Mostly Colorblind

  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...

I think this is going to be an ugly election cycle for the Democrats. We can expect losses for the president's party in Congress in their first midterm election, and Joe Biden has not done anything to change my expectation. This is compounded by the fact that the economy seems to be the most pressing concern for voters, and inflation is a very difficult issue for policymakers to make go away or minimize. Since inflation is effectively making money less valuable, people that have a lot of money hate it , and even though unemployment is at a record low right, and many people in lower tax brackets have money in their pockets, it doesn't seem to go as far when you have to pay large bills for gas, heating your home or buying groceries.  So I believe we'll see the US House of Representatives swing to Republicans, probably with about 15-20 Democratic seat losses. Oddly, this is not actually that high of a number (Trump's party lost 41 in his only midterm, Obama lost 63 in his ...

  The 2016 election fundamentally changed my orientation towards election forecasting. As a political scientist, I spend much of my time up to my eyeballs in data, and I trust that data to guide my understanding of the world and what will happen next. So when Hillary Clinton was up in the national polls, I issued a projection that had her winning , and like nearly anyone else who put their name next to a projection that year, I was wrong. So with humility over that election in mind, here is my current map that has Biden cruising in a dare-I-say wave election.  (Don't worry, there's alot of anxiety behind this confident facade, so if you are looking for downside in the polls or the election procedures skip ahead to the spooky section on the ghosts of 2016.)  A Biden Wave:  In the imagined words of Joe Biden. " Look. The polls have us up. 8 or 9, now I remember the Nixon elections, and if a 8 point win isn't a wave, then I don't know what a wave is anymore. Now, my f...

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...

Today, my doctorate from Penn was officially conferred. In honor of this moment, I want to share some knowledge, how to be a graduate student. 1) A political science Ph.D. is a two-part process. The key dividing point is your comprehensive examinations (or field exams, or qualifying exams, or whatever. At Penn they were called "comps", which is the lingo I'll use). I would recommend a different approach to each side of the comps. Before comps, you should take advantage of what a graduate education is, a chance to get paid to read and explore a field of your interest. I took an eclectic collection of courses during my first two years, including an infamous "Great Books" of comparative politics. But what you want to do here is to scrape the surface of all these different possible fields you could be interested in, to see what works for you. A mistake that I've seen many graduate students fall into is being held prisoner by the topic they discussed in their...

The Mostly Colorblind Courtroom Sketch.  During my brief time in Washington, there has been a great deal to learn about our three branches of government. For both the legislative and executive branches, the lesson has been that there is a sprawling infrastructure underneath the politics we observe on the news or C-SPAN. Members of Congress are supported by staffs of varying sizes, as well as nonpartisan agencies, and also interact with outside groups, lobbyists and the media. Congress also spends a great deal of time overseeing the administration. Meanwhile, the administration itself is primarily filled with non-political appointees, who take a longer view than the current 4-year term. As a result "the government" is much more static than campaign rhetoric or the media would lead us to believe. That being said, all of the political appointees in the administration will be fired on January 20, so upheaval is certainly possible. However, on Monday when I went to the Su...

Clinton 323, Trump 217 Since it became clear that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination in June, I have been about 80% certain that Hillary Clinton would beat him in the General Election. So I put my money where my mouth is, buying stock in Clinton the day before the Democratic Convention when the price was $0.64 to win $1.00, in essence a 64% chance of winning. Like any good scientist, I was prepared to factor new information into my view. But the real threats to Hillary's candidacy (an indictment from the FBI investigation, a Lehman Brothers like collapse, etc.) never materialized. On Twitter, I doubled down on this confidence a number of times in response to particulary silly moments in the news cycle, such as when Hillary was struck was pneumonia... If you're a bettor, feel free to cash in on this ridiculous news cycle that has Hillary's chances at $0.64 to pay $1 https://t.co/nWJbkxXoNK — Alex Garlick (@garlicksauce) September 13, 2016 or wh...

My early assessment of the Tom Brady suspension as a natural experiment to examine the classic QB vs. system debate. pic.twitter.com/DwzFkyk5g9 — Alex Garlick (@garlicksauce) September 23, 2016

On Monday, I wrote about my plan to strategically vote against Trump on Super Tuesday . As with many things political scientists say, it was a decision based in reason that I did not expect much to come of. When I got to the polling place, I was asked which ballot I wanted, and it was somewhat surreal to hear myself say: "Republican." I could feel JFK spinning in his grave. I got into the voting booth and found myself face to face with this: a genuine Republican primary ballot. I went through with the plan, and voted for John R. Kasich of Ohio (I did laugh at the idea of supporting Jeb!). On my way out I pledged to re-read Profiles in Courage  to make it up to JFK. This morning, the results show that my single strategic vote won Hartford, Vermont for John Kasich. And statewide, Kasich played Trump to a tie, as they will split Vermont's 12 GOP delegates.  Not to call myself a hero, but this morning my neighbors woke up in a town that does not support...

Tomorrow, Super Tuesday, is the presidential primary in my new state of Vermont. It is also the first day I will ever vote in a Republican primary. I am doing this because: 1) I can, 2) I care about my country, 3) it’s strategic. Why? 1. I can.  Vermont is one of 11 states that has an “Open Primary”, meaning a voter can choose to vote in either party’s primary. My understanding is that Vermont voters are handed two or more ballots and instructed to just fill out and deposit one of them. This encourages strategic voting. 2. I care about the tenor of politics in this country. I will be voting in the Republican primary to vote against Donald Trump. Trump is probably more moderate than his main competitors, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, but ideology is not everything. The lack of civility that Trump brings to politics is unhealthy. While many have lamented the state of affairs in Congress, electing Donald Trump would not fix anything. Just look at Maine, which elected ...

Last spring, I made a GIF about the history of the Australian Ballot in the United States ( here ), when I was presenting my research as a manuscript at the MPSA conference. Today, that manuscript was published as an article in State Politics and Policy Quarterly ( my first peer-reviewed article!). Therefore, it's time for another GIF. This one goes over a few top-line results from the paper. BONUS: You can read the article on my academic website .

US News published my OP-ED about the use of gridlock as a tactic in Congress. Feel free to give it a read! The GOP obstructs legislation because, well, it works http://t.co/dXLXRfS4GP — U.S. News Opinion (@USNewsOpinion) December 2, 2014

538's projection likes the Republicans even more. After nailing the projection for the 2012 election ( well, almost ) and the 2010 Special Election ( see the section on Scott Brown losing in 2012 ), I’ve spent hours in the lab preparing this prediction. And… it’s not pretty for Democrats. The US Senate Projection : Republicans finish with 51 seats, take control of the Senate. If you recall from 2012, I emphasized how important the economy was for national elections. In short, a good economy is good for the incumbent party in the White House (this is why I projected an easy win for Obama). Since then the economy has continued to improve, with the unemployment rate down to 6%. Why is it going to be bad for the Democrats then? Two things: The economic gains are not being equally distributed. The NY Times shows how benefits from the recovery have flowed disproportionately to top earners. And this is not just the famed “1%”, the unemployment rate is 6% nationwide but...

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...