Do members of Congress vote differently when they are worried about winning their party’s primary election? On today's episode, Ethan and Wioletta interview Anthony about his forthcoming paper, “Do Primary Elections Exacerbate Congressional Polarization?,” which is forthcoming from the Journal of Politics.

Using detailed voting data and the natural variation in primary election timing across states, Anthony and his co-author, Shu Fu, show that primaries play a surprisingly small role in pushing lawmakers to the ideological extremes—accounting for only about 1% of congressional polarization.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do politicians really understand what drives voters—or are they relying on flawed assumptions that could shape democracy in troubling ways?

As we take some time off for the holidays, we wanted to re-share our episode with University of Calgary political scientist Jack Lucas, whose paper “Politicians’ Theories of Voting Behavior,” reveals striking gaps between how politicians perceive voters and how voters see themselves. While politicians often hold a cynical, “democratic realist” view of voters, citizens are far more optimistic about their own behavior. But who’s right—and does it even matter?

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we speak with Cory Clark, behavioral scientist and Associate Professor of Psychology at New College of Florida. We discuss her paper, “Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors," which explores how controversial topics in science are perceived, debated, and sometimes suppressed, and the psychological dynamics of taboo beliefs and self-censorship in academia.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.