Political Science’s Not Dead. Nor is forecasting

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With the vote mostly counted in the US, PS have posted a useful summary of the Political Science Forecasting Models for that infamous election. [contentcards url="http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/how-accurate-were-the-political-science-forecasts-of-the-2016-presidential-election/"] By and large, and in neat contrast to the current fad for self-flagellation, the augurs of the discipline have done well. Eight of the ten predictions that were published in…

Deliberation does not reduce the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ ethical preferences

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Deliberation does not reduce the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ ethical preferences 1

This week, I had the opportunity to talk on the Nuffield Politics Seminar about my current project on citizens’s preferences on Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and how they differ from what lawmakers decided. The feedback I got was amazing, though not always practical (“If you could go back in time and vary about 10 experimental conditions…

All the Political Science wisdom on the Trump victory /presidency in one single blog post. Or two, perhaps 

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The one and only Philip Schrodt has written what I think is the perfect seven-take-home-messages rant on that election and it’s likely outcomes. Skip all the self-flagellation/yes-but posts and read this instead: [contentcards url="https://asecondmouse.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/seven-observations-on-the-2016-election/"] Then again, there is one thing that does not get enough coverage in there, and that is the whole polling/prediction disaster.…

Does deliberation reduce the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ ethical preferences? (Or: Mr A goes to Oxford)

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Does deliberation reduce the gap between citizens' and legislators' ethical preferences? (Or: Mr A goes to Oxford) 2

I’m enormously flattered that the good people over at Nuffield College have invited me to their Political Science Seminar Series. I’m talking about a current project of mine that looks into the extent of the gap between citizens’ and legislators’ preferences on bioethical issues in general and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) in particular. Here is the…

In March 2016, Helmut Norpoth predicted a Trump victory

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Ballot - Vote

[contentcards url="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/primary-model-predicts-trump-victory/F374BCB3C2A291B21A8A39CD3ECD6BE3" target="_blank"] I’m not a huge fan of predictive Social Science. People are not the weather; they are bound to react to our predictions, which may become self-defeating or self-fulfilling in the process. Either scenario is unpleasant for obvious reasons. Predictive models are often subject to herd behaviour. They rarely rely on first principles,…

AfD: Frauke Petry’s co-leader not running in 2017 Bundestag election

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The #AfD’s leadership is highly fragmented. Regional figures play an important role for the ideology and image of the party. The national executive has not one, but two party chairs. While Frauke Petry is the more prominent and visibly radical of the two, co-leader Jörg Meuthen, an academic economist, has long refused to be sidelined…

Namechecked by the Huffington Post

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In passing, the Huffington Post mentions my AJPS article on Contextual Effects. Very flattering, though the whole story is a bit more complicated than the Post suggests. [contentcards url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-global/heres-what-science-says-a_b_12806252.html"]

Esteemed colleagues predicting solid Clinton win

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Who will be the next US President?  Some commentators have argued that voter intention polls are flawed because it is difficult to know who will actually turn out to vote. To get around this problem, Andreas Murr , Mary Stegmaier , and Michael S. Lewis-Beck use citizen forecasts, a “who do you think will win”…