Category: Politics

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.…

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…

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”…

Five Brexit links I did not really like

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Bonus:

Guest blogging at EUROPP: The AfD’s second place in Mecklenburg-West & the challenges facing Merkel in 2017

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The result of yesterday’s regional election in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (aka Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the initiated or Meck-Pomm for the impatient) was not a surprise, but still a shock to many. I wrote a short article for the LSE’s EUROPP blog. Angela Merkel’s CDU came third behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the German Social Democrats…

Germany’s AfD does a Trump, demands blanket ban on asylum for Muslims

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In a press statement this morning, the AfD’s deputy leader Alexander Gauland (who is also head of the party’s chapter and the parliamentary party in the Eastern state of Brandenburg) has demanded a (temporary) ban on Muslims seeking refuge in Germany “until all asylum seekers in Germany have been registered, checked upon, and have their…

Guest Blog: Brexit (Arne Niemann)

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1st guest blog ever: Nach dem Brexit-Referendum bringen alle denkbaren Modelle für eine Neuregelung der Beziehungen zwischen Großbritannien und der Europäischen Union Nachteile: für Deutschland, für die EU – und besonders für Großbritannien selbst. Ein Verbleib Großbritanniens im Europäischen Wirtschaftraum (auch als „norwegisches Modell“ bezeichnet) wäre dabei für alle Beteiligten höchstwahrscheinlich mit den geringsten ökonomischen…

Brexit : What I learned from watching BBC News for 48 hours straight

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So Britain has voted for Leave. The BBC is providing coverage 24/7. And the most amazing thing? To me,  it is the deafening silence from the Conservative leadership and the Leave campaign.
The country has just held what might be the most important vote in a generation or more. Britain is divided against itself in all sorts of ways. The rest of Europe is jumping up and down excitedly. Foreign ministers and PMs across the continent try to calm down the markets and their people.
Meanwhile in Britain, there is zilch political leadership. No one is outlining any sort of plan. Boris,  the man who has supposedly won the campaign, has not been seen or heard since Friday morning. Cameron is doing business as usual, inspecting the armed forces. The rest of them probably had plans for the weekend, as opposed to plans for carrying out Brexit. For the outsider, it looks once more like bloody amateur night in British politics – a night that might last all summer.

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