There is no political topic that can get people’s blood boiling quite like partisan gerrymandering. Many even go so far as to call it an afront to our democracy. But what do we know about how effective it is and what the data shows about its outcomes? In a new paper, “Widespread Partisan Gerrymandering Mostly Cancels Nationally, But Reduces Electoral Competition” Princeton political scientist, Kosuke Imai, uses a novel methodological approach to try and document the effect of partisan gerrymandering. What he finds is surprising and may lead people who participate in it to re-think whether it’s worth the effort. Link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217322120

Is Partisan Gerrymandering As Bad As You Think?

With all the noise created by a 24/7 news cycle, it can be hard to really grasp what's going on in politics today. We provide a fresh perspective on the biggest political stories not through opinion and anecdotes, but rigorous scholarship, massive data sets and a deep knowledge of theory. Understand the political science beyond the headlines with Harris School of Public Policy Professors William Howell, Anthony Fowler and Wioletta Dziuda. Our show is part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network.

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Hello Not Another Politics Podcast listeners. We’re taking some much needed time off as the school year comes to a close; but with the elections right around the corner we still wanted to share some incredibly relevant and important political science research.  This week we’re resharing an episode all about October Surprises that has some counter intuitive insights that could become important during this election year.  And thanks to everyone who listened to our podcast this year. We don’t make money off this show, it’s a labor of love to make important scientific research interesting and accessible, but your support is crucial to helping us to continue that mission. The data shows that the number one way podcasts grow is through word of mouth. If you could please just tell a friend, a family member, co-worker to listen to our show it would help us immensely. Thanks again!

How Powerful Are October Surprises?

The Supreme Court is supposed to be our non-political branch of government, making decisions solely on the constitutional soundness of laws. But in recent years it appears as though the Court has taken a shift to the right, most notably in the Dobbs decision in 2022. Which raises a question: does the public still the view the Court as legitimate? Those are the questions explored in a new paper from UPenn political scientist Matthew Levendusky in a paper titled “Has the Supreme Court become just another political branch? Public perceptions of court approval and legitimacy in a post-Dobbs world”.  

Does The Public View The Supreme Court As Legitimate In A Post-Dobbs World ?

If the media is to be believed, the US public has a tenuous at best grasp on accurate political news. They’re either consuming disinformation and fake news on social media or following biasedly inaccurate news outlets. Either journalistic truth is as good as dead or we’re living in separate informational universes. But is this too alarmist, could the real story be more nuanced? That’s what Columbia professor of economics Andrea Prat finds in his recent paper “Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are About Political News”. But what are we to make of these results, and how do we square them with claims of political polarization?

How Good Are We At Spotting Fake News?

There is a fact of our political discourse so agreed upon that nobody thinks to question it: affective polarization…democrats and republicans disliking each other...has been getting worse, much worse. But what if that belief is actually based on polls measuring the wrong thing? That’s the argument made by Northwestern Political Scientist James Druckman in his paper “What Do We Measure When We Measure Affective Polarization?”

Is Partisan Animosity Directed At Fellow Citizens Or Elites?

How do we know if our democracy is healthy? For political scientist, the answer often comes down to things we can measure like responsiveness to voter’s wishes. But is that really the right thing to measure? There are two camps in this debate. The empiricists want to focus on what and how we can measure things like the health of our democracy, often focusing on indicators like responsiveness, while the normative theorists want to focus on what we even mean…and what we should mean…by democratic health. If you’ve listened to our show before, you can probably guess that we fall more into the empiricists camp, but we wanted to bring on someone who could challenge our assumptions. Andrew Sabl is a political scientist from the University of Toronto and the author of “The Two Cultures of Democratic Theory: Responsiveness, Democratic Quality, and the Empirical-Normative Divide” in which he argues that the empiricists need to pay more attention to what they’re measuring and why.

Is Partisan Gerrymandering As Bad As You Think?

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