Brendan Nyhan

New at CJR: Fact-checking versus strategy

My new post at CJR analyzes how media organizations in New Hampshire and at the national level have covered recent misleading ads by Rick Perry and Mitt Romney:

In Sunday’s Boston Globe, reporter Michael Levenson warned of a coming “year of mudslinging.” This “rough, negative, and confusing advertising onslaught,” as Levenson calls it, is foreshadowed by recent ads run by Texas governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney which are “drawing howls of protest from Democrats but no apologies from the Republicans’ campaigns.”

In both cases, the evidence is compelling that the candidate ads were misleading...

How should reporters here in New Hampshire or at the national level cover these sorts of claims?

Read the whole thing for more.

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New at CJR: Covering a "national campaign" in NH

I'm starting a regular gig as a New Hampshire campaign correspondent for Columbia Journalism Review. My first post, which focuses on the challenges of covering an increasingly national campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, is now online -- here's an excerpt:

At one time, the hope was that people in early states would have a unique opportunity to avoid the media filter and get to know the candidates and what they stand for on a more intimate level. In this cycle, however, analysis of how the candidates are faring threatens to crowd out the actual content of the campaign, even in early states like New Hampshire. The danger, in other words, is that the presidential campaign will be Politico-ized all the way down.

Is there a better approach? Rather than adopting the prevailing framework from national journalists, we should hope that state reporters write in a framework that is attentive to strategic factors but still places their primary emphasis on the positions and proposals of the candidates.

Hope you'll go to CJR and read the whole thing.

The attack on election forecasting straw men

In recent days, journalists, bloggers, and commentators have reared up to bash a fictitious conventional wisdom about election forecasting.

The premise for many of these statements is that political scientists believe that campaigns and other non-economic factors don't matter in presidential elections. For instance, The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky describes "the political-science theory of presidential elections and economic determinism" as "pretty much strictly a function of economic conditions." At Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende states that Emory's Alan Abramowitz thinks "presidential elections can be reduced to a simple equation." And in a Bloomberg View column, Ronald Klain, the former chief of staff for Al Gore and Joe Biden, writes that "a group of political scientists, mathematicians and scholars have argued that a handful of factors determine of presidential elections, irrespective of the campaigns."

But as the political scientists John Sides and Seth Masket have already pointed out, these are straw men. Very few political scientists think campaigns don't matter or that elections can be perfectly forecast in advance. In an earlier post, Sides expressed this point well:

Because people continually overestimate the effect of campaigns, this blog holds up the other end of the dialectic by emphasizing the economy and defending those who do. But plenty of research has identified the effects of campaigns too... it's time to abandon this whole it's-either-the-economy-or-the-campaign dichotomy...

Even New York Times blogger Nate Silver, who has become something of a professional critic of political scientists, concedes the point in a post today, writing that the view Klain ascribes to forecasters "is certainly not the majority opinion within the discipline."

What's bizarre about this flurry of articles is that election forecasting is such an obscure topic in the political press. The conventional wisdom that presidential election outcomes are largely unpredictable in advance and that the outcomes we observe are primarily the result of campaign strategy is vastly more prominent. So why is everyone so worried about forecasting models?

A related straw man is the idea that political scientists think their models make perfectly precise predictions. Here, for instance, is what Silver wrote:

[P]olitical scientists as a group badly overestimate how accurately they can forecast elections from economic variables alone. I have written up lengthy critiques of several of these models in the past...

The three posts that Silver links to critique a historian's non-quantitative model which few political scientists would endorse, Ray Fair's forecasting model, and the "Bread and Peace" model of Douglas Hibbs. Only the last two are representative of the field, and political scientists have criticized Fair's model at length in the past (PDFs).

More generally, as Jacob Montgomery and I wrote last week, there is certainly reason to be concerned that these models are too confident about their predictions, but most sophisticated quantitative researchers in political science are aware of these concerns and do not interpret the forecasts so literally. Moreover, we can evaluate which models perform well in making forecasts beyond the data used in estimation and combine their predictions to create more accurate forecasts with appropriate estimates of uncertainty, as Montgomery and his co-authors do in their article (PDF). Silver dismisses this exercise as a "game show" and disparages any attempt to evaluate the models by their future performance -- "most of how they perform over the next few elections will be determined by luck" -- but we can and should aspire to better.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

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Forecasting 2012: How much does ideology matter?

By Brendan Nyhan and Jacob Montgomery

One year in advance of the 2012 election, New York Times blogger Nate Silver published a presidential forecasting model. The model includes measures of presidential approval and economic performance -- standard variables in election forecasting models -- as well as a novel measure of challenger ideology that appears to have substantial effects. Based on this model, Silver estimates that "The difference between [Mitt] Romney and [Rick] Perry amounts to about 4 percentage points" -- a huge predicted effect that could easily swing the outcome of the election. Consider, for instance, Seth Masket's graphic illustrating how the predicted probability of a Republican win depends heavily on the estimated ideology of the GOP candidate:

Though candidate positioning is likely to influence presidential election outcomes, there are important reasons to question whether the challenger ideology effect Silver identifies is so powerful.

First, when the economy is growing and presidential approval is high, strong moderate candidates may be scared off from entering the race, leaving only ideologues. A similar effect has been shown when one party has held the presidency for a long period of time. When this happens, the opposition tends to perform better due to the perception that is "time for a change", and opposition parties are likely to nominate more moderate candidates in the hopes of regaining control of the White House at the expense of ideological purity.

Second, the estimates of challenger ideology that Silver uses are primarily drawn from voter perceptions of the candidates. However, these perceptions are driven by the content of the campaign, which is itself shaped by the economic context. Candidates who appear extreme in one era may seem less so in the next (consider the changing perceptions of Ronald Reagan between 1976 and 1980, for instance). For all of these reasons, Silver's estimates of the effects of challenger ideology and election outcomes are likely to be significantly exaggerated.

In addition, as we demonstrate below, Silver's model does not substantially improve the accuracy of presidential election forecasts, which casts further doubt on the importance of candidate ideology (see also Alan Abramowitz).

Silver's model includes three predictor variables - presidential approval one year in advance of the election, election year GDP growth, and an estimate of challenger extremism (i.e., the extremism of the candidate of the party that doesn't control the presidency at the time of the election). Using just three variables to predict the outcome of a presidential election may seem simplistic, but in forecasting simplicity is a virtue. With only 17 elections since 1944 to work with, including many indicators in a statistical model is likely to result in the identification of factors that are highly correlated with the election results we have already observed, but which do a horrible job in predicting the future.

For related reasons, Silver criticizes other forecasting models that use relatively obscure economic variables such as growth in real per-capita disposable income:

The government tracks literally 39,000 economic indicators each year.... When you have this much data to sort through but only 17 elections since 1944 to test them upon, some indicators will perform superficially better based on chance alone.... The advantage of looking at G.D.P. is that it represents the broadest overall evaluation of economic activity in the United States.

As Silver notes, there are legitimate reasons to worry that the search for statistically significant predictors will result in identifying indicators that perform well by "chance alone" (an extreme example: Washington Redskins home wins). Using such indicators can cause us to be overconfident in our statistical models (what statisticians call overfitting the data) and tends to make accurately predicting future events -- like next year's election -- very difficult or impossible.

As you might expect, scholars have spilled a lot of ink debating the best forecasting indicators for outcomes ranging from the paths of hurricanes to stock prices. But rather than have a philosophical debate, we can evaluate this concern empirically to determine the extent to which specific forecasting models can successfully predict election outcomes beyond the range of the data used to estimate them. In particular, if models are spuriously identifying chance relationships, then they should perform relatively poorly after the point at which they was first published.

To do so, we began with Silver's source data, which was compiled from the New York Times website and generously shared with us by Harry Enten.* Using a standard linear regression model, we almost precisely replicated the coefficients in the Javascript code for the interactive calculator on the Times website.

As a starting point for evaluating Silver's model, we first compare it with the Douglas Hibbs' "Bread and Peace" model, which uses the real per-capita disposable income variable described above. Silver has previously criticized the Hibbs model as performing relatively poorly outside the range of the years in which the model was first estimated (1952-1988). Here is the key graphic in question:

However, when we estimate both models using the same data as Silver's graph above (1952-1988) and predict the outcome for the 1992-2008 period in terms of the share of the two-party vote received by the party of the president (the standard outcome variable in the literature), we find that Hibbs's model generally performs better than Silver's (Stata data and do files available upon request):

Of course, these are not the only available models for comparison. Indeed, political scientists and economists have estimated dozens of other presidential forecasting models over the past twenty years. For example, PS: Political Science and Politics published a pre-election symposium in 2008 that included presidential election forecasts from numerous scholars (see also here, here, here, or here). Most such models make predictions based on economic conditions and/or public opinion, but they typically do not include a measures of candidate ideology.

While it is fun to compare the performance of these forecasts, we should be clear that there is no one "correct" model. Rather than relying on a single model, we can instead combine the forecasts of numerous models using a technique called ensemble Bayesian model averaging, which creates a composite forecast weighted by the predictive performance of the component models. This approach was developed for combining weather forecasting models (see here) and has been applied to political outcomes in a paper (PDF) by Montgomery, Ward, and Hollenbach.

The figure below, which uses the methodology described by MWH to create Figure 3 in their paper, compares one-step-ahead predictions from Silver's model, the most recent versions of six prominent models in the literature (Campbell's "Trial-Heat and Economy Model," Abramowitz's "Time-for-Change Model," Hibbs's "Bread and Peace Model," Fair's presidential vote-share model, Lewis-Beck and Tien's "Jobs Model Forecast," and Erikson and Wlezien's "Leading Economic Indicators and Poll" forecast**), and a composite forecast created using the ensemble technique. The forecast of each model is plotted with its 67% and 90% confidence intervals against the eventual outcome, which is represented with a dotted line:

Silver's model performs well in some elections, but it is very inaccurate in comparison to its peers in 1992 and 2008. With those exceptions, it does not appear to differ from other models dramatically, though its overall performance is worse on average than the comparison models. The ensemble forecast appears to perform quite well, producing predictions that are relatively close to the actual outcome.

The figure below, which is adapted from Table 4 in MWH, compares the accuracy of the models more precisely using mean average error -- an intuitive (though imperfect) metric for comparing forecasting models that measures the average amount by which they mispredict the final outcome.

We can see that all of the models are relatively accurate on average. They mispredict the vote share for the incumbent party by an average of 1.7 to 3.4 percentage points -- an impressive record given that most models include only two or three variables. By this metric, Silver's forecasts are the least accurate in the group and the ensemble forecast is the most accurate. (See MWH for a discussion of the extent to which these models appropriately express uncertainty about their predictions.) Since some of these models -- and implicitly the ensemble model that relies on them -- have been around for twenty years, this result should not be especially surprising. The literature on presidential forecasting is relatively mature.

At this point, we should note two important but wonky caveats. First, we follow MWH in using the most recent version of each of the forecasting models from political science. In some cases, model specifications may have been revised to account for previous results, which could artificially improve their performance in one-step-ahead prediction tasks (see footnote 14 in MWH). Second, these models differ in the extent to which we would even expect them to make accurate forecasts far in advance of a presidential election. For instance, Campbell's model includes the president's trial heat performance on the Labor Day before the election. Silver's model, on the other hand, takes on the more ambitious challenge of using approval data from a year before the election (though it relies on GDP growth during the election year, which is of course not available in advance).

