Topic
Social Science
A collection of 90 issues
The Fairest of All
In the 2006 CCES, respondents were asked, “Which network do you think provides the fairest coverage of national news?”. Here's a plot of proportions of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents thinking so about some of the news channels. Compare the results with Perceived media ideology of some news sources.
Not Feeling as Warm toward Whites Anymore
The difference between Whites’ thermometer ratings (0 = cold, 100=warm) of Whites and Blacks has gone down relatively steadily over the past 50 or so years.
However, the decline is almost entirely explained by the drop in ratings of Whites.
Aging Curves of Political Knowledge
Now, aging curves of political knowledge by cohort.
Bias is in the Eyes of the Beholder
Figure credit: Yphtach Lelkes. From joint work on selective exposure.
Randomly Redistricting More Efficiently
In a forthcoming article, Chen and Rodden estimate the effect of ‘Unintentional gerrymandering’ on number of seats that go to a particular party. To do so they pick a precinct at random, and then add (randomly chosen) adjacent precincts to it till the district is of a certain size (decided
A Potential Source of Bias in Estimating the Impact of Televised Campaign Ads
Or When Treatment is Strategic, No-Intent-to-Treat Intent-to-Treat Effects can be biased
One popular strategy for estimating the impact of televised campaign ads is by exploiting ‘accidental spillover’ (see Huber and Arceneaux 2007). The identification strategy builds on the following facts: Ads on local television can only be targeted at the
Moving Away From the Main Opposing Party
Two things are often stated about American politics: political elites are increasingly polarized, and the issue positions of the masses haven't budged much. Assuming such to be the case, one expects the average distance between where partisans place themselves and where they place the ‘in-party’ (or the ‘out-party’
State of the Union
Over the past forty years, the proportion of respondents reporting at least one union member in the household has declined precipitously (Source: American National Election Studies).
Interviewer Assessed Political Information
In the National Election Studies (NES), interviewers have been asked to rate respondent’s level of political information: “Respondent’s general level of information about politics and public affairs seemed — Very high, Fairly high, Average, Fairly low, Very low.” John Zaller, among others, has argued that these ratings measure political