In case you hadn't heard, there was a big storm right before the election. Despite no real evidence, pundits, and even some scholars, have tried to demonstrate an effect of Hurricane Sandy on the election outcome. Is it possible that it had an effect? The likelihood that the ...

Mitt Romney has stuck with his theme of attacking President Obama over "gutting" the work requirement for welfare.  In an often-aired television commercial, Romney's claims that Obama "quietly" dropped the requirement that welfare recipients find work and instead they "just send you a check". As Romney's ad loosely indicates, ...

Unions may be powerful in shaping opinion, even if their political influence is on the wane. It may seem like a long time ago now, but just a few weeks back, the political news was all about Scott Walker beating a recall bid in Wisconsin. At the time, it was ...

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 ...

Tragedies inevitably raise political questions.  Politics, despite its tawdry reputation, is essentially a competition over matters of fundamental importance.  So, when the story of the killing of Trayvon Martin made national news it is not surprising that political posturing soon followed.  Ultimately, because politics are involved, any resolution to ...

Previously, I wrote about the divide between liberals and conservatives over the value of college: liberals are far more likely than conservatives (by 20 percentage points) to believe that college is important to financial success. Since then, I've been asked by several people, "then what do conservatives believe is important ...

When Rick Santorum chided President Obama for encouraging all Americans to go to college, he received widespread criticism, but it may still have been good politics.According to new survey data, the value of college has been politicized and it is an issue on which liberals and conservatives are worlds ...

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 expected that most Americans would place a high value on the party of their Congressmen...55% of respondents they would not pay even $1 to place their preferred party in power.