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Twitter feed: @BrendanNyhan
For those who want to know about new posts but don’t use RSS, I’ve created a Twitter feed linking to my posts here. (I may post original content there as well at some point, but no promises!)
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The Coburn amendment vote
Yesterday the Senate defeated Tom Coburn’s amendment to kill the National Science Foundation’s political science program — which had my colleagues up in arms — by a 62-36 vote that broke down largely along party lines: Party Yes No Democrats 5 53 Republicans 31 9 To understand the vote breakdown better, we can use this
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VA/NJ governor races not predictive
Underscoring a point I’ve made several times in the last week, Alan Abramowitz, a respected political scientist at Emory University, has a new analysis showing that the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial results are not predictive of midterm election seat changes: [T]he results of the previous year’s gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey did
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WSJ vs. WSJ on 2009 elections
Wall Street Journal, 11/3/09: Republicans Are Poised for Gains in Key Elections Outcomes in New York, New Jersey and Virginia Are Unlikely to Forecast Much About National Races in 2010, History Shows Republicans appear positioned for strong results in three hard-fought elections Tuesday. But isolated, off-year contests aren’t always reliable indicators of what will happen
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Frank Rich: Hack
As TNR’s Jon Chait points out, Frank Rich’s column about GOP infighting in New York’s 23rd Congressional district is full of nasty rhetoric comparing the GOP to murderous regimes, cults, etc.: [T]he real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada… [T]his pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field… …[T]he
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WSJ: “all medicine will be rationed”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board goes back to the future in the fight against health care reform with this remix of Betsy McCaughey’s false claim about the Clinton health care plan: ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics. But unlike McCaughey, whose claim
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Alexander wistful for bipartisanship
Lamar Alexander is the latest elite to push the golden age of bipartisanship meme: The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who attended one session with the president, recalled that in the 1960s, when he was a Congressional aide, Democrats and Republicans worked together on civil rights. He said he saw
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Glenn Beck’s strange visual aids
Combining conspiracy theorizing with 1980s board games, Glenn Beck used Connect Four (!) on his show yesterday to illustrate his claims about radicals in the Obama administration: Beck, who has a penchant for bizarre visual aids, previously boiled a fake frog on his show: Other visual aids have included wild chalkboard scrawls and arboreal metaphors
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Sarah Palin polls like Dan Quayle
Sarah Palin continues to post gruesome poll numbers for a supposedly serious presidential contender. The latest CNN poll found that only 29 percent of Americans believe she is qualified to be president. That number represents a significant decline from perceptions of her qualifications during the campaign, which were already terrible. Indeed, perceptions of Palin’s qualifications
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The AP calls statisticians!
Via Matthew Yglesias, I’m thrilled to see that the Associated Press sent blind climate data to four independent statisticians to see if there has been a cooling trend in recent years. (Answer: No.) The next step is to consult with statistical experts on a whole variety of other topics, including whether three off-year elections can