Has someone done an analysis of whether there’s a correlation between the racial composition of districts and Dem’s relative performances vs 2024 in special elections? @the-downballot.com @gelliottmorris.com

PlanScore now has 2024 precinct-level election data integrated into its analysis (mostly from official sources compiled by the NYT for its national map) for about 25 states. You can use it to check the fairness of maps in your state.

@davesredist.bsky.social continues to be an invaluable resource for scholars and practitioners around redistricting.

Really enjoyed this discussion about the impacts of partisan redistricting and gerrymandering for control of Congress.

I remain puzzled by people who think everything is at risk and conclude that we should do exactly what they already wanted www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/o... Liberalism used to be obsessed with tradeoffs (the basis of all Slate pitches!) and would mock tradeoff denialism on the right. Not any more.

Hey DC-area friends - you should subscribe to the non-profit Banner's new Montgomery County vertical. They have 8 full-time journalists covering Montgomery County issues. Super exciting! www.thebanner.com/montgomery/

We're slowly integrating 2024 presidential vote into the @planscore.org model for evaluating the fairness of new districting plans. You can now score maps using 2024 precinct data in CA, TX, and MO. More states coming soon. planscore.org

This is a paper I really care about. I feel the core message is very important for social scientists in general, and political scientists in particular. "Quantitative Research in Political Science is Greatly Underpowered." (with A+ co-authors)

This also means people should update their view of sentiment regarding Biden economy being all media effects.

Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪 From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...

The gerrymandering game has only just begun. The 2030s will be worse. Perhaps only then will we get serious about major reforms, such as instituting proportional representation for House seats in states with more than two or three legislators.

What would you say if you saw it in another country?

In 2022, @chriswarshaw.bsky.social Eric McGhee & Michael Migurski published an article in Publius on the 2021-2022 redistricting cycle. The last lines in their article nicely summarizes the likely outcome of this tit-for-tat mid-decade redistricting mess of 2025. academic.oup.com/publius/arti...

Check out CHIP50 newest release of executive approval data, with state-level data on approval of Trump and each state's governor. www.chip50.org/executive-ap...

New Post: "For Your Syllabus: Statistical Power" Add content on statistical power to your social science courses. Not just to methods courses. For substantive courses, Bloom's MDE (i.e., 80% power to detect 2.5*SE) is easy to teach and really helpful! www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2025-08...

Combining the TX and CA redistricting proposals in my simple house model (tinyurl.com/cmchousemodel - copy & edit!), the net effect is D+0.1 seats in a neutral year, with increasing D gains w/ national vote. Bit more responsiveness away from 50/50, too. TX alone is R+2.1 seats, CA alone is D+2.2

Good baseline for impact of various gerrymandering schemes on 2026 is that generic ballot (Dems +3-4) implies Dem's likely to gain about 15 seats in the midterms (history implies even bigger gains). Rep's unlikely to pickup that many seats through redistricting's. So real impact will be on 2028/30.

Big update to @upshot.nytimes.com 2024 precinct map. Now includes most of CA and CO.

Yet again, Trump is falsely claiming that Democrat-controlled cities like DC are letting crime get out of control. Our research – from cities across the US – shows that this just isn't true @chriswarshaw.bsky.social @dbjones.bsky.social @matttheeconguy.bsky.social

This NYT article uses PlanScore to analyze CAs current congressional map. Exactly the type of application we envisioned when we built PlanScore. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/u...

Here's predicted Trump approval within state, modeled using our latest polls. Overall approve (left) and tariffs (right). Red is approve, blue is disapprove. Note how underwater POTUS is on trade — including in rural areas of both "red" and "blue" states www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trump-is-u...

Journalists - if you're trying to determine the partisan fairness of new congressional districting plans, check out www.planscore.org.

If we are really in a new era of extreme gerrymandering, it's pretty clear that the 2030 elections are likely to be the most important election of our lifetime. The 2026 elections are important for 2030 though for determining incumbency advantage and preventing more mid-decade redistricting.

