Biden's Prediction: Inside Information or Pure Bluster?
Vice President Joe Biden, quoted in the Times a few days ago: “The day after the election, there will be a Democratic majority in the House and a Democratic majority in the Senate. If it weren’t...
View ArticlePredicting the Midterm Elections: A Freakonomics Quorum
Photo: Ben Sutherland This year’s midterm elections promise to be a bit more eventful than usual, with predictions of seismic change in Congress and in many statehouses, most of it in a blue-to-red...
View ArticlePredicting the Outcome of Tomorrow's Midterm Election
The first academic paper I ever published was an empirical analysis of the “midterm gap” in American politics.? (I couldn’t find an ungated version, but it’s not really worth reading anyway!) In almost...
View ArticleYet One More Way in Which D.C. Is Like High School?
Happy Election Day, everyone! Please don’t read this before you vote. And then don’t read this either. It’s a paper by Lauren Cohen and Christopher Malloy, both of Harvard Business School, and it’s...
View ArticleDid the Tea Party Help or Hurt the Republicans?
Is the Tea Party responsible for yesterday’s election results?? Probably.? But perhaps not in the way you were thinking. Journalists have written thousands of pages describing the anger, fury or...
View ArticleHow Much Does the President Really Matter?
Pete Souza, Whitehouse.gov President-elect Obama, backstage at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2009, just before taking the oath of office. Podcast Freakonomics Radio How Much Does the President of the...
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