Ultimately, almost every analyst agrees at this point that it is still too soon to say with much confidence whether President Obama will win in November. In particular, there is still too much uncertainty about the state of the economy next year. However, both theory and data suggest that the conservatism of his opponent is likely to matter less than Silver's model suggests.

Correction 11/10 1:19 PM: A previous version of this post stated that James Campbell's "Trial Heat and Economy" model uses presidential approval on the Labor Day before the election as a predictor. It actually uses the president's performance in a trial heat poll against his opponent on Labor Day.

Update 11/11 10:57 AM: We would like to be clarify that the model comparison we performed did not directly test whether adding estimates of challenger ideology to existing forecasting models would improve their performance. It would be desirable to do so. In the time that we had, our goals were to (a) raise concerns about causal inference and the difficulty of measuring challenger ideology and (b) compare the performance of Silver's model against others in the forecasting literature.

Update 11/16 1:48 PM: See also Silver's followup post and my response to him and other recent critics of election forecasting.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

* Silver's challenger ideology data are primarily derived from The Party Decides by Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller. We used the exact data underlying Figure 4.1 in The Party Decides as provided by Noel. The Times presents these data on a 0-100 scale but the underlying data are actually on a 0-7 scale based on estimated distance from the ideological center. We used Silver's challenger ideology estimates for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 but convert them from the 0-100 scale to the original Party Decides metric.

** All of these authors generously shared their data with MWH.

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Perry's "16th century" gaffe (with audio)

I attended the post-debate fraternity event last night where Texas governor Rick Perry mistakenly placed the American Revolution in the 16th century:

"Our Founding Fathers never meant for Washington, D.C. to be the fount of all wisdom. As a matter of fact they were very much afraid if that because they’d just had this experience with this far-away government that had centralized thought process and planning and what have you, and then it was actually the reason that we fought the revolution in the 16th century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown if you will."

The incident has been widely reported, but I haven't seen any audio or video, so here is an MP3 audio clip from my recording of the event. It's low-quality but hopefully intelligible.

While I think the whole issue is pretty trivial, it does threaten to solidify the conventional wisdom that Perry is dumb. Yesterday, for instance, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Joseph Rago said at a pre-debate panel at Dartmouth (where I am on the faculty) that Perry seemed like he "had some sort of mental disability" during the previous debate. A few more incidents like this and Perry will be covered more like Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle than Mitt Romney. And as Palin and Quayle can tell you, once the narrative forms, reporters start looking for anecdotes to reinforce the story they want to tell. It's a cycle that is very difficult to break.

Update 10/12 11:59 AM: NBC News has video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Perry's challenges in Dartmouth GOP debate

Going into tonight's GOP debate at Dartmouth College (where I am a faculty member), the challenge for Rick Perry, as TAP's Jamelle Bouie notes, is to reassure nervous elites that he's a capable national-level candidate while attracting support from anti-Romney conservatives who have swung toward Herman Cain:

Romney is leading the field with 38 percent support among likely voters in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Herman Cain takes the second place spot with 20 percent of the vote, and Ron Paul finishes third with 13 percent of the vote. The remaining candidates, including Rick Perry, poll at 5 percent or less.

This obviously isn’t great news for the Texas governor. But it’s not terrible news either. The simple fact is that Herman Cain isn’t a serious candidate. His policy knowledge is slim and his political organization is nonexistent. Yes, he’s traveled to a few primary states, but that has more to do with book sales than it does with actually running for president. Sooner or later, his bubble will pop, and he’ll fall back down to earth.

But while Cain’s candidacy is a sideshow, his constituency is not. Cain represents the largest faction in the anti-Romney wing of the Republican base, which is as large—if not larger—than Romney’s own base of support. In New Hampshire and elsewhere, these voters have attached to Cain for lack of a better choice.

To put this another way, Herman Cain has sucked the oxygen out of Perry’s bid for anti-Romney conservatives. As such, Perry’s task for tomorrow’s debate and the weeks ahead, is to reassure Republicans of his conservative credentials and re-establish himself as the real alternative to Romney. Part of that, as I noted earlier, will involve attacks on Romney’s record. But part of it, I think, will require Perry to gently show conservatives that while Herman Cain is a great guy, he’s not quite presidential material.

The problem is that Perry is uniquely ill-suited to go after Cain. First, the former Godfather Pizza CEO's primary vulnerability is his lack of detailed policy knowledge, but the same is true of Perry. In addition, it would be awkward for Perry to target Cain so soon after the controversy over a racially offensive term painted on a rock at a hunting camp leased by Perry and his family. Cain, the only African American running for the GOP nomination, said afterward that Perry showed "a lack of sensitivity."

For these reasons, it's likely that Perry will instead focus his fire on Romney as he did at the Value Voters Summit and in an online video. He has to hope that other contenders will take on Cain in the hopes of attracting some of the gadfly candidate's supporters once his boomlet dissipates.

What's been strange to observe, though, is how Perry's handlers and allies have failed to play in the expectations game in a savvy way. Rather than downplaying his likely performance in the debate tonight, they seemed to promise a major improvement in a New York Times story on Perry's struggles that included an unfortunate comparison of the candidate to a "tired puppy." By comparison, expectations for George W. Bush were set so low that it was considered a victory when he "survived" his first debate in 1999 "without any major gaffe" and the AP later reported that "Even the Texan's allies sounded underwhelmed" by his early debate performances. If Perry's camp is smart, they will avoid creating an expectation of a dramatic turning point that he is unlikely to deliver.

Going forward, Perry's principal challenge is to stay viable so that more elites don't defect to Romney. He is well-funded and has a favorable primary calendar. Regardless of his standing in national polls, he has a decent chance to mount a comeback against Romney because support in multi-candidate primaries is so fluid. When there are relatively minor ideological differences between candidates, it's possible to make rapid gains as voters shift to their second or third choices for strategic or stylistic reasons. If Perry can adapt to the rigors of a national-level campaign, his odds of consolidating enough of the anti-Romney vote to win the nomination are significantly better than the current Intrade estimate of 18.9%.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

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New column on Obama/Truman differences

I have a new column at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball on why Harry Truman's 1948 campaign against the "Do-Nothing Congress" may be a misleading model for President Obama:

[T]he dramatic narrative of Truman’s victory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. As University at Buffalo, SUNY political scientist James Campbell pointed out in 2004 (gated), Truman’s comeback was fueled by “sizzling” growth in the year before the election (the time when voters tend to most strongly reward economic improvement)...

This well-timed surge in economic growth is likely to have played an important role in the success of Truman’s campaign. By contrast, the International Monetary Fund just downgraded its forecast for US economic growth in 2011 and 2012 to 1.5% and 1.8%, respectively.

The column, which updates a 2010 post on this blog, directly contrasts economic growth under Truman in the six quarters before the election with the forecasts for the equivalent period under Obama. The difference is dramatic. Read it to find out more.

The unwritten rules of academia

My friend and former UM RWJ colleague Fabio Rojas, a sociology professor at Indiana University, has a new ebook based on his popular series of Grad School Rulz posts on the Orgtheory blog. If you're in a Ph.D. program or thinking about pursuing a career in academia, this is a necessary purchase (especially for only $2). Like Fabio, I had no idea what I was getting into when I went to graduate school and found it difficult to learn the rules about how academia worked (which are almost entirely unwritten). I would put this book alongside Robert Peters's Getting What You Came For as essential texts for the aspiring academic.

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NYT seduced by neuroscience again

Here's a scientific article that needs careful attention among editors of the New York Times op-ed page:

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people’s abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) x 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two non-expert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without. The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on non-experts’ judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.

Back in 2007, the Times published a a questionable op-ed titled "This Is Your Brain on Politics" that tried to interpret voters' mental states based on fMRI data from 20 subjects. The analysis was promptly debunked by a group of prominent cognitive neuroscientists, who wrote that the article uses "flawed reasoning to draw unfounded conclusions."

Unfortunately, the NYT doesn't appear to have learned its lesson. On Saturday, it published an op-ed by a neuromarketer named Martin Lindstrom claiming that consumers showed brain activity consistent with "love" when "exposed separately to audio and to video of a ringing and vibrating iPhone." And again, it's not able to withstand serious scrutiny. Here's The Neurocritic:

Lindstrom committed a logical fallacy -- one cannot directly infer the participants' cognitive or emotional state from the observed pattern of brain activity in neuroimaging experiments. See papers by Aguirre (2003) and Poldrack (2006).

Here's UT-Austin neuroscientist Russ Poldrack:

Insular cortex may well be associated with feelings of love and compassion, but this hardly proves that we are in love with our iPhones. In Tal Yarkoni's recent paper in Nature Methods, we found that the anterior insula was one of the most highly activated part of the brain, showing activation in nearly 1/3 of all imaging studies! Further, the well-known studies of love by Helen Fisher and colleagues don't even show activation in the insula related to love, but instead in classic reward system areas. So far as I can tell, this particular reverse inference was simply fabricated from whole cloth. I would have hoped that the NY Times would have learned its lesson from the last episode.

And here's Yarkoni himself, a neuroscientist at UC-Boulder:

This brings us to what might be the biggest whopper of all, and the real driver of the article title: the claim that "most striking of all was the flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion".

...[T]he insula (or at least the anterior part of the insula) plays a very broad role in goal-directed cognition. It really is activated when you're doing almost anything that involves, say, following instructions an experimenter gave you, or attending to external stimuli, or mulling over something salient in the environment...

The insula is one of a few 'hotspots' where activation is reported very frequently in neuroimaging articles (the other major one being the dorsal medial frontal cortex). So, by definition, there can't be all that much specificity to what the insula is doing, since it pops up so often. To put it differently, as Russ and others have repeatedly pointed out, the fact that a given region activates when people are in a particular psychological state (e.g., love) doesn't give you license to conclude that that state is present just because you see activity in the region in question. If language, working memory, physical pain, anger, visual perception, motor sequencing, and memory retrieval all activate the insula, then knowing that the insula is active is of very little diagnostic value. That's not to say that some psychological states might not be more strongly associated with insula activity (again, you can see this on Neurosynth if you switch the image type to 'reverse inference' and browse around); it's just that, probabilistically speaking, the mere fact that the insula is active gives you very little basis for saying anything concrete about what people are experiencing.

In fact, to account for Lindstrom's findings, you don't have to appeal to love or addiction at all. There's a much simpler way to explain why seeing or hearing an iPhone might elicit insula activation. For most people, the onset of visual or auditory stimulation is a salient event that causes redirection of attention to the stimulated channel. I'd be pretty surprised, actually, if you could present any picture or sound to participants in an fMRI scanner and not elicit robust insula activity. Orienting and sustaining attention to salient things seems to be a big part of what the anterior insula is doing (whether or not that's ultimately its 'core' function). So the most appropriate conclusion to draw from the fact that viewing iPhone pictures produces increased insula activity is something vague like "people are paying more attention to iPhones", or "iPhones are particularly salient and interesting objects to humans living in 2011." Not something like "no, really, you love your iPhone!"

