A new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby Poll has Mitt Romney ahead of John McCain by 37 percent to 34 percent in a poll of 1185 likely Republican voters in California (2.9 percent margin of error). But what is the probability that more likely voters in the state actually support Romney? Given the 2.9 percent margin of error, it’s possible that Romney just got . . .
University suspends blood drives to protest federal ban on gay blood donors. (Earlier) Can chimpanzees trade commodities? Smoking and SIDS link explained. States brace themselves for voting technology upgrades.
45 percent of Chicago doctors recommend placebos, survey says. What’s the secret to China’s economic success? “Five Myths About How Americans Vote.” Which science topics are the presidential candidates dodging?
The next generation of sports viewing: fiber-optic fields. BusinessWeek profiles James Altucher. (Earlier) A case for the rationality of voting. (Related) The latest in e-mail trends: “Don’t Print Me” messages. (Earlier)
The Hydrogen Education Foundation’s 2007/08 contest challenge: fix airports. (Earlier) Does Dunbar’s “magic” 150 apply to social networking sites? South Korea creates camps to cure Internet addiction. (Earlier) The realities of vote buying. (Earlier)
Half of N.Y.U. students say they would sell their right to vote for $1 million, according to a poll published yesterday by the Washington Square News. Sixty-six percent said they would trade their voting rights for a free four-year ride at N.Y.U. (roughly $160,000, including room and board). Twenty percent would give up the vote for an iPod Touch (value: . . .
Video Today is Election Day, albeit a quiet one. There isn’t much at stake in New York. There’s more action in New Jersey, though voter turnout is expected to be low, as it is in California. The irony is that the typical voter is more likely to have an impact in a smaller election than in a larger one, but . . .
Nick Kristoff‘s OpEd column in today’s New York Times (sub. req’d) will set to racing the hearts of many readers of this blog. His column is about voting, and he makes several points that would not get much of an argument from a roomful of economists. (Wait, scratch that: there is nothing that a roomful of economists will not argue . . .
More bad news on prostate health: The latest study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that lycopene, the antioxidant widely hailed as a prostate cancer inhibitor, may actually increase the cancer risk. In a study of more than 28,000 men, researchers found no significant correlation between incidents of prostate cancer and the concentration of lycopene in the subjects’ . . .
A few days ago, I blogged about how pre-election polls have historically overstated a minority candidate’s standing, but how that gap seems to be shrinking. In other words, according to the Pew Research Center article I cited, people used to lie to pollsters about their willingness to vote for a minority candidate, but now they do so less often. This . . .
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 . . .
On a few occasions in the past, we’ve asked you to vote for awards for which Freakonomics was nominated, and you did, and we were and remain grateful. Now, if you’re not too exhausted to vote again, there’s another award (albeit a very small one, given the posted vote tally), and it’s actually a little closer to home because it’s . . .
In the Novermber 6, 2005, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt take an age-old problem – complaints about low voter turnout in U.S. elections – and stand it on its head. That is, instead of wondering why so few people bother to vote, they ask why so many people vote. The answer may surprise you. This blog post supplies additional research material.
While 2005 is an off year for Presidential and Congressional elections, Tuesday is still Election Day, and in its honor, we got to wondering: why the heck do people bother to vote? That is the subject of our latest Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine. As always, we’ve posted a page elsewhere on this website with ancillary information. . . .
I met one of (the elder) Richard Daley’s grandsons yesterday. Great guy. At the risk of poisoning a possible friendship, I just had to ask him whether his grandfather really stole the election for Kennedy in 1960 through vote fraud in Chicago. He said no. And I believe him. I once had a research assistant spend a month going through . . .
Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote in the first Quill Book Awards. As promised, the oh-so-glamorous Oscars of the book world will be broadcast on select NBC stations on Saturday, October 22nd. The show is on at 7pm in all locations, and is only an hour, so it’s hard to know if the awarding of Best Business . . .
In recent weeks, we asked you to consider voting for Freakonomics as Best Business Book in the inaugural Quill Awards. (We know, we know: it’s not a business book, but it apparently didn’t fit any other category.) Well, the event was held a couple of nights ago and … we won. So to all of you who voted, or who . . .
A while back, there was discussion, only half in jest, that Levitt might make a good Supreme Court Justice. Now things have gotten even crazier: he has been nominated (again, only half in jest) by the BBC to help rule the world: click here for the opening page, then the “click to start” tab and then “Economists.” (It is telling . . .
Freakonomics has been nominated for the inaugural Quill Awards and we would really appreciate your vote.* Click here to cast your ballot (and be prepared to wade through several screens before finding Freakonomics in the “Best Business” category). You can actually vote for it twice: as “Best Business” book and also “Book of the Year.” Be warned, however, that the . . .
It’s true that we’ve discussed in this very space the futility of a single vote. But when that single vote is going toward you (or, more precisely, a book you’ve written) — well hell, there’s no such thing as a futile vote. As it turns out, Freakonomics has been nominated for the inaugural Quill Awards. Described as a “new book . . .
A few days ago, in an online Q&A with the Washington Post, someone asked this question: Annapolis, Md.: Have you explored why some people vote against their own economic interest? And I gave the following answer: No. But it’s not that surprising, since one vote is really worth very very little. It probably comes down to the fact that most . . .