The Democrats got the shutdown they wanted, and no one is happy My interview with Vox on why the Democrats did not win policy concessions & caved, with an outcome like prior shutdowns but difficult to learn lessons www.yahoo.com/news/article...

I'm not sure why there would be another shutdown at end of January. Some Dems have learned they are unlikely to get anything out of it & others have learned that their members will cave in the end (which means the same outcome).

The PR was fine. The polling was good. The ask was targeted. And it still didn't matter. You can't win real concessions so the question is whether the base likes a long fight with little to show for it or if it just angers them more because you caved in the end.

Dem voters also favored a shutdown & thought Republicans would be blamed (though more narrowly) last time they forced one (over DACA in Jan 2018): www.cnn.com/2018/01/19/p... But most said it was not worth it afterward (because they did not win anything): www.cnn.com/2018/01/25/p...

Immigration-driven diversity increases innovation How Cultural Diversity Drives Innovation: Surnames and Patents in U.S. History www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

You can apply to be the Associate Director of @IPPSR here, joining me in all our endeavors (when I return from sabbatical): careers.msu.edu/jobs/special...

Thermostatic backlash in elections stems from both 1) general incumbent dissatisfaction / responsibility for conditions & 2) response to policy overshooting & ideological direction. It often takes the form of both 1) swing voting & 2) differential turnout journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Election results showed a nationalized thermostatic backlash against the party of the president, similar to 1st Trump term but with even smaller candidate & issue effects & regardless of turnout.

dem margin in 2025 statewide races vs 2024 pres NJ and VA identical curves PA and GA much higher (PA here is the partisan statewide Commonwealth Court race)

cultural over economic coverage on cable news mobilizes viewers who would otherwise watch entertainment programming, so cable news emphasizes cultural politics much more than politicians trying to maximize vote share www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/27v4x...

Studying social sciences & humanities makes students more left-leaning, controlling for initial views & major preference, driven by cultural views. Implies that if all students majored in business, college–noncollege ideological gap would shrink by 1/3 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Union members have polarized by education level, with non-college members now less affected by their union membership. Union members have maintained their Democratic partisanship only by becoming more educated over time journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

But that's just variance. Everyone wants to know about average bias. Here it is. Polls in the last two weeks of the campaign overstated Democratic margins by 2.7 points across all offices—smaller than the 4.6-point overestimate in 2020 and 3.1 points in 2016. But that's a Dem bias 3 cycles in a row.

It is finally finished and released! I was proud to be a member of the Task Force on 2024 Pre-Election Polling, and to play just a small role in producing this report. Here is the report: aapor.org/wp-content/u... And here is the Executive Summary: aapor.org/wp-content/u...

Big thanks to @mattgrossmann.bsky.social for the invitation to discuss my new book!

New review of Polarized by Degrees as a book of the political moment: academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...

How the Money Chase Governs our Elections Early $ still governs who runs, who lasts, & who rises in Congress, even though it's often spent just to raise more @daniellethomsen.bsky.social on The Money Signal on the #ScienceOfPolitics podcast/transcript: www.niskanencenter.org/how-the-mone...

1) It is now harder for Dem candidates to differentiate themselves from the national Dem brand & ideology is only 1 among a few things making vanishingly small differences 2) Ideology & issue focus of national Dem brand is harder to move, given party network, media, & Rep attacks

preferences for redistribution & moral attitudes are not becoming more polarized across countries & have become more homogeneous in many. Attitudes about morality & redistribution are increasingly sorted by party in the US, but hardly in other countries www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle...

Across countries, unequal congruence between high- & low-income voters & policy is driven by status quo bias, rather than unequal abilities to achieve policy change. high-income advantage stems largely from their satisfaction with preserving the status quo onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

experiencing the Advanced Child Tax Credit did generate substantial and lasting increases in support among Republican parents onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Independent candidates do better than Democratic candidates with equivalent messages in rust belt states images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/u... Discussed as the Democratic brand penalty on Ezra (they also briefly discuss Polarized by Degrees): www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/o...

Trump's redeployment of federal power is leading to an increase in (normally conservative) views among Democrats that the federal government has too much power & that agencies are ineffective, moving closer to Republican views. news.gallup.com/poll/696191/... news.gallup.com/poll/696059/...

Democrats still prefer that their leaders compromise, even under Trump news.gallup.com/poll/695690/...

Democratic speeches in Congress are more likely to represent the views of their constituents and more consistent across the party than Republican speeches www.nowpublishers.com/article/Deta...

