New website! 📖 With updated information on my book manuscript on: ❌ How mass protest fails to prevent election manipulation ❌ How dictators who manipulate more are better at defeating protest ⚖️ What *does* interfere with manipulation efforts colejharvey.github.io/book.html

President Trump at only +2.6 net approval in Oklahoma seems hard to believe, and I'm sure reliable point estimates are hard to pin down for such a small state. But then again my neighbor recently replaced his Trump flag with an American flag, so... 👀

I am adopting ~10 chapters from this book for my intro comparative politics course this fall!

It was painful to write an obituary, from an academic's perspective, for one of Russia's most important civil society organizations @themoscowtimes.com www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/07/11/w...

There definitely seems to have been a phase shift this semester

Денег нет, но вы держитесь! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%2...

I am genuinely very curious how easily the president will be able to remove from power a man who: 1) apparently has access to / control over govt payroll and Social Security payment infrastructure, and 2) has a large portion of his wealth tied to the idea that he has governing influence 🤔🤔🤔

Musk's turnout-buying scheme in WI is probably illegal (electionlawblog.org?p=149196). As a social scientist of election integrity, what's interesting here is the effort to build a patronage-based election manipulating apparatus in a society that doesn't have one.

Very encouraging for democratic resilience

Not to add undue alarm, but two things I have not yet seen in the Discourse: 1) If Musk's team has made code changes to the the federal payments system, what happens if he is sidelined? I.e. if Trump pushes him out, does anyone else know how to cut the checks? www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

Perhaps the senior Democratic cohort thinks they can replay 2005 and W. Bush's failed social security reform: Trump overreach ➡️ Dems taking Congress in 2026. But this won't work: the fight is about the rules of the game, not just policy. A few thoughts from a scholar of electoral authoritarianism 🧵

We noticed there wasn't a starter pack on authoritarian politics yet – Now there is! go.bsky.app/UFHn7sS Spread and ask to join!

Beyond the problems identified in the quoted posted, each new post-elections news story like this one (www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/b...) takes my fury to new heights, considering how many pre-election stories were variations on "BREAKING: Trump campaigns in Wisconsin"

Line stretching to the construction sign was ~15% of the people waiting to vote in Tulsa. Took about 1.75hrs. Inspiring to see the commitment, but sad state of voting in OK. Tulsa (380,000 registered voters) has *2* early polling places. Compare to Durham NC (250,000 RV) with 12 polling places!

Situation in 🇬🇪 developing rapidly; major opposition parties are refusing their parliamentary mandates and the country's president refuses to recognize the official results (which show the ruling party with a narrow majority). civil.ge/archives/631... For background and survey data, see quoted post!

While we Americans are justifiably stressed abt Nov. 5, there's another consequential election coming up--in the Republic of Georgia. Like the US, Georgia is undergoing political polarization and threats to democracy. See my analysis here with original survey data, via PONARS: tinyurl.com/66s3k2t6

Agreed, which makes the prediction markets wildly overconfident in a Trump win, in my (non-betting) opinion:

So the last 12 hours or so have significantly increased the odds of Supreme Court reform in 2029, though, right?

I have little doubt that SCOTUS will rule in a way that benefits candidate Trump; the question remains how much damage will be done to the constitutional order along the way. [PS: most authoritarian presidential regimes I know have absolute presidential immunity, note how well that works out.]

Hello polisky ! To introduce myself on Bluesky: I study authoritarian politics, election manipulation, and geographically Russia, Ukraine, etc. To get started, I wrote a longish thread here on the attempted pogrom in Dagestan two days ago, and what it tells us about 🇷🇺 politics. Thoughts welcome!

Like Kevin notes here, when the videos from Makhachkala cycled up from regional accounts to more generalist journos/commentators, the vibe shifted to "Look what Putin has done." I think that's right...but in the most roundabout way possible. 1/n on Dagestan and authoritarianism, and RU politics

The Republican party has been having hard days doing politics at the politics factory

Hello Comparativesky and PoliSkyData 📊 folks! Posting to see if anyone knows of an archive of the precinct-level results for 🇺🇦 Ukraine's 2019 elections. The official databases are 404-ed, and the Wayback Machine archive is naturally spotty. Appreciate any ideas!

@profmusgrave.bsky.social Hello! Could you add me to the Polisky list at your convenience? Thanks for your help; I found the blog post on adjusting to Bluesky very helpful