Category Archives: Politics: US

According to a very polite email I got two weeks ago, a research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

They're doing a study and in the hope of getting politically aware respondents are asking bloggers to pass on their request to fill out their survey. The study will, they hope, “shed light on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election”. They “seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world)” to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which they promise will be completely anonymous.

It looks legit.

One interesting aspect of the request is that I turn off comments on this item: “a necessary precaution we have to take in order to avoid the bias that is likely to result when new respondents see comments about the survey before taking it.” That sounds sensible, so I've complied with the request.

Another is that they want time series data:

… we would like to have respondents complete the survey throughout the days leading up to the Election. To this end, if would be ideal if you were willing to have the link appear (i.e., repost it) four times, in equally spaced out intervals (about every two weeks), with the first running asap and the last running several days prior to Election Day. Of course, if you would be willing to post it even once, it would already be a great help to us.

So, what the heck, I've queued it up for science. Excuse the repeats.

According to a very polite email I got today, a research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

They're doing a study and in the hope of getting politically aware respondents are asking bloggers to pass on their request to fill out their survey. The study will, they hope, “shed light on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election”. They “seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world)” to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which they promise will be completely anonymous.

It looks legit.

One interesting aspect of the request is that I turn off comments on this item: “a necessary precaution we have to take in order to avoid the bias that is likely to result when new respondents see comments about the survey before taking it.” That sounds sensible, so I've complied with the request.

Another is that they want time series data:

…we would like to have respondents complete the survey throughout the days leading up to the Election. To this end, if would be ideal if you were willing to have the link appear (i.e., repost it) four times, in equally spaced out intervals (about every two weeks), with the first running asap and the last running several days prior to Election Day. Of course, if you would be willing to post it even once, it would already be a great help to us.

So, what the heck, I've queued it up for science. Excuse the repeats.

[slightly edited since the original posting]

Someone at Jack and Jill Politics has a wicked sense of humor.

Greenwald, AT&T thanks the Blue Dog Democrats with a lavish party. Worth reading.

Le plus ça change, le plus c'est la même chose

This Daily Kos diarist’s take on The Racial Implications of a Barack Obama Presidency is deeply cynical, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

Via Delong, Ezra Klein on the Disloyalty of the Clinton Staffers:

The most powerful case against Clinton's candidacy was always her political advisers. They were, and are, the sort who sign up with Fox News, and enter into business partnerships with Karen Hughes. And they do all that while they're still associated with Clinton, and when their services might still be needed in the near future.

Clinton's domestic policy instincts often seemed better than Obama's, but her political instincts, as evidenced by the folks she gathered around her, were far worse. It was hard to believe anyone who's internal compass pointed progressive would nevertheless spend millions of dollars asking Mark Penn for advice. The answer, from Clinton supporters, was always that it was about loyalty. These folks had been in the foxhole with Clinton, and she trusted them.

But there's nothing loyal about Penn's decision to partner with Hughes, or Wolfson's decision to rush to Fox — these moves hurt Clinton.

This bad taste in advisers is not news. It dates back to her White House days when she relied on Ira Magaziner to do her health plan numbers. Oddly, President Clinton on the whole had better taste in cronies. But don't get me started on his judge picks, which were all over the map.