The Political Scientist

In a hyper-partisan world, it can feel like even the most mundane of conversations suddenly can erupt into a politically charged jousting match. However, more often than not, those who engage in political discussions are more likely to do so with likeminded individuals in an echo chamber where congruent world views are reinforced (and even strengthened) and differing opinions are either nowhere to be seen or openly derided. It certainly can't help matters much that those who are most likely to engage in online political discussions also happen to have more extreme liberal or conservative ideological views. In 2010, Pew Research Center conducted a post midterm election tracking survey that contained a number of questions related to online political engagement. Whether or not respondents had ever engaged in an online political discussion was one of the questions asked in the survey. When broken down by ideological intensity, the share of respondents in each ideological category

During the (agonizingly) long period leading up to the 2016 presidential election, much ado was made about whether Republican Donald J. Trump's success was (partially) chalked up to his political outsider status. While it's hard to know for sure, some of my own research suggests, at the very least, that presidential candidates were motivated to spend much less time in 2016 focusing on their prior experience as government officials, at least when it comes to primary and general election debates. Political scientists who study presidential debates have shown that candidates both influence and are constrained by public opinion. Presidential hopefuls must cater their debate performances to shifts in public opinion in order appeal to voters, while at the same time candidates must try to influence the agenda of debates to suit their own purposes. It's a delicate balancing act. The content of presidential debates, therefore, can tell us a lot about public opinion at the time o