In sum, the NYT screwed up. Lindstrom appears to have a habit of making overblown claims about neuroimaging evidence, so it's not surprising he would write this type of piece; but the NYT editorial staff is supposedly there to filter out precisely this kind of pseudoscientific advertorial. And they screwed up. It's a particularly big screw-up given that (a) as of right now, Lindstrom's Op-Ed is the single most emailed article on the NYT site, and (b) this incident almost perfectly recapitulates another NYT article 4 years ago in which some neuroscientists and neuromarketers wrote a grossly overblown Op-Ed claiming to be able to infer, in detail, people's opinions about presidential candidates. That time, Russ Poldrack and a bunch of other big names in cognitive neuroscience wrote a concise rebuttal that appeared in the NYT (but unfortunately, isn't linked to from the original Op-Ed, so anyone who stumbles across the original now has no way of knowing how ridiculous it is). One hopes the NYT follows up in similar fashion this time around. They certainly owe it to their readers -- some of whom, if you believe Lindstrom, are now in danger of dumping their current partners for their iPhones.

Update 10/5 7:09 AM: The NYT ran a letter to the editor criticizing Lindstrom's op-ed from Poldrack and 44 other neuroscientists. An unedited version of the letter is here.

Does Obama face a racial double standard?

Writing in The Nation, Tulane political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry suggests that President Obama may be suffering from "liberal electoral racism," which she defines as "the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors." After arguing that Obama's record of progressive achievements is comparable to President Clinton's, she argues that "[t]he 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent," which could be seen as "the triumph of a more subtle form of racism":

These comparisons are neither an attack on the Clinton administration nor an apology for the Obama administration. They are comparisons of two centrist Democratic presidents who faced hostile Republican majorities in the second half of their first terms, forcing a number of political compromises. One president is white. The other is black.

In 1996 President Clinton was re-elected with a coalition more robust and a general election result more favorable than his first win. His vote share among women increased from 46 to 53 percent, among blacks from 83 to 84 percent, among independents from 38 to 42 percent, and among whites from 39 to 43 percent.

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

Since 2008, there has been a disturbing accumulation of evidence that race affects how Americans view Obama. You can't understand Americans' views of Obama without considering the role of racial affect. With that said, however, there are other explanations for the differences in the support received by Obama and Clinton.

First, it's not surprising that Obama's approval numbers are relatively weak because the economy -- which plays the dominant role in presidential approval and electoral performance -- has performed worse under him than it did under Clinton. Here, for instance, is a comparison of how nonfarm employment has changed under the two presidents relative to their first month in office:

Even if Obama is not held responsible for the economic downturn he inherited, job growth since the recession ended has been weaker than it was during the comparable period in Clinton's term.

In addition, Harris-Perry cites Clinton's increased support among various groups in 1996 compared to 1992. However, much of the difference between the results is attributable to the decreased performance of Ross Perot in 1996 -- Clinton only increased his share of the two-party vote marginally between those elections (53.5% in 1992 versus 54.7% in 1996).

In addition, the decline in Obama approval among white Americans since 2009 is not strictly comparable to the change in Clinton's electoral performance between 1992 and 1996. Gallup data show that Clinton actually only averaged 44% approval among whites during the third year of his term (he reached 52% approval among whites during 1996 as the economy continued to strengthen).

It is far too early, of course, to know how race will affect Obama's performance in the general election in November 2012. It may also be true that liberals do not give Obama sufficient credit for his legislative accomplishments. But for the moment at least, I don't think we can't confidently attribute the differences between Obama's and Clinton's support among the general public to race.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

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As will now be customary, the Twitter roundup is below the fold. Reminder: My new Twitter-free RSS feed is now available.

New Twitter-free RSS feed

Thanks to a tip from Lorin Hochstein, I was able to set up an RSS feed using Yahoo Pipes that excludes the Twitter roundups. I would recommend switching to that if you use RSS/Google Reader to follow the blog and prefer not to read them. Hope this setup works better for everyone; please let me know if you have other suggestions.

Will Solyndra be the first major Obama scandal?

Back in May, I wrote an article drawing on my research into presidential scandal (PDF) which noted that Obama had managed to avoid a major scandal for more than two years:

One of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals. Since Watergate, presidential and executive branch scandal has been an inescapable feature of the American presidency, but the current administration has not yet suffered a major scandal, which I define as a widespread elite perception of wrongdoing. What happened, and what are the odds that the administration’s streak will continue?

Obama has been extremely fortunate: My research (PDF) on presidential scandals shows that few presidents avoid scandal for as long as he has. In the 1977-2008 period, the longest that a president has gone without having a scandal featured in a front-page Washington Post article is 34 months – the period between when President Bush took office in January 2001 and the Valerie Plame scandal in October 2003. Obama has already made it almost as long despite the lack of a comparable event to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The principal reason he has escaped scandal for so long, I argued, is the congested news cycle - Obama's presidency has been consumed by major exogenous news events (Middle Eastern revolts, the shooting of Rep. Gabriel Giffords, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, etc.) as well as the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Nonetheless, I argued that "the likelihood of a presidential or executive branch scandal before the 2012 election [is] quite high." How has that prediction fared?

Well, there hasn't been a major scandal yet according to the definition I use in my research, but the controversy over the White House's role in providing loans to the failed clean energy company Solyndra shows signs that it could be the first of Obama's term. Elspeth Reeve at Atlantic Wire has written a followup report on whether the President will break George W. Bush's record for the longest scandal-free period in the contemporary era:

Mark it on your calendars: if President Obama has just 20 days to go -- October 6! -- in order to claim the record as the most scandal-free president since 1977. The prior record holder is also his predecessor: George W. Bush, who in the appraisal of Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan, hit the first scandal of his presidency on October 5, 2003, with the Valerie Plame affair. Nyhan's study this past May predicted that Obama was due for a scandal any day and the Solyndra loan matter may just be the issue that attaches the first S-word to Obama. Literally. 

The criteria for what amounts to a scandal according to Nyhan is whether a news story on the front page of The Washington Post uses that word "scandal" in the reporter's own voice to describe the president or his administration...

Bush made it 34 months before the controversy over the White House's outing of then-undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame hit The Post's front page on October 5, 2003...

Obama had a close call with the ATF blunder Operation Fast and Furious and other newspapers (as well as The Atlantic Wire) have already used the s-word to describe solar technology company Solyndra. Nyhan is watching The Post closely. "Solyndra definitely could break Obama's scandal-free streak," he says. "I'm keeping an eye on the story, but it hasn't crossed the threshold I use in my research yet -- the only Post print article on Solyndra with the word scandal in it so far is an editorial that says the controversy 'may mutate from an embarrassment to a scandal.'"

Twitter roundup

Many thanks to everyone for their emails and comments in response to my request for feedback on the Twitter roundups. Enough people seem to find them useful that I would like to keep them, but I want to try to make the blog more useful to those who don't. As a first step, I'm now posting all the roundups below the fold to make the home page more readable. Per people's requests, I will try to make them shorter and more frequent. I would also like to create an RSS feed that excludes them but haven't been able to figure out how to do so. If you know how to make that happen, please email me.

Twitter roundups: Should I keep them?

I've been posting compilations of my Twitter feed as an experiment and to provide content between posts. Are those valuable to you, or would prefer irregular posts with nothing in between? Please let me know by email or in comments.

Beware early general election trial heats

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that President Obama leading Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in the prospective general election polls known as trial heats.

New TNR columnist/blogger Timothy Noah suggested that Obama's standing was "remarkable" and that the poll showed that the GOP candidates "are unable to capitalize on the miserable state of the economy":

President Barack Obama may have an unfavorable rating of 50 percent, but he still leads every major Republican candidate in the field, according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling. That's remarkable given the dismal state of the economy...

That the Republican presidential candidates are unable to capitalize on the miserable state of the economy gives you some idea of how weak Obama's opposition is. None of the major GOP candidates can beat John McCain's 46 percent from 2008. Mitt Romney, who at this point seems the likeliest nominee, loses 45 percent to Obama's 49 percent... Front-runner Rick Perry loses 41 percent to Obama's 52 percent.

It's important to be cautious, however, in interpreting the President's standing in these early trial heat polls. The fact that Obama is leading now doesn't tell us much about how he would fare against Romney or Perry in November. Research by the political scientists Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson finds that general election trial heats have very limited predictive power until later in the campaign (gated). We are currently 419 days away from the 2012 election. In a draft book manuscript, they show that trial heats pitting the eventual candidates against each other do not forecast the general election outcome well 300 days in advance but their predictive power increases roughly linearly thereafter (figure reproduced with permission):

In other words, we shouldn't make too much of where Obama stands against his likely Republican opponents right now. The direction of the economy is a better indicator of how the election is likely to turn out (as well as Obama's approval ratings, of course, which are heavily influenced by the economy). As Wlezien and Erikson show, the campaign brings economic factors into focus for voters, which in turn causes trial heats to come into closer alignment with the eventual outcome as the election draws near. For now, though, these polls are mostly a media sideshow.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

New research on political misperceptions

My co-author Jason Reifler and I have just posted a new manuscript (PDF) titled "Opening the Political Mind? The effects of self-affirmation and graphical information on factual misperceptions." It's one of the followups to our Political Behavior article (PDF) on resistance to corrective information. Here's the abstract:

People often resist information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs. This disconfirmation bias is a particular problem in the context of political misperceptions, which are widespread and frequently difficult to correct. In this paper, we examine two different hypotheses about the prevalence of misinformation. First, people tend to resist unwelcome information because it is threatening to their worldview or self-concept. Drawing from social psychology research, we test whether affirming individuals' self-worth and thereby buttressing them against this threat can make them more willing to acknowledge uncomfortable facts. Second, corrective information is often presented in an ineffective manner. We therefore also examine whether graphical corrections may be more effective than text at reducing counter-arguing by individuals inclined to resist counter-attitudinal information. Results from three experiments show that self-affirmation substantially reduces reported misperceptions among those most likely to hold them, suggesting that people cling to false beliefs in part because giving them up would threaten their sense of self. Graphical corrections are also found to successfully reduce incorrect beliefs among potentially resistant subjects and to perform better than an equivalent textual correction. However, contrary to previous research, affirmed subjects rarely differ from unaffirmed subjects in their willingness to accept new counter-attitudinal information.

Hope you'll check it out -- comments are appreciated!

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Why candidates win: Tactics vs. fundamentals

Today's NYT news analysis by Jeff Zeleny offers a classic example of how journalists attribute political success to tactical strategies. In the course of an article reviewing President Obama's political standing, Zeleny notes that Obama's approval is lower than that of Clinton and Reagan at this point in their terms, which he attributes to their "repositioning" (e.g., move to the center):

The White House can no longer take comfort in comparing the approval ratings for Mr. Obama with Ronald Reagan’s or Bill Clinton’s in the months after their stinging midterm election defeats. By the time their re-election efforts were intensifying after Labor Day, their respective repositioning had helped elevate their approval above 50 percent.

First, as Mark Blumenthal notes at HuffPost Pollster (where I cross-post), the comparison to Reagan and Clinton may be overstated. At this point in their terms, the Gallup approval ratings for Reagan and Clinton were 47% and 44%, respectively, compared with 42% for Obama.

Even if we grant that Obama's standing is lower, however, it's not clear that we should attribute Reagan or Clinton's approval ratings to their tactical positioning. The difference is the state of the economy. In the third quarter of 1983, GDP was growing at a rate of 8.1% (annual rate, seasonally adjusted). In the third quarter of 1995, GDP growth was 3.4% (though it had been slower in the previous two quarters). The most recent figure for Obama shows GDP growth of 1.0% in the second quarter of 2011. Zeleny attributes the difference between the candidates to tactics, but it's likely to largely be the result of the difference in economic performance.

