Gavin Ploger

What does an independent mean in politics? New CNN poll results identify five distinct types of independents.

Check out our new CNN poll deep dive into who political independents are, how they engage with politics and what they think about the current political moment. The classic swing voter appears to be a thing of the past. www.cnn.com/interactive/...

UMich to close CSCAR, longtime statistical consulting service The University of Michigan disclosed it will phase out the Consulting for Statistics, Computing and Analytics Research unit.

A disappointing decision, made in a (reputedly) disappointing way.
www.michigandaily.com/news/researc...

Can embarrassment of one's party dampen partisanship and polarization? One would think.

In a forthcoming paper at @poqjournal.bsky.social, Taylor Carlson, @stevenwwebster.bsky.social, and I examine what we call "partisan embarrassment," including looking at the ramifications of these feelings...

Also Mia is on the job market and you should hire her, she’s an amazing scholar!

Hi all, I'm still collecting data for my dissertation. If anyone has any thoughts on the Vine app in the year 2025, I would be deeply happy to hear you talk for a bit!

These Faculty Senates Are Trying to Band Together to Stand Up to Trump The idea of a compact among institutions is based on the idea that there’s strength in numbers, and it comes amid frustration that few presidents are speaking out against the administration’s actions ...

Nebraska, Rutgers, Indiana, and Michigan State faculty senates have now voted in favor of creating a mutual defense compact amongst Big 10 schools.

www.chronicle.com/article/thes...

We'll be hosting an REP mini conference on September 19 at Boulder. We're hoping to provide an alternative option for REP folks who can't attend APSA in person. CFP and further details TBA.

EMU has no plans to close its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion While sadness and anger are being expressed down the road in Ann Arbor, Eastern Michigan University says its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will continue. WEMU’s Kevin Meerschaert has this...

Yet another example of the lesser-ranked schools taking the stand that the bigger schools are too scared to.

Here: even as Ann Arbor caves on DEI, Eastern Michigan does not.

The courage of the smaller schools is laudable. The refusal of the bigger schools is frustrating.

Open Letter to the Leadership of the American Political Science Association Regarding Concerns Over the Vancouver Annual Conference and Immigration Risks To the Leadership of the American Political Science Association, As political scientists, our scholarship often interrogates the interplay between policy, politics, and their real-world impacts. It is...

In light of the immigration crackdown on graduate students and professors with documented legal status in the United States, here is an open letter to APSA which you can sign to show support to our colleagues facing tremendous uncertainties. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The more people who sign the less risky it is for all of us. We're over 900 in just about 13 hours since we first posted it. Share with your colleagues, your friends, your list servs, your professional associations, your department and campus email lists -
bit.ly/DemocracyAndHigherEd

in case you missed it, here or on the other place, here's the Sad Dad Bands thread, from the top

Planning a faculty teach-in on current events How to plan a current events teach-in Drafted Feb 21, 2025 Josh Pasek - Generated with AI assistance Key tasks/questions Determine what your teach-in will look like Identify people who can be part of ...

For faculty who are wondering about the steps of putting together a teach-in on what is currently happening, I threw together a quick guide based on some of what we did at Michigan - Feel free to pass it around and open to any suggestions - docs.google.com/document/d/1...

deviation from pre-registration: i cried too much with the more complicated model bc it wasn’t working and idk why

Some higher ed organizations who are loudly circling the wagons against federal funding cuts were oddly silent or circumspect about the earlier attacks on CRT and DEI.

I wish there was a better understanding that these attacks are coming because we failed to repel those.

It's a "post pictures of my cat on social media" kind of day

New timeline, same problems, same solution

My Life As a Homeless Man in America An extraordinary firsthand account.

From Patrick Fealey, very much worth your time.
www.esquire.com/news-politic...

Impressive - and fast - analysis of the US elections: (social) media, voters and the campaign. 88 crisp analyses. Great lineup. Open access.

Democracy commsky polisky @polcomm.bsky.social

www.electionanalysis.ws/us/

Thanks for setting this up! I'd like to be added.

This is one of the few outlets I autopay each month. Just do it and forget about it. This is some of the most important work being done on elections in the U.S.

Corsair K70 core. Just picked it up a week or two ago 'cuz my old one gave up the ghost. Like many keyboards, the new one is a keyboard, and that's about all I need it to be. It does have a silly little knob on it to change volume though, so that's fun.

I can get on board with this

Vanderbilt Political Science is hiring! Assistant Professor in American Political Behavior.

The group is fabulous and they're open to considering psychologists with relevant research. The psych & polisci buildings are neighbors and we chat often. #PsychSciSky #polisky

apply.interfolio.com/152973

What is the Claremont Institute doing back at APSA? Institutional cowardice is not a good way to run a professional association.

The American Political Science Association has some explaining to do. #APSA2024

open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

Oh hey so it turns out that #APSA2024 quietly decided to invite the Claremont Institute back to the conference.

Cool. Coolcoolcool. Yeah the discipline of Political Science should absolutely be supporting these Project2025 motherfuckers. That's nice.

admin.allacademic.com/one/apsa/aps...

Just got my Covid booster and flu shot too! Was able to schedule same day at CVS. Consider this your nudge to do so as well.

📊When teaching or giving a talk, do you like presenting plots step by step, revealing e.g. one group at a time? This is often useful for walking through complex results.

I made a R package that makes it extremely easy to do this!

ggreveal: Reveal a ggplot incrementally
#rstats #dataviz #ggplot2

Screenshot of abstract for the article "Conceptualizing evaluations of the political relevance of media texts: The Politically Relevant Media Model," found at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtae004

🚨New pub alert! 🚨 Out now in Communication Theory, I introduce a model for how media users evaluate media texts as politically relevant, leading to cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes bearing a variety of consequences. A 🧵... (1/10)

Thank you to the many many people who supported this project. Special thanks to my advisor, @snsoroka.bsky.social, who helped make this paper (and the rest of the diss) pretty dang cool; and to @ajacoby.bsky.social for putting up with me while I talked about measurement and order effects for months.