DOES DIVERSITY IN CONGRESS TRANSLATE INTO REPRESENTATION?
February 8, 2019
Podcast with Kenneth Lowande about diversity in Congress
Night-time satellite imagery can measure electricity provision
February 8, 2019
CPS faculty member Brian Min uses satellite imagery to determine whether a place has electricity. His research reveals that certain places get brighter shortly before elections, suggesting politicians lean on power companies to minimize blackouts.
Michigan Republicans ask court to reject gerrymandering settlement
February 4, 2019
Nine of the settlement districts were identified in court records as among the most “partisan outliers,” according to an analysis by University of Michigan professor Jowei Chen, who used a computer program to run thousands of simulations to compare the maps to possible alternatives.
Having the most diverse Congress ever will affect more than just legislation
January 9, 2019
Legislators from underrepresented groups disproportionately advocate for these communities¶¶Article authored by study authors: Kenneth Lowande, Melinda Ritchie and Erinn Lauterbach ¶¶Study: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/lowande/wp-content/uploads/sites/581/2019/01/dr-v3.pdf
Federal appeals panel rules Michigan gerrymandering lawsuit can go to trial
December 6, 2018
Jowei Chen analyzed re-districting plans using a simulation that generated 1,000 of each alternative Congressional districts, state house and state senate districts. He found that nine of Michigan’s 14 Congressional districts were “partisan outliers.”
Google Tweaks Email Program That Assumed An Investor Was Male
November 28, 2018
However, these blunders are not entirely the fault of the algorithm’s programmers and blame can honestly be assigned to the algorithm itself, according to Christian Sandvig, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, who spoke to NPR in 2016.¶¶”The systems are of a sufficient complexity that it…
Eyes on 2020? Ohio GOP Governor, Democratic Senator Mulling
November 19, 2018
With insights from Josh Pasek, a political scientist who’s just to the north at the University of Michigan, here are reasons why such a 2020 showdown might happen. And why it probably won’t.
You can trust the polls in 2018, if you read them carefully
November 8, 2018
Josh Pasek and Michael Traugott wrote the article
Those who love Trump and those who hate him are paying the most attention to him
November 5, 2018
What voters were focused on seemed to have major consequences in 2016, when Gallup found the word “email” dominated what people said they heard about Hillary Clinton during the campaign. “Indeed, the second-, third- and fourth-most-frequently used words associated with Clinton also relate to emails: “FBI,” “investigation” and “scandal,” wrote…
Rob Mickey speaks to Vox about the possibilities of the midterm elections and “backsliding”
November 5, 2018
All that said, there are a few potentially troubling outcomes even if Democrats take one or more houses of Congress. Mickey noted that such a development runs the risk of encouraging more unilateral action from Trump, a kind of “constitutional hardball” that contributes to a concentration of power in the…