: 3.5m (-1.2m vs January) Reform UK: 1.8m (+0.8) Don't know: 0.8m (+0.2) Lib Dem: 0.3m (+0.1) Dead: 0.2m (+0.1) Labour: 0.1m (-0.0) Would not vote: 0.1m (+0.0) Other parties: 0.1m (=0.0)

How the 9.7m 2024 Labour voters currently say they'd vote: Labour: 4.7m (-0.8m since January) Don't know: 1.4m (-0.1) Lib Dem: 1.2m (+0.4) Reform UK: 0.8m (+0.2) Green: 0.7m (+0.2) Would not vote: 0.5m (+0.1) Conservative: 0.3m (-0.0) SNP/PC: 0.2m (+0.1) Dead: 0.1m (+0.0) Others: 0.0m (-0.1)

#jobs #stellenangebote #GESISjobs #jobfairy Our Team Digital Society Observatory in #Cologne is looking for a #SeniorResearcher & #TeamLeader in Computational Social Science #CSS (Salary group 15 TV-L, working time 100%, initially for four years with possible tenure): gesis.jobs.personio....

A fabulous insight in Adam Przeworski’s latest substack. Would love to see if this could be tested somehow.

🔴The Founding Myth of Morgan McSweeney Why reports of Keir Starmer's chief adviser's supposed campaigning genius do not appear to match up with the facts www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-foundi...

In short, Starmer has taken a massive hit among Labour voters, for no gain elsewhere, while boosting Farage's popularity, including doubling his ceiling among Labour voters. I.e., the political scientists were right, Morgan McSweeney was horrendously wrong.

🚨 “Good Description” with @annagbusse.bsky.social 🚨 What sets 'good' description apart from 'mere' description? We develop a framework for evaluating descriptive research, whether we are doing it as scholars or assessing it as readers. Two main contributions... 🔗📄 tinyurl.com/gooddesc

2 weeks before a national election, national conditions and public opinion on issues are basically fixed. The best strategy is respond to the polls and prime your best issues. 12-24 months out from the election, arguably the best strategy is to try to shape national conditions and public opinion. /2

But the magic happens on economics. The two most vote maximising positions Labour could take in this experiment - holding in both Reform and Green defectors - were investment in public services & wealth taxation. Economic fairness unites Labour vote in way culture divides it.

Firstly, to understand Labour/Reform switching it's important to put it in perspective. Historically speaking, Reform voters are not ‘Labour’s lost voters’. 74% of Reform 2024 voters have not voted Labour in a single election since 2005. It's mostly an anti-Labour vote.

This obsession is with “young men turning to the right” is everything that is wrong with the discussion about the far right. It is not just an inadequate read of what is happening, and a bias towards the male norm, but it also normalizes the far right and obscures support for inclusive politics. 🧵