I think it's largely true that Harris's loss is mostly explained by macro-level things like the economy and anti-incumbent sentiment. But it's interesting that many political scientists on Bluesky have only convinced themselves of this now after spending 2024 thinking she was probably going to win.

Term limits are probably bad. But we don't really know what the effect of U.S. Senate term limits would be, because we've never observed a U.S. Senate with term limits. We're just extrapolating from research on less prestigious/professional state legislatures. Which, maybe? But it's at least unclear

At least they were union jobs I guess?

I recently learned that 20 American universities actually do have their own mini nuclear reactors, including Idaho State and UMass Lowell neup.inl.gov/infrastructu...

Amazing in retrospect that there was once a poli sci debate about whether majority-minority districts hurt Black Democratic voters because they could break up 2 districts with a moderate White Dem into 1 Black Dem and 1 white GOP district. An example where polarization really has changed the context

There's a disconnect between how Maine Dems view Platner & how people on Bluesky (including many political scientists) view him. I think this raises a lot of academic questions (about national vs local perspectives, social media, etc) that are more interesting than trying to label him as bad or good

The NYT isn't perfect, but I don't get why people are mad about the focus groups. Mass democracy with high voter turnout means people who barely understand what's going on in the government will sometimes determine major electoral outcomes. If you believe in democracy, it's worth understanding them.

They really did ask better survey questions in the 1940s

Looks like we missed the funniest possible outcome, the VA referendum losing by one vote because of Matt Glassman

I was actually thinking this would be an interesting way to dig into the data when people were talking about it a couple of days ago, but must have missed this at the time.

Interesting nuance: "emigrants came disproportionately from the NSDAP’s bourgeois-nationalist wing of merchants, professionals, and early joiners rather than its working-class populist base"

As a Hampshire graduate, this is sad to see. It's a weird place in a lot of ways, but in a world where universities are increasingly just converging towards being exactly the same it's a real loss to have fewer and fewer places actually trying new experiments in what's possible

Caruana's not going to win the Candidates, but at least he's going out with some extremely weird (and, for this game at least, seemingly winning) chess: three pawns for his bishop and they're all on the g file

I had a lot of fun the other day giving a workshop on the modern DID revolution at Syracuse University's Maxwell School — thank you @adam42smith.bsky.social for hosting! I have posted the slides to my website at amandakweiss.com/did if anyone is interested.

This is a much better articulation of something I was trying (and perhaps failing) to express yesterday. More evidence, I suppose, that longer form writing will always be better for this sort of conversation than the quick emotional reactions incentivized by social media.

What exactly are people on the more populist/"dirtbag" left supposed to do? When leftists voted for Nader, liberals got mad at them. Now that they're trying to work within the Democratic Party, liberals also get mad at them. Is there some magical third option?

What a nice move by Anish Giri to basically end any lingering hope Fabiano Caruana has of ever becoming world champion (giving up the bishop, but if fxg6 black can play e4 with checkmate soon to come)

Maybe this is part of why people like The Pitt so much

Finally read this article. More of a meta point, but it's kind of crazy the Atlantic gave a practicing Mormon $10,000 so that he could nearly destroy his life? (I also didn't realize how central of a role Chris Christie played in all this). www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

This is a tough issue. Banning a vice people are going to do anyway is arguably illiberal. It's also true that legalization is causing major social problems. But even if we banned it, people would still do it. How much enforcement are liberal skeptics of legalized sports betting comfortable with?

This is how I learned we have a softball team

The rare song where I love the bass, guitar, and drum parts equally and can't imagine it without any of them

I think this is the median position of social science academics. It's just that having a middleground/uncertain position on something doesn't lend itself to enthusiastic posting. IRL conversations about AI seem much more balanced than online conversations among self selected enthusiasts/critics.

But how will I know if someone with an incredibly common name has been cited in a field I've never thought about before

Not sure this will exactly hurt her support among the Teamsters leadership

The historical political economy crowd is about to run one million difference in differences models, but not sure what it will mean, if anything, for more qualitative scholars.

The new Yoko Ono bot on chess.com is actually kind of a neat idea. Based on her 1966 art piece Play It By Trust, all the pieces are the same color. I guess that was meant to make an anti-war point, but in practical terms a lot of chess players can probably keep track of which is which.

I think the poli sci rediscovery of Reconstruction—in emphasizing the Radical Republicans/democratization of the South—has missed the role of finance & industry in the GOP coalition, which only became more influential as time went on. Federal occupation costs $$$ & they were the ones with the $$$.

Pascal’s day trader

So close to setting up a chess board correctly, but the black king is on the wrong square

Having finally dabbled a bit with Claude, I'm curious what academic journal editors/etc. see as the line between AI use that needs to be reported (journals are increasingly requiring authors to report AI use) and what doesn't.

It should be illegal to do this in 2026

Personally I think this might be a bit much

They're gonna do betting odds during the Alex Honnold climbing the skyscraper thing aren't they

I think it's worth considering that being a "young Republican" is, in some ways, weird behavior. By contrast, it's normal to be a somewhat apolitical, vaguely conservative young person who ages into voting Republican after they get married and have kids. As this cohort ages, you'll get more of that.

I generally think power metal is too corny, but I have to say that discovering Unleash the Archers' cover of "Northwest Passage" has vastly improved my enjoyment of shoveling my driveway so far this winter www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRD3...

This is (somewhat ironically) interesting descriptive work. But can't help but be struck that the "credibility revolution" is basically driven by the rise of survey experiments using what I assume are disproportionately online samples.

A tension I think about a lot—and I don't know what to do with it—is that publicly funded universities are generally normatively better idea than private schools, but it's just not realistic in an empirical sense to expect conservative states to keep funding them while protecting academic freedom.

Genuinely and non-ironically think this site is better for academics when academics are actually fighting with each other on here occasionally instead of just constantly agreeing.

The poker thing gives me an excuse to share Zohran Mamdani's US Chess Federation profile page: ratings.uschess.org/player/12794...

I like when you're watching the most macho American sport and they go to commercial with a real sexy Depeche Mode song

Really unfair this happened today instead of last semester when I was teaching my New Deal class

Well, at least we didn't make online survey experiments the dominant methodological approach in major areas of the discipline

This is true historically, but there's plenty of reason to think sectionalism is much less important now than it was in the past, whereas the sorts of rural vs urban divides that exist in every state have become way more important.

Incredible contribution to the process tracing literature

I love how accidentally terrifying this photo is

Can't believe this is a real county name

It's good that polling bias declined in 2024 from 2016/2020, but very notable that the bias was still in the same direction. It "should" be the case that the bias "could have" been against Harris (some people on here speculated that), but, no, polls still systematically under-sample Trump types.

People are using a little pocket computer to bicker about a thing someone said about a thing someone else said about a thing another person did in a state that has like 7 people. The human brain wasn’t designed for this sort of thing.