Currently in FirstView: In “Improving Small-Area Estimates of Public Opinion by Calibrating to Known Population Quantities,” @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton provide a framework for incorporating known population data to improve estimates of small subgroups in MRP models.

New in @polanalysis.bsky.social, @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton have an extension of MRP for small area estimation of polling data calibrated with election results. If you toss around the term "logit shift" in casual conversation, this one is for you www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Building affordable housing ➡️ support for funding housing. Nearby homeowners ⬆️ support; renters ⬇️ support. Both are “the policy adjacent”—secondhand recipients & drivers of policy feedback. Forthcoming @ajpseditor.bsky.social ( doi.org/10.1111/ajps...) w/ A. Magazinnik & @msands.bsky.social 1/9

Yesterday I recorded an ep with @danieltavana.bsky.social, one of the few political scientists with an active research agenda on Iran. We spoke at length about the regime, divisions in Iranian society, the prospects for democracy in Iran. One of my best episodes to date. Link in replies.

This post has some more discussion of other methods for incorporating known ground-truth margins in an MRP framework, based on some validation exercises in osf.io/preprints/so...

shira mitchell@shiraamitchell.bsky.social · 7mo ago

blog post: 4th helpings of the logit shift y_1 = governor vote choice y_2 = abortion proposition vote choice x = demographics You want E(y_2 | county). You have y_1, y_2, x in a survey, x in the population, and E(y_1 | county). @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton have ideas !

Folks doing public opinion research: I wrote an R package called `calibratedMRP` that implements methods to calibrate MRP estimates to known geographic-level ground truth (e.g. election results) github.com/wpmarble/cal...

GitHub - wpmarble/calibratedMRP: An R package with tools to generate small-area estimates from survey and administrative data

An R package with tools to generate small-area estimates from survey and administrative data - wpmarble/calibratedMRP

github.com

NEW - Foreign Policy Failures and Global Attitudes Towards Great Powers: Evidence from the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan - https://cup.org/3YSsX4N - @rachelmyrick.bsky.social & @wpmarble.bsky.social #OpenAccess

blog post: 3rd helpings of the logit shift You have multiple outcomes, but only some have aggregate truth to shift to. How can we calibrate our estimates of p(y_1, y_2 | X) to aggregate data about E[y_1] ? @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton have ideas !

Survey Statistics: 3rd helpings of the logit shift statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/16/s...

New paper in @ajpseditor.bsky.social. Is descriptive representation good for substantive representation? Why do voters stay loyal to corrupt and poorly governing ethnic parties? I argue that we ought to focus less on patronage and more on dignity concerns. Defiant pride can come at a price. 1/🧵

My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social: Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain. Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Why most polls overstate support for political violence www.gelliottmorris.com/p/most-polls...

Why most polls overstate support for political violence

Misperceptions about the popularity of violence increase public support for it — but you can help change that.

gelliottmorris.com

Absolutely momentous day for California. We're turning the corner on housing at the very moment America needs us to.

Andrew Bowen (he/him)@acbowen.bsky.social · 11mo ago

SB 79 has the votes!

Job/life update: Today was my last day at Penn, where I've been lucky to teach amazing students and work with great colleagues for the past 3 years. This fall, I'll join @hooverinstitution.bsky.social as a Hoover Fellow—I'm excited to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community of scholars there.

I made an event timeline to try to make sense of all the federal overreach at @georgemasonu.bsky.social and whoo boy. When you lay it out like this, the executive over reach comes into focus. open.substack.com/pub/misofact...

Authoritarians are attacking universities. Here's how it's going at one public school.

I'm publicly documenting an event timeline to help bring order to the chaotic nature of events and help other schools plan the responses they are likely going to need.

open.substack.com

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...

Nothing more American than getting a head start on work by taking a meeting in your car while you commute to work by yourself

More Perfect Union@moreperfectunion.bsky.social · last yr.

Microsoft and Mercedes‑Benz are working together to let people access Teams from the car. Benz is the first car maker to enable in-car camera use for Teams while a car is being driven. The companies are also partnering to put Microsoft 365 Copilot into vehicles. www.theverge.com/news/708481/...

Very cool paper about how important social networks are in driving movement conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

I just posted a new paper on @ssrn.bsky.social, titled "The Chadha Presidency". Here's the link, and I'll post the abstract in the next post. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Been a busy year in the data mines.📊 Just published my mid-year roundup: 29 data visualizations on the state of US democracy, tracking everything from judicial resistance to billionaire influence to why Dems have a mobilization crisis, not a moderation problem. All charts free to use:

On Data and Democracy (Mid-Year Roundup): Charting the Assault on American Democracy and A Path Forward

A narrative of a democracy in the balance, told through 29 data visualizations.

open.substack.com

Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...

Horrendous. In attempting to reclassify Head Start as “welfare” rather than education, the Trump administration is trying an end run around Supreme Court precedent that protects undocumented children from limits to education based on their immigration status. 🧵

Lea Woods@lea9223.bsky.social · last yr.

HHS announced today they will consider Head Start a welfare program, not an education program, and will subject it to new citizenship requirements. This goes against decades of legal precedence that all children in America have a right to education. Announcement here. www.hhs.gov/press-room/p...

War on universities, war on science, war on knowledge

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

A reminder of how the number of centrifuges in Iran soared after Trump’s 2018 JCPOA withdrawal. @brendannyhan.bsky.social

There are nearly 100,000 people at the rally in Philadelphia. #NoKings

She is saying, in effect: "We are going to liberate the city from its democratically elected leadership using the military"

Justin Baragona@justinbaragona.bsky.social · last yr.

Kristi Noem: "We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city." Sen. Alex Padilla is then forcibly removed!

What would you say if you saw it in another country? A senator from a coequal branch of government dragged away by security to prevent him from asking a question of a Cabinet official and arrested

HawaiiDelilah™ 🌊 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦🇬🇧@hawaiidelilah.bsky.social · last yr.

A US senator is assaulted and cuffed for asking a question at a press conference held by the Sec of Homeland Security. We now live in an authoritarian regime where the political opposition can be detained and rounded up.

Eyewitness account from someone arrested at a (small, peaceful) protest in L.A. The arrests of journalists should be particularly alarming: open.substack.com/pub/smotus/p...

Arrested in L.A.

My interview with a fellow scholar who was recently arrested for participating in an anti-ICE protest

open.substack.com

On the campaign trail, this was JD Vance's suggestion for making childcare more affordable: "Maybe grandma and grandpa [want] to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more." (www.vanityfair.com/news/story/j...)

Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · last yr.

ICE pretended to arrest a 21 yo in order to force her to call her undocumented mother to come leave the house (where she was safe from ICE arrest) to care for her baby. When the mother came, she was abducted and the daughter was suddenly of no interest to ICE. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...