Why did Democrats do so poorly in the 2010 elections? The median academic forecast was 44 to 45 seats. However, Republicans significantly outperformed expectations in picking up 66 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate.

After the election, John Sides, Eric...

In recent days, journalists, bloggers, and commentators have reared up to bash a fictitious conventional wisdom about election forecasting.

The premise for many of these statements is that political scientists believe that campaigns and other non-economic factors don't matter in presidential elections. For instance, The Daily Beast's...

(Co-authored with Jacob Montgomery, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis)

One year in advance of the 2012 election, New York Times blogger Nate Silver published a presidential forecasting model. The model includes measures of presidential approval and economic performance -- standard variables in...

Going into tonight's GOP debate at Dartmouth College (where I am a faculty member), the challenge for Rick Perry, as TAP's Jamelle Bouie notes, is to reassure nervous elites that he's a capable national-level candidate while attracting support from anti-Romney conservatives who have swung toward Herman Cain:

Romney...

Writing in The Nation, Tulane political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry suggests that President Obama may be suffering from "liberal electoral racism," which she defines as "the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors." After arguing that Obama's record of progressive achievements...

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in the prospective general election polls known as trial heats.

New TNR columnist/blogger Timothy Noah suggested that Obama's standing was "remarkable" and that the poll showed that the GOP candidates "are unable...

Today's NYT news analysis by Jeff Zeleny offers a classic example of how journalists attribute political success to tactical strategies. In the course of an article reviewing President Obama's political standing, Zeleny notes that Obama's approval is lower than that of Clinton and Reagan at this point in their...

John Judis writes in The New Republic that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush "enjoyed great popularity even though polls showed that the public disliked some of their initiatives" because they provided "leadership and not mediation":

Obama's political team appears convinced that by positioning the president as the Great...

Yesterday Thomas Friedman proclaimed that a viable third party presidential candidate will emerge in 2012:

Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. I know it...

Nate Silver suggests that Republican governors are unpopular due to their conservatism:

[J]ust a year ago, there were plenty of moderate Republican governors -- most of them in liberal or moderate states, where they were often quite popular. Now there are almost none, save some borderline cases like...

According to New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, President Obama's advisers are seeking inspiration from the campaigns of presidents who were re-elected despite increased unemployment:

Mr. Obama's advisers, meanwhile, are looking for lessons from re-election bids that overcame a first-term rise in...

Who would get blamed for an economic downturn resulting from the debt ceiling standoff? John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, has argued that incumbents tend to get blamed by voters for bad economic conditions even under divided government. New York Times blogger Nate Silver

When President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, I was skeptical about its chances of killing the myth that he was not born in this country:

Will Wednesday's release of Obama's long-form birth certificate put an end to the birther myth?

The odds aren't good. The problem is...

Can early primary polls tell us who is likely to win their party's nomination for president? In a post a few months ago, I argued they provide little information:

If we exclude sitting vice presidents (George H.W. Bush, Al Gore) and the vice president from the previous administration (Walter...

Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler objects to the liberal conventional wisdom that, as the New York Times put it, "It is inconceivable that this campaign [birtherism]... would have been conducted against a white president":

We think it was a remarkable statement because somewhat similar campaigns already...

I have a new commentary on CNN.com about the release of President Obama's birth certificate yesterday and why it's a victory for misinformation. Here's how it begins:

Recent polls have found that as much as 15% to 20% of the public, including about 30% to 45% of Republicans, falsely...

Yesterday, John Sides and I published an article cautioning journalists against overstating the importance of political events on public opinion (they rarely have a significant effect). Today -- as if on cue -- NBC's First Read newsletter did just that, suggesting that President Obama's approval ratings are...

I have an article in the new issue of The Forum with John Sides of George Washington University and The Monkey Cage about how reporters can use political science to inform and improve their reporting. One problem we focus on is coverage that exaggerates the effects of...

The wonkosphere has been debating why President Obama and the Democrats got such a seemingly bad deal in the budget negotiations last week. As several writers have noted, they were in a position of weakness due to their base's preference for compromise. Still, it seems clear that Obama and...

Democratic pollster Mark Penn writes the following:

Only two Democrats in the last 90 years have been reelected to a second term -- Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. The rest of the Democrats have seen their presidencies cut short, and so the historical odds of Obama winning a...