I certainly wouldn't claim that ideological positioning doesn't matter on the margin -- it does -- but its influence tends to be greatly overstated. If you doubt this claim, consider where Obama currently stands. He's gone to extraordinary lengths over the last year to present himself as a moderate who is willing to compromise with Republicans, yet his approval ratings are sinking to new lows. Why? The economy is in terrible shape. No amount of repositioning will solve that problem for him. Unfortunately, even reporters as good as Zeleny tend to lose sight of this reality, particularly when it comes to recounting the supposed lessons of previous presidential campaigns.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

Jim Cooper wrongly blames Gingrich for polarization

Joe Nocera's New York Times column today features Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Tennessee Democrat, lamenting the state of Congress. Unfortunately, Cooper almost completely misunderstands cause and effect in his diagnosis of legislative polarization, which focuses, as Nocera writes, on "the internal dynamics of Congress itself":

I thought it would be useful to ask Cooper how Congress became so dysfunctional. His answer surprised me. He said almost nothing about the Tea Party. Instead, he focused on the internal dynamics of Congress itself.

To Cooper, the true villain is not the Tea Party; it's Newt Gingrich. In the 1980s, when Tip O'Neill was speaker of the House, "Congress was functional," Cooper told me. "Committees worked. Tip saw his role as speaker of the whole House, not just the Democrats."

Gingrich was a new kind of speaker: deeply partisan and startlingly power-hungry. "His first move was to get rid of the Democratic Study Group, which analyzed bills, and which was so trusted that Republicans as well as Democrats relied on it," Cooper recalled. "This was his way of preventing us from knowing what we were voting on. Today," he added, "the ignorance around here is staggering. Nobody has any idea what they're voting on."

In the O'Neill era, when an important issue was being debated, there were often several legislative alternatives. But, under Gingrich, "that was eliminated in favor of one partisan bill," said Cooper. That continued after the Democrats retook the House in 2006...

In reality, however, the changes Cooper laments were largely the result of external factors. As I've pointed out before, Congress was relatively de-polarized in the mid-20th century because Southern Democrats operated as a virtual third party (House graphs below; Senate data are similar):

After the civil rights movement, however, the Democrats were no longer internally divided by race. As a result, the political system began to return to the historical norm of polarization. Over time, this shift was reenforced by the polarization among ideologically motivated activists who came to dominate party primaries. As more extreme representatives were elected to the House and the parties became more polarized, they began to elect more partisan leaders, who in turn implemented more partisan rules.

Newt Gingrich is an important part of this story, but he didn't make Congress partisan - he capitalized on growing polarization among activists and elites and an ideologically motivated caucus that wanted to enact a conservative policy agenda. If Gingrich hadn't succeeded in changing the norms of the House, another ambitious member of Congress most likely would have.

(According to Nocera, Cooper also made the claim that "redistricting has fostered extremism on both the left and the right." If that were the case, however, the Senate would not have polarized like the House (it has). The best empirical study finds little evidence that gerrymandering plays a major role in polarization.)

Twitter roundup

Peggy Noonan reads Obama's mind

Even when presidents get in trouble, we rarely see evidence of the strain they probably feel, creating a void at the center of the dramatic narrative that the media wants to sell. That's why journalists and pundits so often rush to fill the void with faux mind-reading and silly interpretations of presidential body language.

Consider Peggy Noonan's latest Wall Street Journal column, which centers on speculation about President Obama's mental state. (I've therefore annotated it with swami graphics, which I am hoping the Journal and others will adopt as a visual aid for readers.)

The frame of the article is that the economy and Obama's presidency have reached "new lows." By the second paragraph, Noonan has already constructed an entirely fictional dramatic scene complete with a fake movie-style quote from Obama ("If they want this job so much let them have it"):

The market is dispirited. I'm wondering if the president is, too, and if that won't carry implications for the 2012 race. You can imagine him having lunch with political advisers, hearing some unwanted advice—"Don't go to Martha's Vineyard!"—putting his napkin by his plate, pushing back from the table, rising, and saying in a clipped, well-modulated voice: "I'm tired. I'm going. If they want this job so much let them have it."

She then moves on to speculating about Obama being "depressed" and "full of doubts":

How could he not be depressed? He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He's got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do. His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust. He thought they'd love him for health care, that it was a down payment on greatness. But the left sees it as a sellout, the center as a vaguely threatening mess, the right as a rallying cry. He thought the stimulus would turn the economy around. It didn't. He thought there would be a natural bounce-back a year ago, with "Recovery Summer." There wasn't. He thought a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball struggle over the debt ceiling would enhance his reputation. The public would see through to the dark heart of Republican hackery and come to recognize the higher wisdom of his approach. That didn't happen either.

Next, Noonan purports to discern his "inner rationale for not coming up with a specific debt-ceiling plan":

The president shows all the signs of becoming a man who, around the time he unveils his new jobs proposal in September, is going to start musing in interviews about whether anyone can be a successful president now, what with the complexity of the problems and the forces immediately arrayed, in a politically polarized age, against any specific action. That was probably his inner rationale for not coming up with a specific debt-ceiling plan: Why give the inevitable forces a target?

She then analyzes Obama's body language during his Midwest bus tour and purports to discern that he was "observing himself and his interactions":

Under these circumstances he could not possibly be enjoying his job. On the stump this week in the Midwest, he should have been on fire with the joy of combat... But even at his feistiest, he was wilted. Distracted. Sometimes he seems to be observing himself and his interactions as opposed to being himself and having interactions.

Why did Obama decide to vacation in Martha's Vineyard? Noonan looks into the President's mind to give us some answers:

Mr. Obama's media specialists probably told him what Bill Clinton's mavens told him: If you're going to the Vineyard, you have to go to some real American place first, like the Rockies. Which Mr. Clinton did. Going to the Vineyard didn't harm him. But Mr. Clinton had prosperity...

Mr. Obama doesn't have that advantage. It seems important to him to be true to himself -- not to be the kind of person who'd poll-test a vacation. Or maybe he thinks that no matter what he does, it won't work, so what the heck. But his decision to go now, and there, seems either ham-handed or vaguely defiant.

Finally, the column closes with speculation on Obama's feelings about possibly being a one-term president:

In early 2010 this space made much of the president's pre-State of the Union interview with Diane Sawyer, in which she pressed the president about his political predicaments. He said: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." I thought at the time: He means it, he can accept being a one-termer.

Maybe he's feeling it now more than ever.

Maybe it means not much will change in terms of his leadership between now and the election.

Maybe he'll be as wilted next year as he was this week.

(Memo to columnists: When your column ends with three sentences starting with "Maybe," you haven't said anything.)

In short, the entire column is built on mind-reading -- I had to excerpt half of it just to collect all the examples. It's a great example of how the novelization of the presidency works. Like Maureen Dowd, Noonan's talent for making up pleasing stories about political figures have made her a highly regarded pundit for one of the nation's top newspapers. Too bad those stories are largely fiction.

Why I'm excited about the David Leonhardt era

The selection of New York Times economics columnist David Leonhardt as the newspaper's Washington bureau chief was widely acclaimed when it was announced last month, and rightly so -- Leonhardt, a favorite of mine, was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for "his graceful penetration of America’s complicated economic questions." But despite all the acclaim, I still don't think people have fully appreciated the difference in perspective that he could bring to the job.

Here's what Leonhardt said, for instance, during a discussion of opposition to President Obama on Jonah Keri's podcast yesterday (starting at 21:22):

I do think the economy is the dominant thing. I think what tends to happen is the economy drives elections and then we construct narratives around that to explain things. I think if the unemployment rate had been falling in the summer of '10 and into the fall the Democratic losses would have been much less in that midterm election.

It's hard to overstate what a radical statement this is from the incoming DC bureau chief of the Times. Journalists tend to create dramatic narratives centered on candidate tactics and personalities to explain electoral outcomes that are largely driven by structural factors (the state of the economy, the distribution of seats in Congress, etc.). If Leonhardt shifts the NYT's political coverage away from these bogus narratives and toward the careful explanatory journalism he has practiced so successfully, it would be a huge step forward for the field.

Immediately after making the statement above, Leonhardt also went on to criticize what I've called the Green Lantern theory of the presidency (see also here), which has been back in the news as liberal critics of Obama have become more vocal:

Some of the criticism of the White House I think is not reality-based. You hear a fair amount of criticism on the left that basically amounts to "If only he had been tougher, if only he had asked for more of these things and demanded more of these things, Congress would have gone along." But when you try to tease that out to the end, it ends up being fairly weak tea. It's not at all clear if by giving more liberal speeches Barack Obama could have persuaded Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman and controlled the Senate to vote differently...

Again, rather than engaging in the false hype of the powers of the bully pulpit that so often appear in press coverage of the presidency, Leonhardt recognizes that the president's power over Congress is quite limited. As he notes, these critiques are speculative and unsupported at best.

There's an important connection between these two myths. In both cases, journalists tend to prioritize the visible and the dramatic (speeches, ads, etc.) over empirical evidence about what matters. Leonhardt is the rare journalist who has succeeded in political coverage by emphasizing the latter rather than the former.

With that said, it's important to note that Leonhardt faces a difficult set of challenges. In the past, the Times has featured the work of writers who manufacture crude narratives while frequently neglecting the role of the economy in politics. Given likely institutional resistance to change, we shouldn't set expectations for Leonhardt too high. But I'm still more optimistic about the Times than I've been in years.

Twitter roundup

Twitter roundup

Twitter roundup

Judis wrong on Reagan, Bush popularity

John Judis writes in The New Republic that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush "enjoyed great popularity even though polls showed that the public disliked some of their initiatives" because they provided "leadership and not mediation":

Why has Obama continued to opt for compromise? One reason may be that he dislikes conflict and wants to see himself as a mediator. Another reason seems to be political. Obama’s political team appears convinced that by positioning the president as the Great Mediator, they will win over independent voters in the 2012 election... Still, his advisers might want to look at a recent Pew poll that shows Obama losing ground with self-identified independents during the last two months. It just might be that what these and other voters want from a president is leadership and not mediation, even if they disagree with some of Obama’s policies. That’s certainly what happened during Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s presidencies. Both men enjoyed great popularity even though polls showed that the public disliked some of their initiatives.

In reality, Bush's popularity shot up to stratospheric levels immediately after the 9/11 attacks (86% in a September 13 ABC News poll) before he'd even had time to show much leadership. It was a classic rally-around-the-flag response -- exactly what you'd expect given the magnitude of the attacks. The rest of his presidency was a slow decline toward the highest disapproval ratings ever recorded by an American president.

While Reagan also enjoyed high levels of approval at times (most notably, when he was shot, when the economy was booming before Iran-Contra, and when he was about to leave office), he was actually not especially popular either -- his average Gallup approval ratings in office were lower than those of Kennedy, Clinton, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and George H.W. Bush.

Judis has made a practice of overhyping Reagan as a model for Obama. In articles published in March 2010 and August 2010, he claimed that Reagan's communication strategy was responsible for his political success in a poor economy during his first two years in office. However, there is no convincing evidence that Reagan's approval ratings or GOP performance in the 1982 midterms were better than we would have otherwise expected. The same conclusion applies here -- there's no reason to think that "leadership" made Bush and Reagan enjoy "great popularity."

