🤔 Do surveys exaggerate democratic support due to social desirability bias (SDB)? ➡️ Using survey-mode variation & list experiments in 24 countries, @pcmagalhaes.bsky.social & @aarslew.bsky.social find no evidence that SDB inflates democratic attitudes www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

Latest ITV BarnCymru 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 poll confirms trend seen over last 6 months - neck and neck race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK for largest party, with Labour falling to even more distant third. Evidence growing of distinct realignment in Wales 🧵

This is extremely good!

This polling discrepancy is a huge concern when you consider how polls influence political behaviour. Last year, @mbarnfield.bsky.social and I published a paper about the dangers of this exact situation - a 'mixed-poll environment' with conflicting estimates academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...

Ever struggle to explain why your research is relevant? Sometimes the data just does it for you! 👇 Has anyone seen a more dramatic poll discrepancy than this one from Spain nationwide polling? CIS has PSOE +9.0pp, while NCReport has PP +9.4pp *over the exact same fieldwork*! 🤯😅

What a great way to wrap up #EPOP2025!

Back in Exeter for the first time since my first PhD visiting stay! I'm thrilled to be presenting joint research on election polling with @klaramueller.bsky.social at the @psaepop.bsky.social Conference tomorrow. So looking forward to this panel full of great scholars

This is a prime case study of how moving your issue agenda as a center right party (Cons) to the right extremes will eventually cost yourself everything. The Cons are projected at 24!!! seats right now. Reform at 395!

I have a new article out at @polstudies.bsky.social. In "Electoral Hope", I make the case that supposedly irrational "wishful thinking" is actually a crucial part of how voters make rational sense of their role in democracies. OA link: doi.org/10.1177/0032...

📝Why has a Bukele-style far-right party emerged in Spain—even though VOX already exists? In our new paper, @javierpadilla.bsky.social, @canalejoalvaro.bsky.social and I explain the unexpected rise of SALF ("Let the Party Be Over") in the 2024 EP elections: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.... 1/3

Just discovered that ChatGPT writes as I did during my masters (maybe even early PhD): trying to use grandiloquent words to compensate for a lack of depth in my writing(s)

I never re-read the book 'All souls', by Javier Marías, but my memory of it (and the reason why I think I liked it) is because it mocked/despised a mindless fascination with some characters and traditions orbiting Oxford.

🧪How did COVID-19 affect citizens’ democratic preferences? ➡️ @cescamat.bsky.social A.Arenas A.Falcó & @jordimunoz.bsky.social find a lasting rise in technocratic preferences and a temporary bump in the willingness to sacrifice civil rights and freedoms www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

📣 NEW PAPER ALERT! 🚨 "School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support" Just published in @wepsocial.bsky.social with @nspmartin.bsky.social and @rolandkappe.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1080/0140... 🧵👇

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

Very cool paper! - Pretty sure most people will adopt this check right away. And even if I'm wrong, you know Reviewer 2 will ask for it anyway 😉

Unfortunately, I won't be able to participate in #EPSA2025 😔 - But as I'm coauthor of 3 pieces that will be presented, I feel compelled to share the details in case you're interested in any! - A thread follows 🧵 @epsanet.bsky.social PS: Sadly, 2 of the presentations clash in date and time

Very relevant findings for survey research and survey methodology: Attitudes toward democracy and previous survey engagement appear to play a greater role in panel attrition than whether respondents supported the winning or losing side in the last election 👇🏽

Psychological inoculation is a very popular intervention against online misinfo, but it hasn't been tested using real-world outcomes in realistic scenarios. In a new paper just published in PNAS Nexus, this is what we did: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... Short version: It didn't really work.

New paper out in @electoralstudies.bsky.social where I look at the impact of parties’ age-targeted group appeals on age gaps in voting🧵

Our paper “Long-Term Time Horizons and Support for Public Investment” is open access @psjeditor.bsky.social (w/ @karlpike.bsky.social @philipjcowley.bsky.social). Whether the public supports policy that pays off in the long term depends on what “long term” means. doi.org/10.1111/psj.70040

For the first time all devolved national elections in the UK will use different electoral systems Cool site below by @eoghanly.bsky.social allows you to see how they all work turning votes into seats 👇

🇪🇺🇦🇫 Published Today in CPS 🇪🇺🇦🇫 “Stand by those who share our values” – how refugees fleeing the Taliban improved European attitudes toward immigration Article: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Pre-print: osf.io/preprints/os... Thread: 1/8

People, stop using conjoints: the *ultimate* conjoint is out!

