Matt Grossmann

Texas redraw would give Republicans more of a national advantage in districting, but from a low point in their advantage relative to the last few decades (though it may matter more now that fewer candidates substantially outperform their party)
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u...

A new article by David Mayhew and Ethan Yan on "memorable drives" to repeal congressional measures targeting Prohibition, the Taft–Hartley Act, and the ACA. "A congressional enactment can be just a first draft."
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Check out this fascinating paper by my colleagues Erin Rossiter and Jeff Harden. Such a cool design and interesting findings. Plus, Taylor!

The Development of an Issue Public: Evidence from The Eras Tour | The Journal of Politics: Vol 0, No ja

We have a JOP article about how swifties ~randomly denied tickets to the eras tour due to website allocation errors changed their views on related policies
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Reconciliation and rescission - Niskanen Center Molly Reynolds discusses how much power Congress is ceding to the President.

Reconciliation and rescission

How did Congressional Republicans succeed & how much more can appropriations power decline?

New Science Of Politics podcast/transcript with @mollyereynolds.bsky.social

www.niskanencenter.org/reconciliati...

Communities with colleges exhibit higher levels of civic engagement and greater social trust today, relative to “runner-up” locations without colleges that were considered long ago. These counties are also more politically liberal, especially since 2000
scholar.google.com/scholar_url?...

District courts are ruling against Trump administration, but not the Supreme Court
data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-suprem...

Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Is Described as Avoiding the Likeliest Cause of Death

On issue focus (economy vs democracy), contrast vs Trump attacks, & distancing from Biden, it was not a left vs center fight but the left & center (including the SuperPAC) vs the campaign. So they may settle on "too much on TV, not enough on ground" www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/u...

U.S. Public Trust in Higher Ed Rises From Recent Low More Americans say they are confident in higher education now than a year ago, the first increase Gallup has measured in the decade-old trend.

Confidence in higher education is rising again (likely thermostatically in response to attacks), but with remaining concern more concentrated on politics & less on costs
news.gallup.com/poll/692519/...

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library We provide a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of the relationship between campaign finance pressures and the wealth of politicians. We argue that the heavily right-skewed wealth distri....

greater country campaign financing pressures lead to greater shares of very wealthy legislators
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

1 view (DK yet how true) is that Obama with Congress used surplus to successfully relax repayment with limited Rep rollback & ~consensus on degrees for jobs. Biden did massive forgiveness without Congress, which was mostly undone & stimulated Rep retrenchment of Obama reforms

What is the best history of the student loan limits that ended up in the reconciliation bill? I would like to know how much they were developed in response to Biden's expansion of forgiveness & changes in payback terms & how much they slowly built independently?

One AI dystopia (that we might say is already in progress with conventional software) is that we can achieve grand-scale standardization & rule-setting & that many remaining human jobs are finding ways around these systems, especially through the layered kludges of the past.

Many assume that bureaucracies function well by optimizing & then standardizing procedures. But close looks usually reveal they function well when goal-oriented implementers close to the ground know & practice loopholes, overrides, & fast-track alternatives.

Thermostatic politics on immigration continues.

The Senate Passed a Federal Voucher Program. What's in It? The measure would create a national program funding private school tuition through tax credits, though states would have to opt in.

The revised voucher provision in reconciliation still opens an option for Dems to copy. Rather than appropriate $ for alternative energy, health care, or social services, they can just give 100% tax credits for individuals to give to charities to do it
www.edweek.org/policy-polit...

Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy Scientific Data - Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy

I'm very pleased to share that my paper, "Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy," coauthored with
@mattgrossmann.bsky.social
and Caleb Lucas is now out (open-access!) at Nature Scientific Data. nature.com/articles/s41...

Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy Scientific Data - Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy

Introducing CongressData and Correlates of State Policy

Our new open-access article in Nature Scientific Data:
rdcu.be/evEpj

Economic literacy polarizes partisans' policy positions, rather than making them more similar to economists' policy views across parties
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

How the president gained war powers - Niskanen Center Casey Dominguez finds that although the founders bestowed war powers with Congress, by the Spanish-American war legislators had expanded their view of the president’s powers and begun applying a more ...

How the President Gained War Powers

The long history, with implications for how shared constitutional understanding can be lost to nationalism & partisanship

Casey Dominguez on the #ScienceOfPolitics podcast, with transcript
www.niskanencenter.org/how-the-pres...

The (Sometimes Untraceable) Origins of Policy Ideas in Congress: An Analysis of Seven Landmark Laws Research on lawmaking suggests enactments are constructed in various ways. Although multiple approaches are documented in the literature, political scientists do not know which are used more often. I....

The (Sometimes Untraceable) Origins of Policy Ideas in Congress
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Pew & Catalist disagree about the education divide by race, not only in 2024 but in prior elections. Pew shows earlier divides, so not as much continuation of the trend. Catalist shows extension to minority groups in 2024 & a slower build.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Apparently, we've been architecting, anchoring, & sanctifying to compete with Amazon
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

civil rights framing is counterproductive for policy support across issues, beneficiaries, and audiences
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Apparently you can impose taxes on two disfavored interests without running afoul of the no new tax pledge: gamblers & universities.

Biden & Trump immigration changes seem to have reduced border flows. To what extent will increased interior enforcement, including showy raids, lead to more outmigration (self-deportation) of those already here, especially with larger ICE budgets coming? Any evidence so far?

Reducing the insured population & adding a rural hospital bailout is quite the kludge. Some budget wonks advocated many of the Medicaid cuts (provider tax limits & immigration & work enforcement). But was any wonk advocating this combo as a fix for US health care before the bill?

Column | What if Trump’s gains with minorities weren’t about Trump at all? We’re all racing to explain Trump’s growing appeal with minority voters. But what if it was never really about Trump at all?

Educational & ideological polarization extending to social minorities & trending against parties of the left is not unique to the US
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Some useful details in replies. But institutional lobbying on bills likely to pass tries to tone down negative provisions, work for least-bad options, & win exemptions. That's what they did here. It's more a failure of folk theories of lobbying (bills pass because lobbyists) than lobbying literature

Don't think "Dems should have strong-armed Manchinema more" is an analogous lesson here. Republican leaders made deals with individual moderate holdouts when they had to (& lost a couple). Most of the successful strong-arming was on right-wingers to go along with the deals.