There’s been a lot of speculation recently about how the remaining undecided voters will break over the next few days.  My co-author on THE GAMBLE, John Sides, writes that his analyses of currently undecided voters using our Cooperative Campaign Analysis Data (C.C.A.P.) from the last 3 ...

Only a few days remain until the Republican National Convention and the official kick-off to the 2012 presidential election.  All year we have watched the candidates campaign and finally we have two nominees and a sprint to the finish.  It seems like a good time to take stock of where ...

With Mitt Romney having picked Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, we can shed some light on these questions: What do people know about Ryan?  And what do they think of him? A series of polls done by YouGov for the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project suggests that most ...

In 1960, Richard Neustadt wrote Presidential Power, in which he told students of politics that presidential power was the “power to persuade.”  Neustadt wasn’t so much talking about shifting public opinion, but Sam Kernell introduced that wrinkle in 1986.   On May 9, President Obama announced that his opinion ...

YouGov is in the field each week on Saturday mornings with a nationwide, 1,000-person survey.  Today, we're going to look at the surveys before and after President Obama’s ABC interview during which he came out in support of same-sex marriage.  The interview made news for days --- and was the ...

Jim Warren’s weekend piece in The Atlantic about an annual meeting of political scientists and the research they presented had a provocative headline (not exactly what you expect your Google Alert to turn up when it emails you about a hit to your name), but it also hinted at  ...

There has been a lot of talk lately about the value and accuracy of political science forecasts of election outcomes.   Both Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com and John Sides at the same site have made clear the strengths and weaknesses of these models.   Since my work ...

Back in January, many people wondered whether Mitt Romney’s support in the Republican primary (about 25%) was a floor or a ceiling.  The question was whether that quarter of the Republican electorate was made up of solid supporters who would be a foundation from which Romney’s support could grow ...

Leading up to the 2010 election, Model Politics published several posts about the distorted view typical Americans have of those who live around them – overestimating the presence, by large amounts, of everything from illegal immigrants to the number of people making over $250,000.  The greatest misperception, however, ...

We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don't need and the country can't afford, ...