I am trying to do a better job of keeping track of what I read. Because most of y’all share my interests, I figure I might as well send my favorite links to you after the week comes to a close. This lets me write a bit about those articles — which helps information retention — and talking about the links will also help us all synthesize this information together.
So here are a few links to stories about data journalism, politics, or polling that were published over the last week that I thought were educational or otherwise liked:
Steven Shepard (POLITICO): Pollsters prepare for major changes after presidential election misses. Steven reports from the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research about what changes pollsters have made since 2020 and what research they’re doing into differential partisan nonresponse bias.
John Ganz (Unpopular Front): "Real America's" Ruling Class. Pegged in part to Seth’s story about car dealership owners, John writes about the wealthy ownership class in “Real America” which exercises a lot of devolved political and culture over residents via things like churches, civic associations, HOAs, and other social interactions. This is the real “Ruling Class” for many of us, John says, despite conservatives’ obsession over the power of Holywood stars and media elites who largely won’t let them into their clubs.
Jamelle Bouie (The New York Times): It’s Trump’s Party, and He’ll Lie if He Wants To. Pegged in part to the results of last Tuesday’s primary election results in Pennsylvania, Jamelle shows how election denialism and belief in the illegitimacy of Democratic victories has deep roots in the Republican Party, even though it only recently became its defining feature.
Democracy Corps focus group: Getting Heard By Our Discontented Working Class Voters. The working-class voters in the Democratic base say the members of their party “always disappoint. They promise big change and nothing happens. The Republicans, by contrast, seem much more united and deliver on what they promise to do.” The young working-class Americans in their sample emphasized taxing the rich as a priority. One said: “ Things are really bad for the working class. We need help with rent and we’re so worried about losing civil liberties. People are dying because of a lack of action. Please enact executive orders to help us. We’re desperate.”
Taylor Orth, Carl Bialik & Kathy Frankovic (YouGov): Which issues do Americans think should be decided nationally rather than left to the states? YouGov did a recent poll with The Economist and asked respondents whether they thought some policies should be legal nationally, left to the states, or illegal nationally. They found a lot of support for federally legal same-sex marriage and marijuana and plurality support for a ban on assault rifles. Few Americans think various policies should be left to the states.
Samuel L. Perry and Philip S. Gorski (The Washington Post): With the Buffalo massacre, white Christian nationalism strikes again. Perry and Gorski cover some of the social-science research on the ideological pipeline flowing from mainstreamed racist and white-grievance politics to violent white nationalist extremism.
And a related study from Ipsos shows how nativism and white grievance politics have become dominant on the right.
I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these things.
Elliott, at this point, I want to read what people outside the USA think about how to relate to us, and what they think we could do, realistically, to stop the madness.
Elliott, at this point, I want to read what people outside the USA think about how to relate to us, and what they think we could do, realistically, to stop the madness.