Democrats have increasingly focused on appeals to their affiliated identity groups in recent years, without much change among Republicans #polisciresearch diss
The diss finds limited evidence that identity appeals increase affective polarization, though affective polarization is increasing with Democratic diversification. Interestingly, the Republican Party is relatively stable on racial & religious composition escholarship.org/content/qt4k12…
Our own data on Party messages does not include the latest time period, but we do find that Democrats consistently make more references to social groups & Republicans more to ideological principles & labels & these differences show up beyond elections: mattgrossmann.tumblr.com/asymmetrydata
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It was a privilege to delve into great progress being made across economics, psychology, sociology, political science, & anthropology & return to fundamental questions in the history & philosophy of science. Thanks @OUPAcademic & all those who helped.
It is more difficult (but not impossible) to reach consensus cumulative knowledge in social sciences, but that is due to the diversity of human experience & the complex, cross-level processes we study, rather than our methods. Social scientists recognize their uphill battle
3/n
Left parties in many countries have exchanged support from low-education voters for high-education voters since 1970, but without becoming parties of the rich; the right in many places has become a coalition of the rich & the uneducated
The reversal of the educational cleavage in most countries is strongly linked to the emergence of a new sociocultural axis of political conflict & the rise of Green & anti-immigration politics
While the shift is global, the US stands out as moving from almost no left/right division on education & a large division on income in 1970 to a large division on education & almost no division on income by 2010 (by this measure)
Long way to go, but more traditional NSF funding & DOE national lab funding have successfully attached themselves as solutions to today’s focus problem of Chinese technology competition; also, the distributed locations of national labs & grant-seeking universities still matter
Compared to other issue areas, significant science & tech policy changes involve more leadership from administrative agencies; but the policymaking network is sparsely connected with no core; there has long been high international but low public influence amazon.com/Artists-Possib…
There is now a good chance that we'll more than double traditional NSF directorate funding (while creating a new directorate & funding national labs) under the guise of an anti-China technology competition bill
Senate bill now more closely tracks the House bill, but with more $
Polled issue opinions are associated with ballot initiative outcomes but popular policies underperform; voters systematically prefer the "no" option #polisciresearch dropbox.com/s/zn2uf6kyv8id…
CW among consultants is that an initiative should start with 2/3 support in the polls to pass (with 50%), usually explained not just as status quo bias but responsiveness to negative information; eg, con spending on initiatives is more important than pro: amazon.com/Populist-Parad…
Democrats lost vote share among Latinos, from 71-29% in 2016 to 63-37% in two-way, but gained among white voters with a college degree, from 50-50 to 54-46% in 2020
The run-for-President successful Republican agenda is apparently:
- restrict mail voting
- fine social media for bans
- riot / protest restriction
- ban vaccine passports
- ban transgender in girls sports
- spend the federal stimulus miamiherald.com/news/politics-…
Noem is pursuing a similar focus on symbolic cultural politics & appeals to conservative media: nytimes.com/2021/05/02/us/…
In Red State Blues, I find that Republican control of states polarized cultural politics but didn’t shift state economic policy much: amazon.com/Red-State-Blue…
Meanwhile, Democratic state governments are continuing to move leftward on economic & cultural issues, though without reinvention: seattletimes.com/seattle-news/p…
Federal $ means size & scope of gov will continue growing across Dem & Rep states, continuing long patterns I found