The phenomenon of midterm surge and decline has become a staple of American electoral commentary, appearing in nearly every journalistic account of congressional midterm elections. The pattern seems intuitive: the […]
Category: Political Analysis
Presidential Ideal Points in the Age of Trump: A Suggestion for Future Research
One of the more powerful tools in understanding American political institutions is the ideal point estimate — a statistical summary of how a political actor behaves across a set of […]
Researching the Impact of Gun Acquisition on Public Opinion Post-Mass Shootings
This essay explores a potential research idea aimed at understanding how the legality of a mass shooter’s gun acquisition influences public opinion on gun control. The manner in which a […]
Beyond Gerrymandering: Establishing a Compactness Benchmark for Redistricting
Evaluating the compactness of political districts is a crucial yet complex task in the redistricting process. Although a substantial amount of literature exists on this topic, including numerous methods to […]
Replication and Transparency in Empirical Legal Studies
Replication and transparency are fundamental to the advancement of scientific knowledge, including in the field of empirical legal studies. To that end, many political science journals maintain replication archives for […]
Why Only 50% of Findings Can Be Replicated: Exploratory Thoughts
Thinking about the “replication crisis” in social sciences, I did some back-of-the-envelope type analysis of the probability that a statistically significant finding is true. The result I get is that […]