Abstract for Belichick, McDaniels, and Patricia (2016)

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Turnout for What?: An altogether different concern with field experiments

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To the degree that Political Science Twitter can blow up, it blew up this week with the controversy over a field experiment run by professors at Stanford and Dartmouth in Montana (For the latest in the debate, see John Patty ; for overview, Derek Willis in NYT ). I don’t have anything to add to the ethics in field experiments discussion, although I am sympathetic to the accused profs. (If you would like a totally ethical look at how information increases participation in races like these, see my MPSA paper from last year!) My concern with this episode is that it illustrates a problem with the literature on turnout studies. They’ve gotten too good. One only needs to look around at the mail parties send to voters to see that voter shaming ( like in Alaska ), and possibly intimidation, is alive and well. These are techniques that were first tested by field experiments. (Look, it even happened to me in 2012) The combination of these techniques and the robust field offi...
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2024 Projection: Not Going Back

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  This is the most difficult little projection that I can remember doing because the polling industry seems broken. I'll get to why in the polls section below. But first, I think Kamala Harris is winning, and as I've told a few reporters this week, on track for perhaps a "comfortable" win. Let's talk about why. Kamala June 28-July 21 of this year was just about the most fascinating period of party politics I've ever lived through, rivaled only by the 2008 Obama-Clinton primary, or 2015-16 Trump vs. Everyone in the Republican party primaries. But Joe Biden's terrible debate was almost more interesting because there was no schedule, no rhythm to it. In those party nomination contests there's a cycle of polls-fundraising numbers-nomination contest-polls-etc. that was absent here. This was just Democrats working behind the scenes to determine who was their best chance to win the election. I was shocked by what I saw from Biden in the debate, and even thou...
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10 Tips for Going on the Political Science Job Market

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It’s August, and academics are procrastinating so I’ve seen lots of advice on the job market. A lot of this advice seems good, but it usually comes from tenured professors who last went on the market before the advent of Twitter. So here are ten quick thoughts on my two recent trips to the academic job market: My qualifications for dispensing advice include spending many hours in the belly of the beast. Long term planning. One of the most sobering pieces of advice I got on the market came from Mike Horowitz at Penn, who emphasized to a group of us: “The market is a multi-year process.” This turned out to be the case for me, and the majority of people I have seen go through the market. At Penn we had 5 years of guaranteed funding, so planning for the market should begin in earnest in the second half of the fourth year. Once you lose that guaranteed funding, you’ll need to spend time on finding contingent employment, and anytime that is spent not on research you will not get...
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