Context for gerrymandering debate “How responsive/congruent is state policy with state public opinion” is one of the most studied poli sci questions Red & blue states both passed more 'extreme' policy in recent decades. Blue state policy shifts were aligned with state opinion. Red states’ weren’t

According to PlanScore, the new Texas congressional map would have a +17% pro-Republican efficiency gap, which is more skewed than 97% of congressional maps over the past 50 years. planscore.org/plan.html?20...

This is incredible public service journalism from @gelliottmorris.com and Strength In Numbers. Having a continually updated polling average of the generic congressional ballot—an important metric for understanding elections—is just invaluable. Support their work!

Here's a treat for state politics and policy researchers: Ethan Dee and I published a dataset in Nature: Scientific Data with the universe of state legislative bills since ~2009 coded by 28 policy areas. We used a machine learning model built off open source components.

From a new version of my idealstan working paper that I will be presenting at APSA.👇 I'm so proud of this not-so-little-anymore model. Vroom vroom vroom 🏎️. An order of magnitude faster than the competition (mcmcPACK).

MIT Political Science is hiring this fall, with junior lines in both American Politics (members.apsanet.org/CAREERS/eJob...) and IR. Please share widely!

Good morning, election data nerds! Here's a Monday morning present for you: we've finished updating our county-level presidential election results dataset to include 2024. The full dataset (covering 2000-2024) is now available on our Dataverse: buff.ly/eUGYc1h

📢 Thrilled to share our new article introducing CampaignView—a comprehensive open-source dataset of congressional candidate campaign bios and policy platforms (2018–2022). Paper + data here: campaignview.org & doi.org/10.7910/DVN/... 🧵1/4

The @nytimes.com just posted an updated version of their detailed map of the 2024 election results, with the data available for download. This is invaluable in part because funding constraints have slowed down academic efforts at releasing precinct-level results. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Reality: "The Republican budget bill, which now heads to Trump's desk, will be the most unpopular major law in at least 30 years" www.gelliottmorris.com/p/one-big-un...

Personal update- I’m looking forward to starting new adventures this fall at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy (@mccourtschool.bsky.social). I’m grateful for 8 amazing years at GW. I’ll miss friends, colleagues, and students there, but fortunately I’m not moving too far.

4 polls out today on the GOP budget bill Post-Ipsos: 23% support/42% oppose/34% no opin KFF: 35% favorable/64% unfave Pew: 29% favor/49% oppose/21% not sure Economist/YouGov: 35%-51% support-oppose www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202... www.kff.org/medicaid/pol... www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Lots going on in the world and not saying this is the most important thing, but am I reading the Senate version of Trump's BBB correctly as imposing a substantially lower endowment tax than the House version? www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

According to @the-downballot.com, in the 26 specials since Trump's inauguration, the median Democratic over-performance since the 2024 presidential election is 14.6%.

This isn’t just about Harvard or higher education. This is a preview of how it could be for every industry, company, organization, and operation. *Everyone* should be outraged.

Using government powers to try to silence opponents of the regime. Right out of the authoritarian playbook.

Great thread on today's news about the Trump administration trying to restrict most Americans' access to life-saving COVID shots.

Appalling. If you haven’t gotten your shot this season yet, go do it.

Suggests speed bumps ahead in Senate (assuming swing district GOP walk the plank to ensure House passage, which seems historically reasonable bet). Recalling unpopularity of 2017 tax cuts, this year’s version (even if ✂️✂️ pared back in Senate) seems eventually ripe 🎯 for Dems come 2026 midterms.

The Trump II legislative agenda (tax cuts for the rich, Medicaid cuts) is shaping up like the Trump I legislative agenda (tax cuts for the rich, ACA cuts). Here is @chriswarshaw.bsky.social showing the historical unpopularity of the Trump 1 agenda

IMHO public opinion researchers should not be neutral about the importance of democracy, also known as the mechanism by which public opinion influences governance

To break this down a little further, a thread 🧵 on what's pending in each state. 1/

Upheaval and disruption in dc area is just massive. Every week, I hear about another friend or parent at my kids’ bus stop or soccer team that’s leaving federal employment.

Today's Trump approval #'s are grim (would likely lead to huge Democratic majority in House if midterms were held tomorrow). There's also no reason to think they'll get better if/when Republicans in Congress vote to make big cuts to Medicaid and other popular social welfare programs.