With this third and final post, we wrap up our day of divorce. Find our other D-day contributors here and here. History shows that we Americans generally like to elect politicians who have a stable family life, or at the least the appearance of one: a spouse, perhaps a couple of children, etc. Among candidates running for national and statewide . . .
We’ve written in the past about the (presumed) worthlessness of book blurbs. But I just came across one blurb that I think might be an exception. The book in question is Why Blacks Fear “America’s Mayor”: Reporting Police Brutality and Black Activist Politics Under Rudy Giuliani. You may recall that this was the book Al Sharpton was reading on a . . .
One of the really fun innovations in this election cycle is the extent to which the speech of the candidates has now become grist for statistical analysis. For instance, the Times’ “Caucus” blog reports that Reagan’s name was invoked 53 times last night, and by this measure Romney beat McCain 19 to 12. The Times has now set up a . . .
That’s the question asked by the Wharton economists Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko. But they are not talking about national political parties. In that realm, party affiliation has indeed been shown to have a strong effect on legislation and policy. No, Ferreira and Gyourko are interested in whether party affiliation matters on the local level — and their answer, essentially, . . .
Slate, the 11-year-old online magazine that can lean pretty hard to the left, has just launched a video channel called Slate V. By the current standards of web video, these things are genius. It is interesting to note that the two leading GOP presidential candidates, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, seem to be abnormally enthusiastic about prescribing mental-health treatment. Click . . .
On the InTrade prediction market site, John Edwards has fallen behind the undeclared Al Gore. Here is Edwards’s recent price chart: And here is Gore’s: Note how far Gore has fallen since the Oscar hubbub. Note, also, that Gore remains (fairly) adamant that he won’t run. On the GOP side, meanwhile, the not-quite-yet-declared Fred Thompson has just about caught up . . .
Now that it’s looking a bit more likely that Michael Bloomberg could maybe, perhaps, possibly run for President on a third-party ticket, you’ve got to at least entertain this bizarre ballot possibility in 2008: For U.S. President: Hillary Clinton (D-NY) Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY) Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) How nice it would be, speaking as a NYC resident, to know that regardless . . .
Today, ABC News director of polling and Freakonomics.com guest blogger Gary Langer offers an interesting breakdown of recent poll numbers on a particularly timely topic: Whether a pro-abortion stance by a Republican candidate (in this instance, Rudy Giuliani, whose position on the issue has been cited as a major hurdle in his pursuit of the presidential nomination) will in fact . . .
Here’s a really interesting article (albeit a few months old) from the Pew Research Center that concerns a point we’ve touched on before: Minority political candidates tend to do better in pre-election polls than in the actual elections, suggesting that voters want to sound color-blind to pollsters but in fact carry a strong racial preference into the booth. The article . . .
Despite speculation about Rudy Giuliani’s reluctance to run for President, and skepticism that he’s a viable candidate, it looks as though he’s about ready to officially declare himself a candidate. This comes as little surprise to anyone who received the following “Team Rudy” e-mail from Brent Seaborn, a former Bush operative now putting together the Giuliani campaign team. Are Giuliani’s . . .