The vivid partisan sorting of US house districts by income and party -- 2005 -2024

Given declining US confidence in institutions overall, striking that low election confidence is *not* a secular trend--instead 2020 is the disjuncture.

Plot shows the winner/loser effect demonstrated by
Charles Stewart and others. Data from @mitelectionlab.bsky.social

In the April @apsa.bsky.social ejobs release, we're still tracking a 30% decline in political science tenure track jobs since 2023-24.

Figure depicting partisan attitudes on 9 different policy dimensions for the US to respond to the Israel Gaza war

Striking partisan stability in Israel/Gaza attitudes in the 2025 CES study

Thanks--releasing these data as PDFs only does not seem to be the most transparent choice...

This compares each market to the average post 2016 year:

Political Science's academic job market having its worst post-Covid year -- almost 20% fewer jobs than at the same point in the previous cycle (which itself was bad!)

Data scraped from APSA ejobs pdfs.

Bookmakers have shifted Democratic chances of winning the White House in 2028 by 2pp since the start of the Iran war

Pedagogical opportunity to remind undergraduates that the Democratic party used to dominate the presidential vote in the Mahoning Valley.

Dominant in American behavior over the last decade: for instance scholar.google.com/citations?us...

exactly!

"the bottom of the leaderboard" -- inspired brand leadership!

APSA authored papers by subfield and department, 2018-2025.

A coarse but interesting look at the areas of research activity in the discipline.

Older colleagues report the disjunction on the number of students doing polcomm/other behavioral work as coincident with the advent of MTurk.

Not the whole story, but cheap data is important to a grad student!

To show prospective students our discipline's research priorities, I scraped the last 6 @apsa-preprints.bsky.social annual meeting programs to count papers by section, then assigned sections to subfields. Polisci remains fascinated with the American case!

Things undergrads are surprised to learn -- there are only modest amounts spent on American politics.

data from @opensecrets.org and US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Trump's first year in office saw a rapid decline in GOP affiliation, erasing the advantage in net partisanship that had endured during the Biden term.

data from @gallup.com

Views of American industrial sectors remain strikingly non-ideological (save for the publishing, the movie industry, and fossil fuels).

The consequences of low media trust and Republican partisanship--only 1 news media source enjoys over 30% use among those partisans.

Data from @pewresearch.org's American Trends Panel, March 2025.

Among the most vivid declines in the American people's trust -- their diminished trust in other people.

Data from @gallup.com's Social Series.

The shrinking levels of white ethnocentrism in the
@electionstudies.bsky.social Cumulative Datafile conceal a pretty striking partisan effect: since around 2012 very low ethnocentrism among white Democrats, but the opposite effect among other Democrats.

With thanks to amengel.bsky.social, the decline is far more modest when I take proper account for the administrative codes in the feeling thermometers

hey Drew -- I'll email you my code and you can see if I'm straight

Americans have become increasingly confident that their votes are counted as intended—aside from a sharp drop among Republicans in 2020.

Data from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections.

Debunking “When Prophecy Fails” In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased....

When 'When Prophecy Fails' Fails:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

(h/t @ethanvporter.bsky.social )

Line charts showing Americans’ confidence in 14 national institutions (1973–2025), split by party (Democrats in blue, Independents in gray, Republicans in red). Institutions include the military, small business, churches, police, Supreme Court, banks, medical system, public schools, newspapers, organized labor, big business, criminal justice system, Congress, and health maintenance organizations. Across institutions, partisan polarization has grown, especially for public schools and the Supreme Court. By 2025, banks and big business are among the few institutions with similar moderate/high confidence across parties.

In 2025, polarization on schools & the Supreme Court leaves only Banks + Big Business with moderate/high confidence across parties.

Populism still cuts across partisan lines. Data: @gallup.com Social Series.

The recent reversal in Republicans' moral approval of Gay and Lesbian relations is even more striking in context -- it does *not* coincide with more restrictive moral licensing in other areas.

Data from Gallup's Social Series.

The inversion between income and Whites' presidential vote is also found among the validated voters in the just released Cooperative Election Study.

Something undergrads after often surprised to find out--there's curiously little money in American politics.

Nope! Survey research was expensive in the 1940s!