Wednesday, November 2, 2011

So much grooviness, so little time


  • Larry Bartels finds that voters consider the economy a president inherited when evaluating presidential economic performance. Models accounting for the 2009 economy predict a strong Obama victory next year; models ignoring 2009 predict he'll lose.
  • Steve Smith shows that congressional Democrats are no less unified than congressional Republicans.
  • Nick Confessore argues for an expanded party model. Not really new for political scientists, but good for the NYT.
  • Mann and Ornstein: "True Independents and swing voters aren’t best captured through clever centrist political positioning. They have almost no ideological frameworks with which to judge the candidates and parties; they are quintessentially referendum voters, with low levels of information and focusing almost exclusively on performance."
  • Jon Bernstein suggests a fairly plausible political nightmare scenario for next year.
  • Dave Weigel: "Prediction: Cain wins Iowa caucuses. Gets up to give speech. Says: 'The Aristocrats!' Walks offstage, having told best joke ever."
  • A bleak chart.
  • Via Steve Greene, evidence that oenophiles have no idea what they're talking about. (But I'm sure my dad would have gotten it right.)
  • Speaking of my dad, an ophthalmology poster we co-authored won a third-place prize in Vienna.
  • My university considers me a "person to watch." In a good way, I hope.

2 comments:

Steve Greene said...

Thought this take on it was pretty good. If I actually drank wine, I'd be all over $3 Chuck.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2011/11/why_you_should_be_drinking_cheap_wine.html

marc said...

Person of Interest is the bad one. Though I suppose one could be both.