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

The underpants gnomes theory of Internet politics

Seth Masket makes a useful point about the reasoning used by the third party hypesters at Americans Elect:

This whole endeavor seems rather enamored of the idea that American Elect can change American politics by harnessing the power of the Internet. Or as the organization promises, "We’re using the Internet to give every single voter... the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012." Look, I love the Internet as much as anyone, but its transformative power in politics has been way overstated. Political activists use the Internet to fundraise, to contact voters, to spread information, and to debate issues. News flash: we were doing all those things before the Internet was invented. We may do those things differently -- sometimes more easily, sometimes more effectively, but not always -- but it's still the same basic tasks of politics.

This is the same specious reasoning we saw in predictions of an "Internet candidate" for president or the so-called "party-in-a-laptop". In almost every case, the people who make these sorts of claims fail to explain how, exactly, the Internet will make a third party feasible. The whole enterprise has an underpants gnomes quality to it:

1. Internet
2. ???
3. Third parties!

The Internet may reduce the costs of organization or communication in important ways for political activists, but fundamental barriers to third party success - most notably, strategic voting and the Electoral College - haven't changed.

Twitter roundup

Third party hype: Thomas Friedman redux

Yesterday Thomas Friedman proclaimed that a viable third party presidential candidate will emerge in 2012:

Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. I know it sounds gimmicky — an Internet convention — but an impressive group of frustrated Democrats, Republicans and independents, called Americans Elect, is really serious, and they have thought out this process well. In a few days, Americans Elect will formally submit the 1.6 million signatures it has gathered to get on the presidential ballot in California as part of its unfolding national effort to get on the ballots of all 50 states for 2012.

As Cogitamus reminds us, though, Friedman has made similar proclamations several times before. Here are his previous predictions from my timeline of third party hype:

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (4/28/06):

If the Democrats shirk this energy challenge, as the Republicans have, I'm certain there is going to be a third party in the 2008 election. It is going to be called the Geo-Green Party, and it is going to win a lot of centrist voters. The next Ross Perot will be green.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/3/06):

Yes, our system is rigged against third parties. Still, my gut says that some politician, someday soon, just to be different, just for the fun of it, will take a flier on telling Americans the truth. The right candidate with the right message on energy might be able to drive a bus right up the middle of the U.S. political scene today — lose the far left and the far right — and still maybe, just maybe, win a three-way election.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (6/16/06):

Frankly, I wish we did not need a third party. I wish the Democrats would adopt a Geo-Green agenda as their own. (Republicans never would.) But if not, I hope it will become the soul of a third party...

To be sure, Geo-Greenism is not a complete philosophy on par with liberalism or conservatism. But it can be paired with either of them to make them more relevant to the biggest challenges of our time. Even if Geo-Greenism couldn't attract enough voters to win an election, it might attract a big enough following to frighten both Democrats and Republicans into finally doing the right things.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (10/3/10):

Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election's outcome.

There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center. I know of at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, developing "third parties" to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation's steady incremental decline.

Like a stopped clock, Friedman may be right this time -- Americans Elect seems better organized and funded than previous ill-fated efforts like Unity '08. It's certainly possible that they will put a credible candidate on the ballot in most or all states. But all the other factors that make it so difficult for independent candidates to successfully challenge the established parties still apply (ask Ross Perot!).

[Cross-posted to Huffington Post]

Why are GOP governors unpopular?

Nate Silver suggests that Republican governors are unpopular due to their conservatism:

[J]ust a year ago, there were plenty of moderate Republican governors — most of them in liberal or moderate states, where they were often quite popular. Now there are almost none, save some borderline cases like Mr. Daniels and Mr. Herbert.

The unsurprising result is that Republicans now have a group of extremely unpopular governors — particularly Mr. Scott of Florida, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John R. Kasich of Ohio and Paul R. LePage of Maine, all of whom have disapproval ratings exceeding 50 percent. Other Republican governors in crucial swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania also have below-average ratings.

What Silver omits, though, is a more basic political fact: incumbents tend to be unpopular when the economy isn't performing well. Here are two graphs from Jim Stimson's Tides of Consent (previously reproduced by John Sides on The Monkey Cage) which show how approval ratings of governors and other public officials and institutions trend together and generally follow perceptions of the economy:

It's possible that the conservatism of the GOP governors is driving their approval ratings even lower than they otherwise would be, but a poor economy is difficult for every incumbent.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

Obama advisers looking for wrong lessons

According to New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, President Obama's advisers are seeking inspiration from the campaigns of presidents who were re-elected despite increased unemployment:

Mr. Obama’s advisers, meanwhile, are looking for lessons from re-election bids that overcame a first-term rise in unemployment, like those of George W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower, Republicans all. That’s a turnabout from the Obama team’s initial plan to base its re-election campaign on the economy’s progress since 2008.

The problem for Obama is that the first terms of the three presidents in question (Bush 43, Nixon, and Eisenhower) produced reasonable income growth, which is a better predictor of presidential election outcomes than unemployment. Consider this modified plot from Douglas Hibbs, whose Bread and Peace model employs a weighted measure of real disposable personal income growth -- the presidents in question are highlighted in green:

Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush 43 all presided over at least moderate income growth during their first four years in office; Obama so far has not. (The same applies for GDP growth, another frequently used variable in forecasting models.) Unless the state of the economy improves, it's not likely to matter who he models his 2012 campaign after.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed (7/12-7/19) Brendan Nyhan Jul 19, 2011 at 1:03 PM
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	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @ddiamond: Two years ago: The 'death panel' rumor had just debuted. See how it spread - on page 11 of @BrendanNyhan's paper: http://t.co/3iegDwS #HCR
	http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyha n/health-care-misinformation.p df
	Jul 19, 2011 at 11:25 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Recommended @monkeycageblog: Henry Farrell on Rupert Murdoch and Preference Falsification http://j.mp/oVhFo3
	Rupert Murdoch and Preference Falsification — The Monkey Cage I did a Bloggingheads debate with Felix Salmon last week, and the New York Times excerpted the only political science relevant bit of our discussion, where we compare the post-Murdoch debate to ...
	Jul 18, 2011 at 4:02 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Charles M. Blow's cringe/sentence ratio reaches new heights: http://j.mp/noD911
	Quote Of The Day, Overwriting Edition | The New Republic From Charles Blow in today's New York Times, recounting a trip to the south where he spent time with blue-collar workers (the title of the column, 'They, Too, Sing America,' was admittedly fair ...
	Jul 18, 2011 at 12:42 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan For more on the end-of-life $ issues raised by D. Brooks http://j.mp/qcKSdc see new research by my co-author Peter Ubel http://j.mp/o0G3zD
	Death and Budgets - NYTimes.com Much of the budget mess may stem from a deep cultural antipathy toward recognizing our own mortality.
	Savings are in the balance in hard choices in health care A new study may signal our readiness--and reluctance--to rein in health care spending. Cutting health care costs is a laudable goal, but where do we start? Many analysts say it's time to curb sp...
	Jul 16, 2011 at 8:53 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan .@michaelshermer on "The Believing Brain" and "belief-dependent realism" in Scientific American http://j.mp/pvIxUc Book: http://j.mp/qfOH8w
	The Believing Brain: Why Science Is the Only Way Out of Belief-Dependent Realism: Scientific American Was President Barack Obama born in Hawaii? I find the question so absurd, not to mention possibly racist in its motivation, that when I am confronted with “birthers” who believe otherwise, I fin...
	The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths "Michael Shermer has long been one of the world's deepest thinkers when it comes to explaining where our beliefs come from, and he brings it all together in this important, engaging, and ambitio...
	Jul 16, 2011 at 2:00 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @kwcollins: Op-ed in Politico defending NSF's social, economic, and behavioral science directorate: http://t.co/7HPgzNo
	Opinion: Tom Coburn wrong on behavioral research - David Poeppel and Mitchell L. Moss Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) wants to end federal funding of basic research in the social and behavioral sciences. This is the key recommendation in his report, "The National Science Foundation: Un...
	Jul 16, 2011 at 1:37 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @MysteryPollster: Attn. political journalists: Before you over-analyze the next GOP horserace question, remember this http://t.co/DF6hNZe
	Majority of Republicans Can't Name a 2012 Favorite PRINCETON, NJ -- More than half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 58%, do not express a preference when asked in an open-ended format -- with no candidates' names read -- whom ...
	Jul 15, 2011 at 7:50 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan ABC Australia on new psych research: "effect of misinformation on memory and reasoning cannot be completely eliminated" http://j.mp/pPL6ZF
	Setting the record straight almost impossible › News in Science (ABC Science) Monday, 11 July 2011 Branwen MorganABC Mud sticks The effect of misinformation on memory and reasoning cannot be completely eliminated, even after it has been corrected numerous times, say Austr...
	Jul 15, 2011 at 7:43 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan America’s inefficient health-care system in graphs http://j.mp/oVd8tt (via John Sides)
	America’s inefficient health-care system: another look « Consider the Evidence Second chart now corrected, thanks to commenter Roger Chittum. America's health-care system differs from its counterparts in other affluent nations in a number of ways: greater fragmentation amo...
	Jul 15, 2011 at 2:06 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Recommended: @conor64 on watching premiere of Palin doc in an empty OC theater. Breitbart plays a key supporting role. http://j.mp/qVwJlI
	Sarah Palin Movie Debuts to Empty Theater in Orange County "Why aren't you seeing Harry Potter?" an usher said to the reporter sitting alone in the audience
	Jul 15, 2011 at 1:05 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan From @conor64: How I Became the Subject of a Conspiracy Theory http://j.mp/pkoqQi
	How I Became the Subject of a Conspiracy Theory Conor Friedersdorf - Conor Friedersdorf is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of...
	Jul 18, 2011 at 7:50 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Shorter WP: Who's right - Michele Bachmann or the Fed chair? We don't know! http://j.mp/nMpSDv
	Top Republicans clash over debt-limit plan Two top Republican leaders clashed Wednesday over a plan that could allow the government to avoid a potentially catastrophic default but would not ensure the deep cuts in federal spending that p...
	Jul 13, 2011 at 7:27 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan WP he said/she said: "Bernanke warned...of fiscal catastrophe...But cons. House Reps accused...Obama of 'scare tactics'" http://j.mp/nMpSDv
	Top Republicans clash over debt-limit plan Two top Republican leaders clashed Wednesday over a plan that could allow the government to avoid a potentially catastrophic default but would not ensure the deep cuts in federal spending that p...
	Jul 13, 2011 at 7:25 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jbplainblog: 5->3 isn't "plummet", it's noise MT @joshtpm: Pawlenty Plummets To 3% In National Poll http://t.co/yaRlHHW
	Pawlenty Plummets To 3% In National Poll While Bachmann Surges A new poll shows Tim Pawlenty slipping to the bottom tier of the presidential field as rival Minnesotan Michele Bachmann shoots upwards. The latest numbers from Quinnipiac University put Mitt Ro...
	Jul 13, 2011 at 6:01 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Real talk: Primary importance of debt ceiling fight is effect on economy, not Obama's positioning http://j.mp/nt7zkW
	A Budget Deal and 2012 — The Monkey Cage Over the weekend, Marc Ambinder tweeted: Here is how I see it. Scenario #1: There is no deal. Assume there is no deal and then assume, as Geithner and others have warned, that there are serious ...
	Jul 13, 2011 at 11:10 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Interesting Google review of the use of online ads in 2010 elections http://j.mp/odKRQ0 (disclosure: I know someone in that unit)
	Google Public Sector & Elections Lab: Online Ads in 2010: Research and Case Studies Every March, politicos from across the country meet for the “Pollie Awards,” an event hosted by the American Association of Political Consultants. Often referred to as the “Osc...
	Jul 12, 2011 at 10:13 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Review of recent scholarship on the conservative movement in Annual Review of Sociology http://j.mp/oV07uI (gated)
	The Contemporary American Conservative Movement - Annual Review of Sociology, 37(1):325 Search for articles by the same authors or containing the same key words. Select below.
	Jul 12, 2011 at 2:56 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Lower status people laugh at jokes more http://t.co/tknRCRq MT @normative Montage: Obama Receiving Sycophantic Laughter http://t.co/L5lP0qn
	What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing - New York Times So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, "Wow, it's hot in here!" And the other muffin replies: "Holy cow! A talking muffin!" Did that alleged joke make you laugh? I ...
	President Obama Receiving Sycophantic Laughter While President Obama certainly has an above-average sense of humor for a politician — easy-going, self-effacing, maybe a little corny at times — he's not known as one of the planet's foremost c...
	Jul 12, 2011 at 1:19 PM

Who would be blamed for a debt default?

