Barry Burden

Fall leaf 2

Trump says he will meet Putin in Hungary for Ukraine talks after 'very productive' call The US president, who is due to host Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, says there will be fresh US-Russia talks with

If two autocrats are going to meet the gathering might as well be hosted by a third autocrat www.bbc.com/news/live/cy...

Fall leaf 1 (and timeline cleanse)

Only 3 states are represented by senators of opposing parties -- the lowest number of split delegations in the 100+ years that senators have been directly elected.

Only way it goes lower next year is if Susan Collins loses and Dems hold all of their seats.

Interesting and good to know!

It is an extremely complicated mix of modes and samples but doesn’t seem much different from 2020.

The 2024 @electionstudies.bsky.social has the share of "pure independents" in the US at its lowest level since 1952 (7%)

This is real, stupid, and the 113th most important and terrible action coming out of the administration

Why are federal troops not being deployed to Springfield to stop illegal immigrants from eating cats and dogs?

In other words, the GOP does not “need” Dem voters to pass a budget. They actually have votes to spare.

Non-trivial government shutdowns are rare under unified government. When a single party is in control, it can use the regular reconciliation process to enact a budget without any minority votes. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

Charlie Kirk had an unmistakable & lasting effect in galvanizing young conservatives, but he's actually fairly unpopular among young people

An open endorsement of hate - precisely what you do not want the President to do after an assassination when messages from leaders disavowing violence are especially important www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/u...

Unconstitutional, petty, and authoritarian behavior of the kind that led the colonists to declare their independence from the king www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

No administration in my lifetime has been this hostile to the free speech protections of the First Amendment

Thank goodness because we were told it was Antifa that attacked the Capitol on January 6

Kash Patel running the FBI, Trump suing the NYT, and RFK Jr trying to stop vaccinations can only mean that our government actually AI slop

It’s the study of politics around environmental policy.

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

My department @uwmadison.bsky.social is hiring an assistant professor with expertise in environmental politics. Send us your application. jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Please let me know when you actually want to do something about gun violence directed at politicians and school children

Election Matters 2025 Flyer - Money, Politics and the First Amendment Friday, October 3, 3-4:15 pm in room 2260 of the UW Law School Live Stream Option Available featuring Barry Burden, Benjamin Ginsberg, Saurav Ghosh, Raymond La Raja, and Abby Wood register and learn more at go.wisc.edu/190re6

Join us for the next installment in our Election Matters panel series on "Money, Politics, and the First Amendment." This event will explore the impacts of increasingly expensive elections and the tension between campaign finance regulation and free speech. Register here: go.wisc.edu/190re6

There’s also an accompany purge of competence, expertise, and independence in government and other institutions

The authoritarian checklist It is time to admit that America is no longer a functioning democracy

No longer a full democracy. The US has already become a (competitive) authoritarian system. And it’s getting worse. The receipts from @donmoyn.bsky.social donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...

Trump learning what Biden folks did not get about branding of the Inflation Reduction Act

District Populations and Partisan Bias We investigate whether the differing population sizes of legislative districts affect the ability to engage in partisan gerrymandering. We conjecture that larger populations facilitate partisan gerry...

🗺️ Do bigger districts make gerrymandering easier?
@bcburden.bsky.social & Veronica J. Judson find that larger district populations give mapmakers more “raw material” to distort boundaries, leading to less compact and more biased maps.

Read now: 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New @misofact.bsky.social bit from me: party activists both sides of the aisle believe extremism hurts Democrats but helps Republicans misofact.substack.com/p/democrats-...

New open access @lsqjournal.bsky.social article from me & Veronica Judson shows that legislative districts with larger populations experience more partisan gerrymandering onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Zero public chatter about who might run for Wisconsin AG in 2026 if Kaul runs for gov www.jsonline.com/story/news/p...

Our follow-up study in APR: perceived electability is affected more by fundraising from donors than self-funding by the candidate.

Campaign money is apparently seen as a measure of public support and not merely a resource to win elections.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Our new @polbehavior.bsky.social article uses survey experiments in real state primaries to show that perceptions of candidate electability are boosted by moderating among Democrats and by fundraising among Republicans link.springer.com/article/10.1...