We’re in a moment of democratic upheaval in the U.S., w/ race central to how many understand the crisis.
Join Katherine Tate, @coreydfields.bsky.social, & me as we talk Black politics & American Democracy.
In-person & Zoom!
May 18, 4–5:30pm PT
Info + RSVP: cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/events/black...
Never change, Spike.
(Photo posted by @omarjimenez.bsky.social)
At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours By Bryce P. Tetraeder, CEO, Global Tetrahedron
We have a deal. theonion.com/at-long-last...
Title page of our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception,” with Lauren Davenport (Stanford) and Hunter Rendleman (UC Berkeley), dated April 14, 2026. Abstract: What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity to Joe Biden’s claim that hesitant Black voters “ain’t Black,” American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics—particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification—play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.
Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics!
Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper.
More soon!
Hey, boo. I had a pretty good week at work.
I think the subevent results in Figures 5 and 6 hint at this being a real issue: cop and protester injury and lots of property damage are almost certainly great predictors of media traction and citizen observation.
I'll add to this 2 observability issues in treatment that contribute to SUTVA: time and unit-varying probability that media observe and record (so event is piped to CCC) and time and unit-varying likelihood that citizens observe and react
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Come join us for the Local Political Economy (pre) Conference in Boston on September 2nd!! This year we'll have papers AND posters. Indicate your interest in presenting, discussing, or just attending by 4/30/26 here: forms.gle/bP16UPzRxfsk....
There’s so much humor in this, but most importantly it’s going to make JD Vance’s book tour extra, super, AAA hilarious
It’s gonna be a real real cool time hanging with my Republican and performatively Catholic in-laws while they try to explain that Trump is right, actually, to shit talk the living voice of god on earth.
Not dunking on Zack or this post, I’m just always struck by how easily American journalists will admit that the media shapes public polling and political outcomes when they’re not talking about America.
"What do you mean, a new flatmate? Moving in when? What the fuck, Vlad?"
The last part seems important. Securing a win this large required progressive Hungarians voting for a ton of stuff they hate.
Hats off to them for doing what was needed to take back their democracy.
Batdance > Purple Rain fight me Mark
Environmental Research Communications LETTER Political elites' partisan beliefs about climate change OPEN ACCESS Alexander C Furnas'*®, Timothy M LaPira? O and Salil D Benegal' © Addressing climate change requires political elites to share a basic set of facts about climate science, yet political elites in the United States are divided in their views about climate change. We document this using the first large-scale survey of over 3,500 U.S. political elites-including elected officials, staffers, regulators, lobbyists, and policy professionals—to assess the partisan divide in beliefs about climate change held by political elites. We show near-unanimous agreement among the Democratic elite on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, primarily caused by humans, and widely recognized by scientists. In contrast, substantial minorities of Republican elites reject these scientific facts, with fewer than half affirming anthropogenic climate change and nearly one-third endorsing a climate-related conspiracy theory. Comparing elites to the general public, we find that political elites are more aligned with climate science, but partisan gaps among elites are as wide as those observed in mass opinion. Regression analyses show partisan identity explains far more variation in elite climate beliefs than ideology, trust in science, or broader conspiratorial predispositions. These findings suggest that partisan polarization among elites reflects not only strategic electoral behavior but also privately held attitudes.
I've got a new paper out today with @timlapira.bsky.social and @salilb.bsky.social in ERC showing that party ID strongly structures political elites' beliefs about climate change. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Just in time for fire season
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#OpenAccess from @apsrjournal.bsky.social -
Heterogeneous Treatment Effects and Causal Mechanisms - https://cup.org/47LAo2G
- JIAWEI FU & TARA SLOUGH
#FirstView
The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.
The best I can find are:
Good data, but no differentiation by gender: www.icpsr.umich.edu/sites/nanda/...
Individual-level covariates, but outcome is self-reported: www.census.gov/topics/publi...
I am wanting to study gender turnout gap in US elections by state (at least, county would be preferrable) for the last 10 or so years, but having trouble finding validated participation information from state voter files.
Is there good archive of validated turnout information?
Thanks @neillewisjr.bsky.social!
Also worth reading Black Elephants in the Room by Corey Fields and The Loneliness of the Black Republican by Leah Wright Rigeur.
To be clear, ideology ≠ partisanship. But their work shows how Black conservatism rooted in racial considerations.
Really good stuff!
Dumb McNamara: www.military.com/daily-news/i....
Really fun experience working on this paper with @owasow.bsky.social. When you think about it, it's just two Black and Jewish guys studying the effects of a Black and Jewish partnership to build 5,000 Black schools in the rural South on participation in the Civil Rights Movement
NPR: Trump's VA killed a home loan program. Vets are now losing their homes because of it
Trump was warned this would happen. He did it anyway.
Now, over 10,000 Veterans lost their homes. 90,000 more are on track for foreclosure. On top of cutting jobs, slashing benefits and throwing our heroes into an unnecessary war.
The most anti-Veteran President in history.
Delighted our paper (with an amazing group of co-authors) is forthcoming in the APSR
Takeaway for Labour and other centre-left parties: fixing public services is key to reducing support for the populist right
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More wearable narcs
Kalshi and Polymarket haven’t posted bets on whether Trump will fall asleep during arguments.
COWARDS
Super happy to see this paper finally formatted.
While this paper might seem about political fundraising, it's really about the theory of *parties*: is it a broader network (UCLA school, i.e., Bawn et al. 2012) or elite/institutions-driven (re: Aldrich)?
doi.org/10.1086/735435
He also conveniently omits (or doesn’t understand) that studying novel processes and outcomes allows the authors to claim assumptions for causality are met, knowing reviewers lack qualitative expertise to evaluate that claim
Methodological homogeneity incentivizes heterogeneity of application
Anyway, very cool paper. Looking forward to getting into that gigantic 7-9 change in voting behavior