Study: Pols think voters are more conservative than they actually are

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:53:00 +0000

Ezra Klein highlighted an interesting recent story in which Republican strategist Mike Murphy said that the GOP would only negotiate with President Obama on budget matters after Obama made two key concessions: means testing of Medicare and limiting the growth of Social Security expenditures over time. Funny thing is, Obama has already offered these two precise concessions. Murphy responded to this new information in an interesting, but entirely predictable, way: he dismissed Obama’s concessions as false, and he said that the GOP doesn’t trust him anyway. In other words, a political elite had a specific worldview, he was offered evidence that contradicted the worldview, so he chose to dismiss the evidence in favor of his worldview.

Do campaigns still work?

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:38:00 +0000

Last week, I participated in a symposium at Iowa State University entitled “Social Science, Presidential Campaigns and Political Reporting.” Among those who examined last year’s presidential election, the consensus seemed to be that the actual influence of the things we call “the campaign”—including advertisements, candidate visits, volunteer activity, etc.—was very small. The outcome of the election was very well explained by “the fundamentals,” including the economy, conditions of foreign policy, and other aspects of the political environment over which the candidates have little to no power. This is all very consistent with decades of political science research suggesting that campaigns only have minimal effects on voters.

Salon.com > Seth Masket

Study: Pols think voters are more conservative than they actually are

Do campaigns still work?