Out now and open access with my wonderful colleagues! How much does wishful thinking affect who people expect to be governing parties before and after elections? 🧵

We'd love feedback on this project 👇 #PoliSky

A funny (and very well known) thing about early-stage research is that data availability often shapes the project. If Klara’s presentation or the cases of Germany and Spain weren’t compelling enough, consider joining the seminar to see insights from our latest addition—the UK 2024 snap election! 🙃

Who does Spiderman vote for? Who you vote for. In a new paper w/ @markuswagner.bsky.social we show that people engage in motivated projection of political identities. In the absence of explicit info on politics, individuals rely on valence to infer the politics of others doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Another success in the second seminar of the BJ-REPS 🧑‍💻! Last Friday we had @klaramueller.bsky.social presenting an awesome joint work with @aleferna.bsky.social on snap elections. Many thanks to the participants and next month more!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present most recent work joint with @aleferna.bsky.social on the effect of snap election calls on vote intention (un)certainty at BJ REPS 🎓 🗳️ Great atmosphere and lovely to see such an engaged crowd of PhDs from Barcelona‘s different universities! #polisky

This is quite a line-up! 👇

New fun pub - The Authentic A**hole (particularly proud of getting title accepted) ✅ Politicians viewed as authentic when they stick to their positions despite pressure ✅ True even when voters disagree with those positions ✅ Authenticity translates to electoral advantage tinyurl.com/25us7y7z

Out in @naturehumbehav.bsky.social Can people tell true from false news? Yes! Our meta-analysis shows that people rate true news as more accurate than false news (d = 1.12) and were better at spotting false news than at recognizing true news (d = 0.32). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I try to refrain from sharing my own views on political matters, but I admit it's becoming harder and harder. IMO this piece is worth of one of those indulgences, with a list of honest and valid criticisms to DOGE's current approach on.ft.com/432SrzN

Honoured that my joint work with @mbarnfield.bsky.social is mentioned in this piece. Also, this is not *just* another example of "Academics Share Posts That Say What They Want to Hear" (this is a silly nod to the title of our paper), I happen to mostly agree with the main argument put forward here 👇

A good news day :) "The Rainbow Vote" 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ is now under contract with @princetonupress.bsky.social Building on observational data & six original experiments, the book explores & explains the distinctiveness of queer voters in Europe and demonstrates how this has both social & political consequences

OK, here is my pre-registered take: Trump will make American immigration attitudes great again, again. goodauthority.org/news/trump-2...

🚨 New paper with @mbarnfield.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/ijpo... "Voters Share Polls That Say What They Want to Hear" was published last week at IJPOR. TL; DR: people are more likely to share polls on social media if their preferred party is in the lead #polisky

Last week, I successfully defended my doctoral thesis at UC3M, and am thrilled to announce that I'm [finally] a doctor (!) cum laude🎓🥳 - Immense thanks to my three examiners (@mcuanti.bsky.social, Homero Gil de Zúñiga & Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu) for their insightful feedback and engaging discussion!

Very happy to share our paper on the trade-offs in the electoral punishment of corruption, co-authored with @sofiabrei.bsky.social, now published in the European Political Science Review @ecpr.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

For those interested, follow the premier journal specialised in public opinion research and methodology (and send us your papers!) 👇

A highly relevant (and perhaps perpetually timely) piece of research on [political] leadership approval during crises 👇🏽

Surely there’s no bias for recommending this list if I feature in - But in all seriousness, it is a very comprehensive bunch of people whom I admire dearly. Give it a go and let’s make #polisky great (again)! 🤓

You always learn stuff reading Matthew, and his new article on temporal policy discounting is no exception 😉👇🏽

Popping in only to say that #ecprgc24 is my final conference as a PhD candidate, and I’m absolutely enjoying it @ecpr.bsky.social - Grateful for the opportunity to present my research here!

🧪 Scientist? 🦋 New to BlueSky? 👀 Wanna find posts by other people in your area and use the right hashtags in your own posts? 📃 Here’s a list of +200 science-related feeds and their hashtags. #AcademicSky #PhDSky

📣 Our colleagues Alejandro Fernández-Roldán and David Teira just published 'The epistemic status of reproducibility in political fact-checking' in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science. Alejandro's thread🧵 below summarizes some key points of the article 👇 #philsky

See below a short 🧵 about my latest article on Political Fact-Checking ('The epistemic status of reproducibility in political fact-checking'), now published in EuroJPS - Ungated: rdcu.be/dztEo 👇 #philsky #polisky

🚨 New article published in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science! Do the guidelines of the International Fact-Checking Network ensure reproducibility as they claim? Can reproducibility help to achieve effective falsehood detection in political discourse? link.springer.com/article/10.1...