new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

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/...

New in PNAS with @seanjwestwood.bsky.social and @ylelkes.bsky.social: Why depolarization is hard: Evaluating attempts to decrease partisan animosity in America @prl.bsky.social @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Careful polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly reject political violence - see e.g. brightlinewatch.org/tempered-exp..., brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-..., and www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1.... Unfortunately, it only takes one person with a gun to create a tragedy like what've seen today.

As scary as this moment is, remember that support for political violence went DOWN after the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump, not up www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... We need to make the same thing happen this time.

There are few people as kind and inspiring as Bob was, in political science or otherwise. His dedication to his students and to the city of Houston was unparalleled, and I am lucky to be one of many who would not be where we are without him as a mentor. news.rice.edu/news/2025/ri...

It's official -- I'll be taking my talents to Foggy Bottom this Fall! Excited to announce I've accepted an offer to join the Department of Political Science at the George Washington University as an Assistant Professor of American Politics!

The body and blood of Christ

‼️ Two new post-docs at GW! Both affiliated with the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics, one will be more computational, the other more experimental. Links: www.gwu.jobs/postings/119... and www.gwu.jobs/postings/119... Spread the word!

🏫Do income and education shape people's priorities? ➡️Contrary to conventional wisdom, @ctausanovitch.bsky.social @derekholliday.com show that income and education are not strongly associated with differences in what people care about www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Job alert! Interested in working with PRL as a postdoc next year? Apply by January 15! We offer the opportunity to collaborate on and lead projects related to democratic attitudes, elite behavior, and more! polarizationresearchlab.org/hiring/

How did American attitudes toward democracy shift with the election? Our final Path to 2024 report shows substantive changes in perceptions of accuracy, trust, and resignation toward democratic backsliding. Read the full report: prlpublic.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/reports/Elec...

The attempted assassination of president Trump decreased support for partisan violence and did not increase polarization according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Now published in PNAS! We had a survey in the field at the time of the first assassination attempt on Trump. We found that Rs became significantly less supportive of partisan violence and had increased in-party affect. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In our PNAS we don't necessarily find a negative relationship between affpol and antidemocratic norm support, but certainly a non-linear one (appendix fig. below). Personally, I think FT measures have some pretty major empirical oddities we're still evaluating 🔗 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PRL's annual conference is in Salt Lake City, May 1-2, 2025 🎉Apply by 12/31 to present/attend! We are looking for work on democratic attitudes, broadly defined, and preference complete/near complete studies for talks. Details and application: polarizationresearchlab.org/annual-meeti...

Despite so much focus of the U.S. Election on a few battleground states, affective polarization is actually geographically uniformly distributed across states, finds @derekholliday.com @ylelkes.bsky.social & Westwood @prl.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

The nationalization of news is a big part of this phenomenon. See colleagues Johanna Dunaway and Josh Darr on the importance of local news in slowing polarization. www.cambridge.org/core/element...

So happy to see this now published at PNAS! This paper, coauthored with Shanto Iyengar, @ylelkes.bsky.social, and Sean Westwood, was my first project for @prl.bsky.social, and there will be many more coming soon! 🥳 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our paper introducing the "American Local Government Elections Database" is online at Scientific Data. The data includes 78,000 candidates in 57,000 electoral contests in races for seven distinct local political offices in most medium and large cities and counties over the last three decades.

Interested in working with PRL? We're looking for postdocs for 2024-2025! Apply by Jan 15, 2024. We're an interdisciplinary lab studying democratic attitudes and partisan animosity. Data skills required 📈 polarizationresearchlab.org/hiring/ polisky

Today's the day! PRL is now accepting paper proposals for our fully funded Annual Meeting in NOLA, March 20-22, 2024. We look for innovative work on partisan animosity, broadly defined. Apply by 12/15. Can't wait to see what you are working on! polarizationresearchlab.org/annual-meeti... polisky

"Assistant Speaker" implies the existence of adjunct speaker, associate speaker, full speaker, emeritus speaker, and endowed speaker

Beware the UVA poll going around on support for violence & democracy tinyurl.com/uvacpoll I've never heard of firm; few details on methods/sample; and question wording is messy and non-standard. Our survey using more careful methods finds support for violence is extremely rare tinyurl.com/viol-poll

Come join our fantastic and productive group of scholars! polisky

polisky

PRL is excited to announce our 2nd Annual Meeting in New Orleans on March 21-22! Applications to present will open on our website on Nov 1. Hint: strong submissions will include a draft paper. We hope you'll apply! PS it's fully funded ✈️ polarizationresearchlab.org/annual-meeti...

👇Perhaps the best piece *ever* written about scientific fraud & a fascinating character study of Gino and Ariely. Compared to the recent lightweight NYT article, this longform goes far into the dark underbelly of academic "research." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202... academicsky polisky

PSA: If you use #rstats {tidycensus} (or really anything from the Census API), the US Census API will get shut down if the government shuts down in a couple days, so download whatever you need now.

NYT: "Other studies have found that any effects from the indictments dissipated quickly, and that there is little evidence of any increase in the numbers of Americans supportive of a violent response." That's us! We're the linked other studies (w/ @ylelkes.bsky.social and Sean Westwood)!

New (by me) on the Polarization Research Lab Blog: "Not All Elections are Presidential: But They Might Be More Partisan Than Ever"

Party of Reagan just spent nearly double the time discussing UFOs versus taxes: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...