The public may not be getting the policies they want, but it’s very hard to measure what they do want.

If democracy is to be representative, then public policies should reflect what the public wants. But how do we determine whether or not this is the case? Christopher Wlezien takes a close look at policy representation, arguing that it can be very hard to assess given that support for and opposition to a specific policy may not reflect what the public actually wants. Public preferences for “more” policy (spending for example) also may not tell us much about what the public wants. He warns that in some policy areas, expressed preferences for more spending are completely unrelated to the policy status quo and so tell us nothing about whether the public even wants more or less

Early campaign economic perceptions can help to predict the national verdict on Election Day

It is well known that elections are determined by certain fundamental variables: internal factors that reflect voters’ long-term political predispositions and external factors that are unique to each campaign. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien examine how one external factor, the state of the economy, compares to how voters’ internal factors evolve over the final 200 days of presidential campaigns. They find that while noneconomic factors dominate at the outset of the campaign, the economic component increases in salience as Election Day draws nearer and offers greater electoral predictability overall

The media and public opinion react to changes in economic conditions, not the state of the economy in general.

Economic headlines have come to dominate media reports in our contemporary 24/7 news cycle. But how are economic changes reflected by the media? By comparing more than 30,000 news stories from the New York Times and The Washington Post with economic and consumer indicators, Stuart Soroka, Dominik Stecula, and Christopher Wlezien, find that the media and public opinion react to economic changes, rather than the overall state of the economy. They also find that media reports tend to reflect future economic expectations, rather than what is presently occurring, or has happened before.These findings have important implications for political leaders, in that they cannot simply rely on general economic indicators – they will be judged more on recent and future economic changes

Forecasting House Seats from General Congressional Polls

According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the Democrats' vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats. This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic congressional polls into the election outcome

National polls and district information point to a 10 seat GOP midterm swing in the House to 244 seats

This midterm cycle, much commentary has been focused on Senate races, given that the Republican Party looks very likely to hold and increase its seats in the House of Representatives. But how many House seats should the GOP expect to win? With a week to go, Joseph Bafumi, Robert S. Erikson, and Christopher Wlezien give an updated House forecast. They write that a combination of the GOP’s incumbency advantage, their domination of state legislatures (and thus, redistricting) since 2010, and U.S. internal migration, mean that the Republican Party are likely to win about 244 seats on November 4th

Forecasting House Seats from General Congressional Polls

According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the Democrats' vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats. This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic congressional polls into the election outcome

It's (Change in) the (Future) Economy, Stupid: Economic Indicators, the Media, and Public Opinion

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111207/1/ajps12145-sup-0001-text.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111207/2/ajps12145.pd

New methods of removing debris and high-throughput counting of cyst nematode eggs extracted from field soil

The soybean cyst nematode (SCN), Heterodera glycines, is the most damaging pathogen of soybeans in the United States. To assess the severity of nematode infestations in the field, SCN egg population densities are determined. Cysts (dead females) of the nematode must be extracted from soil samples and then ground to extract the eggs within. Sucrose centrifugation commonly is used to separate debris from suspensions of extracted nematode eggs. We present a method using OptiPrep as a density gradient medium with improved separation and recovery of extracted eggs compared to the sucrose centrifugation technique. Also, computerized methods were developed to automate the identification and counting of nematode eggs from the processed samples. In one approach, a high-resolution scanner was used to take static images of extracted eggs and debris on filter papers, and a deep learning network was trained to identify and count the eggs among the debris. In the second approach, a lensless imaging setup was developed using off-the-shelf components, and the processed egg samples were passed through a microfluidic flow chip made from double-sided adhesive tape. Holographic videos were recorded of the passing eggs and debris, and the videos were reconstructed and processed by custom software program to obtain egg counts. The performance of the software programs for egg counting was characterized with SCN-infested soil collected from two farms, and the results using these methods were compared with those obtained through manual counting

Social Welfare Policy Outputs and Governing Parties’ Left-Right Images: Do Voters Respond?

While previous research evaluates how citizens’ perceptions of governing parties’ ideologies respond to party policy rhetoric and the composition of governing coalitions, no extant study addresses whether citizens cue off of government policy outputs. We calibrate citizens’ Left-Right party placements against data on government welfare policies in analyses of 15 party systems for 1973–2010. We identify a welfare generosity effect where governing parties’ images shift further left when welfare policies are more generous; moreover, the public appears to hold the current government accountable for the welfare regime it inherited, in addition to the welfare policy changes to this regime it has enacted since the last election. However, we find no evidence that citizens react to governments’ manifesto-based policy rhetoric, which suggests that citizens prioritize actual government policies, not words. These findings have implications for parties’ election strategies and for mass-elite linkages

An analysis of the public’s personal, national and EU issue priorities

Scholars characterize decision-making in the European Union (EU) as increasingly dispersed across different levels of political authority. This has implications for political representation. Yet, little is known about whether and how public opinion differs across levels of governance. In this paper, we consider evaluations of issue priorities. Specifically, we use data from the Eurobarometer to evaluate the degree of correspondence between issues that citizens consider important to them personally, to their country and to the EU. We find generally weak relationships between different levels of governance, which suggests national issue priorities are distinct from both personal and EU priorities. The results indicate that more careful research is needed to understand how public priorities at different levels affect politics and policy in the E