Despite partisanship’s stronger associations with voting & party feelings, inter-election panel surveys show that the durability of partisan attachments has slightly weakened; partisanship is more consistent, but not a stronger attachment link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Electoral democracy is improving in most US states. States improved if they had high Democratic control without liberal publics; strong unions & diverse populations; or liberal Democratic parties, publics, and strong unions. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Supreme Court is enabling Trump’s executive power grab New #ScienceOfPolitics with @adambonica.bsky.social www.niskanencenter.org/the-supreme-...

With the shutdown losing attention & the generic ballot changing little, there remains limited pressure to end it. No clear gains for either side anticipated, but no clear losses either. Also suggests parties will learn cost is low to do it again.

STEM majors tend to have spouses who majored in other STEM fields, amplifying income inequality across married couples link.springer.com/article/10.1...

When including cognitive abilities, personality traits, emotional intelligence, financial literacy, moral reasoning, sunk cost bias, cognitive flexibility, cognitive empathy, & need for cognition, peak in overall functioning is at age 55 to 60, not earlier www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Due to cognitive biases still present, initial scientific explanations systematically favored inherent properties, while subsequent explanations incorporated extrinsic factors like context or relations more consistently www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Since 1980, voter turnout increased most in states & counties where college-educated populations grew most quickly www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@liampert.bsky.social, @mattgrossmann.bsky.social, and I are thrilled to launch SenateData, a new repository pertaining to the US Senate. We have variables on facets like bills, and members, including original data on senator characteristics and an associated R package. github.com/IPPSR/Senate...

Companies are hiring many more internal policy specialists than lobbyists; it is a much larger investment in politics and internal expertise www.andrewbenjaminhall.com/HallSun25.pdf

The 2024 @electionstudies.bsky.social has the share of "pure independents" in the US at its lowest level since 1952 (7%)

I will be at UChicago, Northwestern, & Lake Forest briefly this week. And for the first trip since 2019, I'll be returning to Missouri this weekend (including seeing Mizzou-Bama & Chiefs-Lions). Hope to catch up with many folks soon.

There is increasing political polarization in colleges' student bodies. Both liberal & conservative students prefer institutions with more like-minded peers and are willing to pay thousands of dollars more to avoid students from the other side edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1280

The "We Must Do Something. This Is Something" shutdown still seems unlikely to gain anything that wasn't winnable before. But it also seems unlikely to do any electoral damage. Public & market reaction is extremely limited. Still depends on how Dem base responds to end.

The last time I posted the income relationship to presidential vote among White respondents to the @electionstudies.bsky.social ANES, people asked for additional estimates among all voters. Updated estimates here:

New paper with @hjghassell.bsky.social and @michaelheseltine.bsky.social out in @bjpols.bsky.social. We develop measures of voter perceptions of candidate ideology and candidate messaging ideology and find that perception's are related to what candidates say www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Most graphs of the fertility rate depict the 'period fertility rate', which is based on a single year's data and doesn't necessarily reflect how many children women actually have across their lifetimes. I've used data from the Human Fertility Database to show the cumulative number instead:

spending has long more closely matched presidential budget requests than provided for in enacted appropriations, driven by presidents spending less than Congress appropriates 1970s-era reforms did not eliminate these deviations. drive.google.com/file/d/1bTy4...

The Trump admin is only making one pocket rescission request, focused on foreign aid? What about the other unspent $, like at NIH & NSF? Is it going to be spent on something by this month? Is there another impoundment path they are trying?

Join us at 9am for a live edition of the Science of Politics podcast. We'll talk shutdown politics, Democratic Party factions, repositioning, the 2026 elections, & long-term prospects for liberalism & renewal

Depolarization is not "a scalable solution for reducing societal-level conflict.... achieving lasting depolarization will likely require....moving beyond individual-level treatments to address the elite behaviors and structural incentives that fuel partisan conflict" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Gaining Dem senate control in 2026 is very unlikely (ME, NC, OH, & elsewhere?!). But margins matter; every race lost in 2024 made 2026 harder. 2028 doesn't offer much more. Dem geographic disadvantage is real but it may mean they need to win 3 cycles in a row (haven't since 80s)

Excellent work here by @mikecowburn.bsky.social and @meredithconroy.bsky.social! Very interesting dynamics potentially driving these gendered trends: Dems worry (too much) about a what an imagined public might want. Reps do what they want, when they feel like they can.

Democratic women are disadvantaged in competitive district primaries, where party elites prioritize electability & view men as safer. Republican women are disadvantaged in safe district primaries, where elites & voters assume they are less conservative. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Among both Democrats and Republicans, jurors openly favor (hypothetical) copartisan defendants over out-partisan defendants, with the greatest effects among those that are most affectively polarized journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....