Who would get blamed for an economic downturn resulting from the debt ceiling standoff? John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, has argued that incumbents tend to get blamed by voters for bad economic conditions even under divided government. New York Times blogger Nate Silver responds that a debt-induced crisis "would not be a normal case":

Whatever else the 2012 election would be if the debt limit is not raised in a timely fashion, it would not be a normal case. There’s no especially appropriate precedent for the economy tanking by such an immediate and direct result of action (or inaction) in Washington. One reason the public tends to score strong economic performance in favor of the president, and poor economic performance against him, is because the United States economy is incredibly complicated — it’s hard for the public to discern cause and effect...

This would be different, however. The stock market could drop by thousands of points. Some major corporations, particularly in the financial services sector, might go under. Although the consequences might take some time to filter through the broader economy, there would nevertheless be a number of immediate and extremely visible effects. Many voters would feel as though they had perfectly reasonable grounds to connect the dots.

You’d have to weigh two things against each other: the additional damage to the economy, which is bad for the president all else being equal, and the additional ownership of the economy that Republicans would take for it, which is bad for them all else being equal. I don’t know which effect would win out, but it’s not a risk that either side should feel happy about taking.

It's certainly true that the current standoff seems relatively unprecedented, but as Jonathan Bernstein (another political scientist) notes, "There's always going to be some slightly new twist to almost any political phenomenon, and in most cases the new twists are a lot less important than the similarities." Over the years, people have come up with lots of stories about why the president won't get credit for a good economy or why the opposition will be blamed for a bad economy, but things rarely work out that way.

In this case, it's worth thinking through the mechanics of how Republicans would be blamed instead of Obama. As Silver notes, the economy is incredibly complex. Even if there were a debt default, the process by which it would affect the economy would be difficult for people to understand. Both sides would no doubt blame each other for the outcome and create elaborate stories about why the other side is to blame, which would then be reinforced and amplified in the press. Then more than a year would elapse before November 2012, and both sides would continue to blame each other for failing to adequately address the consequences of the default. In the meantime, many people will forget the details of what happened, but will know that Obama is the president and the economy is in bad shape. Under those conditions, how likely is it that people who would normally blame Obama for the poor economy will instead blame the GOP when they show up at the polls? Presidential forecasting and approval models aren't perfect, but I think the burden of proof is on their critics to explain why we should expect a deviation from the normal pattern of economic voting.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

Bush White House said tax cuts increase revenue

In his column today, Paul Krugman says the White House didn't make unsupported claims about tax cuts increasing revenue:

[E]ven the administration of former President George W. Bush refrained from making extravagant claims about tax-cut magic, at least in part for fear that making such claims would raise questions about the administration’s seriousness.

In reality, however, Bush officials frequently suggested that tax cuts increase revenues despite being repeatedly contradicted by administration economists. Here's a timeline I compiled in 2006:

President Bush, 11/13/02: "Well, we have a deficit because tax revenues are down. Make no mistake about it, the tax relief package that we passed -- that should be permanent, by the way -- has helped the economy, and that the deficit would have been bigger without the tax relief package."

President Bush, 1/7/03: "This growth and jobs package is essential in the short run; it's an immediate boost to the economy. And these proposals will help stimulate investment and put more people back to work, is what we want to have happen. They are essential for the long run, as well -- to lay the groundwork for future growth and future prosperity. That growth will bring the added benefit of higher revenues for the government -- revenues that will keep tax rates low, while fulfilling key obligations and protecting programs such as Medicare and Social Security."

Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, 1/8/03: "The entire [tax cut] package the President does believe will lead to growth, which will over time grow the economy, create additional revenues for the federal government and pay for itself."

Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03: "The President's proposals will reduce the tax burden on the American people by $670 billion over the next 10 years. By leaving more money in the hands of the people who earn it, people who will spend and invest and save and add momentum to our recovery, we'll help create more jobs and ultimately increase tax revenues for the government."

President Bush, 5/7/03: "[T]he other way to deal with the deficit is to put policies in place that increase the revenues coming into the Treasury. And the best way to encourage revenues coming into the Treasury is to promote policy which encourages economic growth and vitality. A growing economy is going to produce more revenues for the federal Treasury. The way to deal with the deficit is not to be timid on the growth package; the way to deal with the deficit is to have a robust enough growth package so we get more revenues coming into the federal Treasury."

President Bush, 8/6/05: "The tax relief stimulated economic vitality and growth and it has helped increase revenues to the Treasury. The increased revenues and our spending restraint have led to good progress in reducing the federal deficit. Last month we learned that the deficit is now projected to be $94 billion less than previously expected. I set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, and we are ahead of pace to meet that goal."

President Bush, 2/8/06: "One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it's helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent. That's kind of counter-intuitive, isn't it? At least it is for some in Washington. You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase. See, some people are going to say, well, you cut taxes, you're going to have less revenue. No, that's not what happened. What happened was we cut taxes and in 2004, revenues increased 5.5 percent. And last year those revenues increased 14.5 percent, or $274 billion. And the reason why is cutting taxes caused the economy to grow, and as the economy grows there is more revenue generated in the private sector, which yields more tax revenues."

Vice President Cheney, 2/9/06: The President's tax policies have strengthened the economy, as we knew they would. And despite forecasts to the contrary, the tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues... Nobody's perfect, but when revenue projections are off by 180 degrees, it's time to reexamine our assumptions and to consider using more dynamic analysis to measure the true impact of tax cuts on the American economy. Recognizing this, the President's recently submitted budget would create a new Dynamic Analysis Division within the Treasury Department to analyze major tax proposals. The evidence is in, it's time for everyone to admit that sensible tax cuts increase economic growth, and add to the federal treasury.

President Bush, 7/11/06: "Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit. You might remember those debates. You endured that rhetoric hour after hour on the floor of the Senate and the House. Today's numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring. That's what's happened."

Krugman's point is that today's Republicans are making more extreme claims about the benefits of tax cuts than during the Bush administration, but I don't think that's correct -- the pattern is consistent over time.

Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed (7/5-7/12) Brendan Nyhan Jul 12, 2011 at 1:22 PM
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	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan .@jonathanchait says Obama is about as strong as Clinton was at this point, but pers. income growth=3% Clinton, 1% Obama http://j.mp/npOEFf
	Checking In On Old Friends | The New Republic I've been taking a bit of a vacation from enjoying the comic stylings of Peter Wehner, but I decided to check in on the former Bush administration Minister of Propaganda to see if he was still s...
	Jul 12, 2011 at 1:05 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan The climate change divide is driven by values, not scientific literacy http://j.mp/qGkhIi
	Mooney on Kahan on Skeptics | Climate Etc. Chris Mooney has a new post up entitled "A little knowledge: why the biggest problem with climate skeptics may be their confidence." Mooney's post responds to Kahan et al.'s new study entitled "...
	Jul 12, 2011 at 12:49 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Via @jonathanchait, a horrifying anecdote about a man who tries to cash a check and ends up losing almost everything http://j.mp/p3X0j5
	Man Jailed For Cashing Check | The New Republic This horrific story offers a window into the reality of life for low socioeconomic status minorities: Something like this would never happen to me. I'm white, which makes me far less likely to b...
	Jul 12, 2011 at 1:31 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan NYT Newsmax profile http://j.mp/oByJes goes easy on the pub's often outlandish content - see eg http://j.mp/mUiGKo http://j.mp/nhPbFj
	Newsmax, a Compass for Conservative Politics - NYTimes.com Newsmax has become a potent force by offering what its chief executive calls “news that Americans in the heartland would like to see.”
	newsmax site:spinsanity.org - Google Search
	Search Results: NewsMax.com | Media Matters for America
	Jul 11, 2011 at 1:23 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Recommended: @jbplainblog on how $ undercuts minority party's incentive to compromise http://j.mp/nZCcsN (I would add primaries)
	A plain blog about politics: Not a Normal Party Nate Silver says that the GOP reluctance to compromise is driven by voter alignments . John Sides has a good post up responding, in which he points to the strong conservativism of GOP activists ...
	Jul 11, 2011 at 12:27 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @SteveKornacki: Matt Bai says messaging is why Christie got Dem votes for his agenda in NJ leg. nyti.ms/qvqKly He's wrong: bit.ly/loBEoP
	Jul 11, 2011 at 12:24 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Excited about David Brooks's newfound love for social science, but he needs a grad student to help with the popularizing http://j.mp/qoxvSL
	Does Nudging Explain Differences in Organ Donation Rates? — The Monkey Cage It's great that David Brooks is taking to the NYT to defend NSF funding for the social sciences. This is not the kind of cause that NYT op-ed writers usually take up. Even so, one of the example...
	Jul 11, 2011 at 1:27 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan You too can hang out with Newt! MT @kohenari: Things Political Scientists Like: Google+ Hangouts with 2012 Pres. Cands: http://t.co/Y55b2wi
	Running Chicken: Things Political Scientists Like: Google+ Hangouts... Things Political Scientists Like: Google+ Hangouts with 2012 Presidential Candidates. I just chatted with Newt Gingrich for a few minutes about Thucydides and Greek democracy, since he asked wha...
	Jul 9, 2011 at 3:39 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @afrakt: Brilliantly simple. RT @kdrum: All of Modern Politics in One Chart http://t.co/FE1553S
	All of Modern Politics in One Chart Via YouGov, here is all of modern American politics explained in a single handy chart. Enjoy. Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Get Kevin D...
	Jul 9, 2011 at 3:37 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @betsylevyp: Great social network influence paper: paying ppl to work out. Does it affect their friends? http://t.co/AFcJlkU (PDF)
	http://econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/ NetworksWorkouts_11_2010.pdf
	Jul 8, 2011 at 1:46 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @asymmetricinfo: Every month seems to validate the Rogoff and Reinhart theory that recovery from financial crisis is sloooooooooooooooow.
	Jul 8, 2011 at 1:11 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan John Sides responds to @fivethirtyeight - GOP moves are driven by activists/elites more than voters http://j.mp/qW4pz3
	Are Republican Voters to Blame for GOP Intransigence on the Budget? — The Monkey Cage Nate Silver answers this question in the affirmative: He shows that, among voters who voted for a Republican House candidate, the percentage who were conservative increased from 58% in 2008 to 6...
	Jul 7, 2011 at 7:51 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan The dissemination of Heritage talking points for #AskObama to politicians, interest groups, etc. http://j.mp/o4SJqx (via @jbplainblog)
	How Republicans and Tea Partiers Alike Used the Heritage Foundation's #AskObama Script Yesterday, President Obama held a live chat session on Twitter. Billed as a "townhall," the President spent an hour fielding questions from Twitter users about the state of the nation. It was a ...
	Jul 7, 2011 at 7:40 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan More on polarization and the US role in the domestic and global economy from @mattyglesias http://j.mp/nn4WId
	Historical Perspective On Polarization Brendan Nyhan brings some historical perspective on partisan polarization in the United States: The post-World War II economic system was built around the US economy at a time when partisan pola...
	Jul 7, 2011 at 7:19 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz: "Setting the Record Straight: Correcting Myths about Independent Voters" http://j.mp/onXNBg
	Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball » Setting the Record Straight: Correcting Myths about Independent Voters Alan I. Abramowitz, Senior Columnist July 7th, 2011 There they go again. The presidential campaign season is barely under way but already pundits and pollsters are making misleading claims about...
	Jul 7, 2011 at 2:51 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Reminder: No relationship between spending cuts and re-election vote, strong relationship with econ. growth http://j.mp/9mfQbX
	The magical thinking of Fred Barnes - Brendan Nyhan Updated below with more details on Clinton's win in 1996] I take it as a given that most journalists know very little about political science. But I still assumed that almost everyone has a basi...
	Jul 7, 2011 at 1:20 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jbouie: If the only option you have for changing the political calculations of a president is protest, you're probably too late.
	Jul 7, 2011 at 12:59 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @vaughanbell: Gay profs perceived as politically biased based on same syllabus as straight profs http://t.co/fReGesl via @kfranklinphd
	News: Whose Agenda? - Inside Higher Ed Do gay and lesbian professors face discrimination from students? A new study -- just published in The Journal of Applied Social Psychology -- suggests that they do, with regard to perceptions of...
	Jul 7, 2011 at 12:33 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @hardsci: Persuade, don't scold RT @PsychScience: Ironic effects of anti-prejudice messages http://t.co/qmNqdv5
	Ironic Effects of Anti-Prejudice Messages - Association for Psychological Science Organizations and programs have been set up all over the globe in the hopes of urging people to end prejudice. According to a research article, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Ps...
	Jul 6, 2011 at 7:06 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan New health myth-busting book by @aaronecarroll of @incidentalecon: Don’t Cross Your Eyes… They’ll Get Stuck That Way! http://j.mp/oqKtem
	Don’t Cross Your Eyes… They’ll Get Stuck That Way! | The Incidental Economist It's no secret we're partial to evidence and data on this blog. We think it makes for better informed, and better functioning, health policy. But research has so many uses. It can be used to dis...
	Jul 6, 2011 at 4:21 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan One of my favorite journalistic tropes - the demand for stronger adjectives. Aren't you outraged? Incensed? Appalled? http://j.mp/n0j5n7
	Spending Cuts and Fast & Furious: Today’s Q’s for O’s WH – 7/5/2011 - Political Punch TAPPER: Some Republicans on the Hill say that some of the spin coming from the White House is inaccurate; that the White House and Democrats have not signed off to trillions of dollars in spendi...
	Jul 6, 2011 at 12:24 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Amusing post from @jonathanchait about Jake Tapper's demand for stronger adjectives from the White House http://j.mp/qyQKx3
	You Wouldn't Like Obama When He's Not Angry | The New Republic As Brendan Nyhan notes, one of the great journalistic tropes is demanding that public figures use stronger adjectives to describe their position. It's an odd mission. Here's Jake Tapper intervie...
	Jul 6, 2011 at 4:22 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @DKThomp: Frank Rich is wrong. Obama's biggest problem isnt Wall Street's rebirth, but the death of jobs. And they're separate. http://bit.ly/kMYkVN
	Did Obama's Failure to Stand Up to Wall Street Doom the Recovery? The president couldn't jump-start job creation. He's also perceived as not standing up against "moneyed interests" on Wall Street. But one has little to do with the other. Columnists occasionall...
	Jul 6, 2011 at 2:29 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @RyanLizza: Perspective on UNH poll (Romney 35, Bachmann 12, Paul 7, Giuliani 7, TPaw 3): 7/07 UNH poll: Romney 34, Giuliani 20, Thompson 13, McCain 12.
	Jul 6, 2011 at 12:06 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Counterfactuals are a hard sell MT@ezraklein How stimulus could've worked even if too small and unemployment is high http://t.co/j7SS7FI
	Could the stimulus have been bigger, cont’d - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post Whenever you talk about counterfactual versions of the 2009 stimulus bill, you end up with some version of the same response: The stimulus failed - after all, look how high unemployment is! - an...
	Jul 6, 2011 at 12:06 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan An interview by @CJR's @GregAMarx with Hans Noel (aka @Student) on "How to Understand the 'Invisible Primary'" http://j.mp/lAysNo
	How to Understand the ‘Invisible Primary’ The 2012 Iowa caucuses are still seven months away, but Republican presidential hopefuls are already well into the "invisible primary"-a tumultuous time of speechmaking, fundraising, coalition-b...
	Jul 5, 2011 at 7:11 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan New Slate article on ongoing social contagion debate including my work with @Student http://j.mp/lYQGtu Our paper: http://j.mp/lmtLkb (PDF)
	Social contagions debunked: Reports of infectious obesity and divorce were grossly overstated. Have you heard that divorce is contagious? A lot of people have. Last summer a study claiming to show that break-ups can propagate from friend to friend to friend like a marriage-eating bacillus...
	http://www-personal.umich.edu/ ~bnyhan/unfriending.pdf
	Jul 5, 2011 at 4:55 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Strong prez narratives oversold, but Obama can't negotiate RT @davidfrum: Would LBJ face this predicament? or Hillary? http://t.co/boFNC99
	Obama plays nice, GOP turns tough Editor's note: David Frum writes a weekly column for CNN.com. A special assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002, he is the author of six books, including "Comeback: Conservatism ...
	Jul 5, 2011 at 3:22 PM

Of Twitter, Nate Silver, and straw men

One of the problems with Twitter is that people can easily take what you write out of context. Last Friday, for instance, Nate Silver criticized me for "poor political punditry" because of a tweet in which I said "A few more jobs reports like this and Romney et al. are going to be measuring the drapes for the [White House]":

The jobs numbers are awful, but they’ve also provided fodder for some poor political punditry.

I won’t name names, since the people in question are normally thoughtful writers. But you can already find an article keyed off the news with the headline “How a one-term president is made.” And a political scientist in my Twitter feed wrote of how numbers like these will have Mitt Romney “measuring the drapes” in the White House.

I do not mean to suggest that the unemployment numbers are unimportant as a news story. To the contrary, recent polls find that four times as many people list jobs rather than the budget deficit as a top priority, even though the latter issue has gotten more press attention lately.

But if you’re going to write about the jobs numbers as a horse race story, you ought to do it right, and that means keeping an eye on the big picture.

Silver goes on to lecture us about how it's only one jobs report, we should keep an eye on the big picture, and that unemployment is a lagging indicator and a relatively weak predictor of presidential outcomes. I agree! That's why I wrote "a few more jobs reports like this," why I've repeatedly written about the lack of a strong relationship between unemployment and presidential outcomes (though see Carlisle Rainey), and why I've closely tracked the forecasting models, (lack of) personal income growth, etc.

To put my tweet in a larger context, the point I was making is this: Obama needs the economy to start turning around soon or the lags involved could doom his re-election campaign. One jobs report is unlikely to make a difference on its own, especially given that jobs are a lagging indicator, but he's in increasingly big trouble each month that we don't see signs of a significant recovery. That opinion doesn't fit into 140 characters, but it's consistent with what I've been writing for months.

The debt ceiling fight in historical perspective

In recent years, growth in elite polarization has broken down a series of bipartisan norms in Washington, but the GOP's brinksmanship over the debt ceiling (which will continue today in a meeting at the White House) is historically unprecedented. It's worth underscoring what the stakes are.

Unlike other commentators, political scientists are often relatively sanguine about polarization. The US had very high levels of polarization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and survived intact. The depolarized mid-20th century norm that so many in Washington idealize was an artifact of the divide over race, so recent increases in polarization can be seen as a return to historical norms. In addition, high levels of partisanship can be clarifying for voters, who get clearer choices between the parties. The comparative experience also suggests the need for a more nuanced view -- many other rich countries function perfectly well despite highly partisan politics.

The problem, however, is that the US political system is choked with veto points (both constitutional and procedural) that can be targeted by opposition parties. The costs of those tactics can be extremely high. Consider this plot of partisan polarization in the US (as measured by the distance between the House party medians in DW-NOMINATE) against estimates of the US share of world GDP (using data from Angus Maddison):

The post-World War II economic system was built around the US economy at a time when partisan polarization was relatively low, which increased stability and gave elites substantial room to maneuver in economic policy matters. Now, however, growth in polarization has fueled a debt ceiling standoff that threatens to destabilize financial markets at a time when US still makes up a substantial proportion of the world economy and plays a crucial role in bond and currency markets.

Obama and the Republicans may yet cut a deal before the ostensible default deadline of August 2. Even if they do, though, will every future debt ceiling increase be held hostage by the opposition party? As Jonathan Chait and Matthew Yglesias note, this prospect is a major threat to US economic and political stability, and it threatens to spill over to the rest of the world as well. Democrats may denounce the GOP's debt ceiling tactics now, but they will be hard to resist if, say, President Romney passes a big tax cut that drives up the debt.

Update 7/7 12:00 PM: In comments, Rob objects to my claim that "the GOP's brinksmanship over the debt ceiling . . . is historically unprecedented," citing President Obama's 2006 vote against increasing the debt ceiling, which his aides say he now regrets. My argument is that the default threat is greater now than at that time given GOP filibuster threats and the precarious state of the global economy. The same principle applies to the 1995-1996 debt ceiling fight -- the threat to economic stability is far more significant today.

Update 7/7 3:17 PM: More from Matthew Yglesias:

A related point I would emphasize is that not only does the United States play a much larger role in the global economy than it did during the Gilded Age, but the federal government plays a much larger role in the domestic economy. A lapse of appropriations leading to a “government shutdown” had relatively modest implications in 1911 compared to what it means in 2011. Another point about this is that a lot of us who spent much of the past decade noting that rising polarization was simply a return to the pre-New Deal status quo have actually missed the part where polarization has, in fact, rocketed to the highest level on record.

