Gabe Lenz

Incredible parallels in this Berinsky &
@gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism

gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

Convince the other side you support democracy. They’ll be less likely to tolerate backsliding by their own side.

Research: Believing that the mass public in the opposing party supports undemocratic tactics leads people to be more supportive of undemocratic tactics themselves. Being assured that a majority of your opponents oppose such radical tactics increases support for democratic norms osf.io/my987/download

Nice work. As always, Jon is a fountain of knowledge.

Picture of Jonathan Ladd on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

I went on Washington Journal to talk about Elon Musk and third parties. www.c-span.org/program/wash...

Exploiting a Major Blunder to Study Policy Accountability: Trump and His Covid Stance in 2020 - Political Behavior Most theories of democracy assume that voters punish politicians who pursue unpopular policies. However, empirical evidence supporting this claim remains elusive, partly because politicians strategica...

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Don’t trust an observational model with a bunch of arbitrary control variables

@gabelenz.bsky.social @alexandersahn.bsky.social Lenz, Gabriel S., and Alexander Sahn. "Achieving statistical significance with control variables and without transparency." Political Analysis

doi.org/10.1017/pan....

Link to the paper link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Even though voters didn’t learn they were out of line with Trump, it’s likely that Trump lost out on the sustained increase in support that leaders around the world received in the first year or two of COVID merely, it seems, for taking the virus seriously, if ineffectively. See: t.co/2emeZLthLp

Of course, this was a close election, and it’s very possible that those who did learn and defect were pivotal in Trump’s loss.

So, will voters stand up for their policy views on Election Day? At least on this policy and for this candidate, the answer appears to be no, at least not in large numbers.

The follow-the-leader tendency is largest for WHO membership. Among Trumpers who supported membership in Aug. 2020, and who never learned Trump’s stance on it, support remained near 100% after the election. By contrast, among those who learned Trump’s stance, support fell to 45%.

Instead of punishing Trump, Trump supporters dramatically changed their views on these COVID policies. When they learned Trump’s policies, they followed the leader. :-)

Did those voters defect when they learned? Since so few learned Trump’s stance, we lack the power to shed much light on this question, and it’s a hard causal one. Nevertheless, we don’t see much sign of defection among those who realized they were out of line with Trump.

Despite billions spent on the campaign, Trumpers mostly didn’t learn that Trump was out of line with them on COVID. On mandatory masks in public, for example, the % saying Biden supported this more than Trump increased from 19% to only 40%.

Eric Guntermann and I had a panel survey in the field. So we were able to take advantage of this apparent blunder. Did Trump voters learn they were out of step with him on this issue? Did they defect from him when they learned?

Politicians are usually strategic. They don’t often step out of line with their voters on highly salient issues during campaigns. Theories of democracy suggest that voters should learn they are out of line and punish them, but we don’t actually know if they do. It’s a hard empirical question.

Not only were Trump voters out of line with Trump on COVID, they also mostly didn’t realize they were out of line. Among Trump voters who wanted mandatory masks in public, only 19% thought Biden was more supportive of this policy than Trump.

Trump’s pollsters repeatedly warned him he was out of line with his own voters. The RNC chair and some of his advisors pleaded with him to change his stance. Trump ignored them.

In the 2020 campaign, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump took a stance out of line, not only with the public in general, but even with his own voters. It’s been forgotten, but even Trumpers were scared and wanted masks and aggressive gov’t action in 2020.

New paper. What happens when a presidential candidate steps way out of line, not only with the public, but even with his own voters? And on a highly salient issue? Candidates typically don’t do that—they’re too strategic. But Trump isn’t. He’s good for social science. 🧵

Everything indicates that the Tesla protests are really eroding his wealth and are the only thing causing enough business/financial pain to him to possibly change his behavior. www.teslatakedown.com to find a protest near you this weekend. Something you can do to really make a difference.

One way to think about what's happening with Trump getting elected and then waging war on the Constitution and laws is that: It's taken less than 9 months for Trump v. U.S. to almost break the American republic. /1

Our institutions depend on a coalition of moderate Republican senators emerging. Give Schumer space to help it form.

YouTube video by Buffy Wicks for Assembly Why should permitting reform matter to Californians in 2025?

Permitting reform: sexy? Not so much. Important? Crucially.

Red tape trips up so many critical housing, transportation, renewable energy & climate resilience projects — and we can fix this. Here I talk to my colleagues about why it’s so important that we do.

www.youtube.com/shorts/v17C4...

Here is the same period for the 1984 election, morning in America.

An underappreciated reason why Harris lost was flat real disposable income growth in the election year. RDI was above trend, but voters care about growth in the election year itself. Between Jan. and Nov. 2024, nothing happened.

New 2024 data: Over 50% of GOP fundraising now comes from just 100 mega-donors.

Trump’s embrace of the billionaire class—and their embrace of him—will only supercharge this trend.

More evidence for the long-term stability and persistence of party id. A change induced by a major early life experience does not decay.