Twitter roundup

Twitter roundup (6/27-7/5) Brendan Nyhan Jul 5, 2011 at 1:46 PM
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	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Interesting - @JonahNRO endorses my post on the myth of Reagan as Great Communicator in USAT: http://j.mp/kwRaym My post: http://j.mp/aEgaFe
	Column: Obama's Reagan parallels are falling away - USATODAY.com 5.1, 9.3, 8.1, 8.5, 8, 7.1 and 3.9. While that might sound like a controversial series of Olympic curling scores, these numbers in fact add up to a grave problem for Barack Obama. They are the q...
	Obama and the Reagan myth revisited - Brendan Nyhan As I've repeatedly noted, journalists have a tendency to attribute electoral outcomes and poll ratings to political tactics rather than the underlying fundamentals (most notably, the state of th...
	Jul 5, 2011 at 1:36 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan For more debunking of unsupported claims re: Reagan's effect on public opinion, see http://j.mp/aFHzmJ http://j.mp/jyZy9n http://j.mp/enVOrS
	Judis vs. Judis on presidents and the economy - Brendan Nyhan Back in January, I predicted the birth of a thousand "Why Obama is failing" narratives: It's time to lay down a marker on punditry about the Obama White House. During the next eleven months, it ...
	Obama should beware Reagan myths - Brendan Nyhan With all of the coverage of President Obama's staffing changes, it's worth noting that he's also been reading and soliciting outside advice as he prepares for the second half of his term. In par...
	Overstating Reagan's effect on public opinion - Brendan Nyhan Time's cover story on Ronald Reagan's influence on President Obama opens with this anecdote (emphasis added): In May 2010, Barack Obama invited a small group of presidential historians to the Wh...
	Jul 5, 2011 at 1:41 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Socially conscious hiphop -- Redman weighs in on state fireworks policy http://j.mp/lnoEMI
	Bans on Fireworks Lifted to Bring New Tax Revenue - NYTimes.com As elected officials try to cash in on fireworks sales in cities and counties where they have long been banned, consumers will find it easier to buy fireworks.
	Jul 4, 2011 at 12:37 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan She's more concerned about the Fed than Obama! MT @marcfishman lindsay lohan paid to tweet re inflation http://t.co/EBol3lq
	http://futurejournalismproject .org/post/7162879480/lohan-twe ets-monetary-policy
	Jul 2, 2011 at 7:47 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @RyanLizza: Some perspective on GOP fundraising #'s: what Republican prez candidate raised the most money in the second quarter of 2007? Rudy Giuliani.
	Jul 2, 2011 at 12:26 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @AdamSerwer: No such thing as accidental rape http://t.co/oS0hWjL
	http://t.co/oS0hWjL I find this post from my colleague Robert Kuttner, in which he posits this theory of what might have happened in the hotel room of former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn bizarre: There’s a knock...
	Jul 1, 2011 at 5:07 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan With economy drowning out HCR debate, Kaiser finds belief in death panels down from 40% in 12/10 to 31% now (but 20% DK) http://j.mp/mCb0Xs
	Kaiser Health Tracking Poll -- June 2011 The June Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds a plurality of Americans (45%) say they would support minor reductions to current levels of Medicare spending, but fewer than one in five (18%) support...
	Jul 1, 2011 at 1:14 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Interview by @craigsilverman w/my co-author Jason Reifler on our research into corrections and the backfire effect @CJR http://j.mp/lD2Alw
	The Backfire Effect Which of these headlines strikes you as the most persuasive: "I am not a Muslim, Obama says." "I am a Christian, Obama says." The first headline is a direct and unequivocal denial of a piece of ...
	Jun 30, 2011 at 8:35 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @JamesFallows: The real dickishness problem, IMHO http://bit.ly/mK0vOw No surprise, it's 'savvy' political analysis, not the gaffes
	The Real Dickishness Problem Sign up to receive our three free newsletters Everyone from President Obama to Ted Koppel is bemoaning a decline in journalistic substance,… To environmentalists, "clean coal" is an insulting ox...
	Jun 30, 2011 at 6:08 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Great example of how triggering event can start a mini-feeding frenzy, but I'm with Chait RT @jonathanchait http://t.co/opgXSLV
	Dickgate (The Other Dickgate) | The New Republic In an appearance on "Morning Joe" today, Mark Halperin called President Obama "a dick," in reference to his press conference appearance. Halperin apologized, but MSNBC has suspended him. The mer...
	Jun 30, 2011 at 3:27 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @pourmecoffee: With Mark Halperin suspended, there will be no one to glibly speculate without facts on when Mark Halperin will return.
	Jun 30, 2011 at 3:28 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Sure it's disrespectful, but suspension is silly MT @RobGeorge POTUS head of state & head of govt. Whoever's in it afforded greater respect
	Jun 30, 2011 at 6:03 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jamisonfoser: Real problem, of course, isn't the coarse language. It's the substance-free theater criticism, which is standard Halperin.
	Jun 30, 2011 at 1:38 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @prowag: Why people believe stupid stuff when confronted with the truth, featuring @BrendanNyhan http://t.co/VejmzGl
	Why Do People Believe Stupid Stuff, Even When They're Confronted With the Truth? | Media The "backfire effect" helps explain how strange, ancient and kooky beliefs resist science, reason and reportage. This story is cross-posted from You Are Not So Smart. The Misconception: When you...
	Jun 30, 2011 at 6:08 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Initial results from deliberative poll on state governance conducted last weekend in California http://j.mp/kkMrou
	Poll finds strong desire for accountability and real solutions What's Next California is the state's first-ever Deliberative Poll, seeking in-depth public opinion on the most pressing governance issues: state-local reform, taxation and fiscal policy, initia...
	Jun 30, 2011 at 1:54 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @drewconway: Excellent commentary on the recent debate about social contagion by Shalizi http://t.co/ArFHNsf
	Knights, Muddy Boots, and Contagion; or, Social Influence Gets Medieval Three papers have appeared recently, critiquing methods which people have been using to try to establish social influence or social contagion: "The Spread of Evidence-Poor Medicine through Flawe...
	Jun 30, 2011 at 12:25 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Tomorrow's BHO obit today from @mattyglesias - lack of stimulus resolve + GOP obstruction -> bad econ. -> political probshttp://j.mp/johs0F
	Obama The Passive David Frum’s proposed critique of Barack Obama: The job has overwhelmed the man. He’s not an alien, he’s not a radical. He’s just not the person the country needs. He’s not tough enough, he’s no...
	Jun 29, 2011 at 2:37 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan The inextricable link between the norm of objectivity and the media's obsession with gaffes http://j.mp/m7w4eL
	Eschaton: The Important Things
	Jun 29, 2011 at 1:54 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @dbernstein: @BrendanNyhan Fair - but also, gaffes are new. Long-held nonsense policy views are not. Journos (understandably) want something new.
	Jun 29, 2011 at 2:29 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jbplainblog: @dbernstein @brendannyhan Gaffes are also often funnier. Gaffe coverage just fits really well with press norms & (understandable) biases.
	Jun 29, 2011 at 2:29 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @johnmcquaid: @dbernstein @BrendanNyhan But a gaffe persists if it becomes part of a "narrative." Nonsense policy views not considered narrative-worthy.
	Jun 29, 2011 at 2:55 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Poor mgmt. of Bachmann's office might be the COS's fault, but shouldn't reporters check? More useful than gaffe patrol. http://j.mp/mhluqI
	Bachmann's Former Chief of Staff: She Isn't Ready Conor Friedersdorf - Conor Friedersdorf is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of...
	Jun 29, 2011 at 1:38 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jbouie: http://cl.ly/828w I wouldn't make too much of this. GOP voters will eventually choose a nominee, and they'll be stoked about him or her.
	Republican Voters Lack Enthusiasm for Presidential Contenders, Poll Shows Republican voters are not satisfied with the candidates running for the Republican nomination and wish they had more choices, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. None of the ca...
	Jun 29, 2011 at 1:31 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @fivethirtyeight: @daveweigel: 1. Jon Hunstman, Mike Bloomberg and Joe Lieberman meet for coffee; 2. ???; 3. Viable third party
	Jun 29, 2011 at 12:21 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jackshafer: A comet falls on #1 and #2 RT @daveweigel: Question from ed of Reuters: What needs to happen to create a moderate third party? #aspenideas
	Jun 29, 2011 at 12:21 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan What's only thing more meaningless than an election year gaffe? A gaffe in June the year before http://wapo.st/jMCGan
	The media’s misguided `gaffe’ obsession - The Plum Line - The Washington Post So what counts as a "gaffe" in the eyes of the press corps? We're getting an excellent lesson in it this week, with the formal rollout of the Michele Bachmann presidential candidacy. Bachmann is...
	Jun 29, 2011 at 12:15 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @jamisonfoser: #BrokenSystem RT @daveweigel: You get more heat for flubbing a founder's name than for saying tax cuts always up revenue.
	Jun 28, 2011 at 4:54 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan More from @monkeycageblog on Legislative Theories and the NY Gay Marriage Vote http://j.mp/lsM3rm
	http://j.mp/lsM3rm In response to my earlier post, a political scientist emailed me and said: …the NY events are contrary to theories that a lot of poli sci folks buy into.  Cartel theories of legislatures say tha...
	Jun 28, 2011 at 3:10 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan What would we do w/o Tina Brown? MT @MahaRafiAtal Newsweek fictional story 'What Princess Di's Life Might Look Like Now' http://t.co/RluIvm5
	What Princess Diana's Life Might Look Like Now - Newsweek After Diana's death, nine years after the car crash in the Paris tunnel, I attended a ball at Althorp, her ancestral home in the English county of Northamptonshire. The party was hosted, improba...
	Jun 28, 2011 at 2:41 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan NYT fails to fact-check false Breitbart claim that was debunked by Anderson Cooper and Chuck Todd in July 2010 http://j.mp/kApH7D
	CNN's Cooper detonates Breitbart's NAACP applause falsehood | Media Matters for America Andrew Breitbart has attempted to divert attention from his falsehoods about former USDA official Shirley Sherrod by claiming that her NAACP audience applauded "as she described how she maltreat...
	Jun 28, 2011 at 1:32 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Another reason to have a gas tax - being hit by vehicle that is 1000 lbs heavier increases likelihood of dying by 47% http://t.co/yaYGEdr
	Pounds that Kill: The External Costs of Vehicle Weight Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for the occupants of other vehicles. In this paper we estimate the increased probability of fatalities from being hit by a h...
	Jun 27, 2011 at 5:08 PM
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Historical context on presidential "flakes"

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann "Are you a flake?," prompting a backlash that forced Wallace to apologize:

Some commentators have suggested that Wallace's question was sexist. I agree that "flake" is a pejorative term that seems to be disproportionately applied to women, but it's worth noting that in presidential politics the term has mostly been directed at men.*

Most famously, former California governor and presidential candidate Jerry Brown was labeled as a "flake" throughout his political career and even asked the same question Bachmann. According to a February 21, 1989 column by Charles Paul Freund in the Washington Post, Brown was once asked "Are you a flake?" on MacNeil/Lehrer. A quick Nexis search shows that many other presidential candidates have been derided as flakes, including Texas businessman Ross Perot, former Floria governor Bob Graham, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, Republican gadfly Alan Keyes, magazine publisher Steve Forbes, and former Illinois senator Carol Moseley-Braun. In terms of presidential candidates, the term is typically used to either mean personally eccentric (Graham, Perot) or a non-serious candidate who is unlikely to win (Forbes, Moseley-Braun) and/or has fringe/extreme views (Kucinich, Keyes).

Ultimately, however, the most important problem with Wallace's question is not the gender politics, but the journalism. As Conor Friedersdorf argued, if Wallace wants to press Bachmann on whether she's a "serious person" or someone who makes "questionable statements," his question did a terrible job of forcing her to engage on specifics. Instead, it allowed her to reiterate her credentials without addressing her long record of false and misleading statements.

* Of course, until recently, almost all presidential candidates were men. It remains to be seen how this pattern will change as more women become serious contenders.