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Brian Schaffner

@bfschaffner.bsky.social
3.4K followers 527 following 189 posts

Political scientist ~ Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies at Tufts ~ CES Whisperer ~ #COYS #GoDawgs

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
we’re hiring an assistant professor in American politics 🐘 apply.interfolio.com/194599
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
who had the better season? @miacosta.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social @apsa.bsky.social
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
old (source: umass polls)
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Joel Wertheimer @wertwhile.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Nice post from Elliott here walking through why this screen is not a perfect LV screen but it's useful. The long and short is screening out all people who say they won't vote undersamples those people (lots of them vote) and oversamples people who say they will definitely vote (lots of them don't)
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Are Jewish Americans really leaving the Democratic Party? Fewer identify as Democratic, but most still plan to vote for Democrats. Read the latest from @bfschaffner.bsky.social: goodauthority.org/news/are-jew...
goodauthority.org
Are Jewish Americans really leaving the Democratic Party?
Recent data shows a significant drop in Jewish identification with the Democratic Party. Is this a temporary blip or a sign of deeper shifts ahead? Explore the numbers and what they mean for 2026.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
from 2024 to 2025 there was a stunning 8-point drop in the share of Jewish Americans who identified as Democrats, but it is not clear that this will translate into a shift in voting behavior in November. my latest piece for @goodauth.bsky.social goodauthority.org/news/are-jew...
goodauthority.org
Are Jewish Americans really leaving the Democratic Party?
Recent data shows a significant drop in Jewish identification with the Democratic Party. Is this a temporary blip or a sign of deeper shifts ahead? Explore the numbers and what they mean for 2026.
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Joel Wertheimer @wertwhile.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Article in the WSJ today about my piece last week and UMich’s defense. Don’t know how else to put it but their defense of not weighting on partisanship was weak and stubborn. www.wsj.com/economy/cons...
wsj.com
Do We Really Feel This Lousy About the Economy, or Is a Key Survey Broken?
The University of Michigan is pushing back and defending its widely tracked consumer sentiment gauge.
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New York Times Opinion @nytopinion.nytimes.com · 04/07/2026
“Americans have been told for at least two decades that they share less and less, while the data show the actual overlap holding roughly steady,” the political scientists Brian Schaffner and Stephen Ansolabehere write.
nyti.ms
Opinion | No One Wants to Hear It, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized
Americans have been told for at least two decades that they share less and less, while the data show the actual overlap holding roughly steady.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
we wrote a thing based on our book project to offer some hope this 4th of July. if you choose to see it, we have quite a lot in common with our political foes. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | No One Wants to Hear It, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized
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Opinion Today @opiniontoday.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
We Hate to Break It to You, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized. (Stephen Ansolabehere and @bfschaffner.bsky.social) 🎁Gift article: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | We Hate to Break It to You, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
we wrote a thing based on our book project to offer some hope this 4th of July. if you choose to see it, we have quite a lot in common with our political foes. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/04/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | No One Wants to Hear It, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized
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David Darmofal @daviddarmofal.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
A @nytimes.com op-ed on this 250th by political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere & @bfschaffner.bsky.social
nytimes.com
Opinion | No One Wants to Hear It, but Maybe We’re Not That Polarized
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Not all popular state politicians are created equal. Andy Beshear stands out for being remarkably popular given the politics of Kentucky. Read the latest from @bfschaffner.bsky.social: goodauthority.org/news/not-all...
goodauthority.org
Not all popular state politicians are created equal
Think you know the 2028 frontrunners? A deeper look at current approval ratings reveals some surprises about the presidential race contenders.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
somebody should run an adaptation of our inauguration crowd experiment asking Trump supporters what color the water is...
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Why are American politics so volatile? Both parties are divided. Older issues divide Republicans by education, while newer ones divide Democrats by race. See the research results here: goodauthority.org/news/why-are...
goodauthority.org
Why are American politics so volatile?
Both parties are divided. Older issues divide Republicans by education, while newer ones divide Democrats by race.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
the perspective that "Dems should be Dems" begs the question, but which Dems should they be? goodauthority.org/news/secular...
goodauthority.org
Secular Democrats are on the rise
Fewer Democrats identify as religious. That’s creating tension with Black voters.
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Ideological moderation might appeal to conservatives, but it can also rankle liberals. Here are some Democrats that have established moderate credentials. See the breakdown from @bfschaffner.bsky.social. goodauthority.org/news/these-d...
goodauthority.org
These Democrats have established moderate credentials
Ideological moderation might appeal to conservatives, but it can also rankle liberals in this year's midterms.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
lots of talk among Democrats about how whether and how much they need to moderate. in a new @goodauth.bsky.social post, i look at which candidates have actually staked out a moderate reputation in their states...one clear standout here 1/3
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
lots of talk among Democrats about how whether and how much they need to moderate. in a new @goodauth.bsky.social post, i look at which candidates have actually staked out a moderate reputation in their states...one clear standout here 1/3
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Joel Wertheimer @wertwhile.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
I don't know what the phrase is when your nephew is a lot like you, but my nephew was in @bfschaffner.bsky.social's methods class this semester and did an interesting study on ideological extremity and politicians raising money and being mean on the internet. tufts-pol.medium.com/who-is-drivi...
tufts-pol.medium.com
Who is driving polarization? The role of ideological extremity in communication and funding
by Fatima Eisa (‘26), Shayna Levy (‘28), Chloe Walker (‘28), and Eliot Wertheimer (‘29)
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
we recently upgraded the CES shiny apps...most of the improvements are aesthetic, but one notable addition is the ability to see breakdowns of the vote for governor and senate in states with large enough samples! full set of apps are here: tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
we recently upgraded the CES shiny apps...most of the improvements are aesthetic, but one notable addition is the ability to see breakdowns of the vote for governor and senate in states with large enough samples! full set of apps are here: tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
sometimes i see a @today.yougov.com poll question and think that the only possible reason for its existence is to settle a bet between two of their employees
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Democrats and Republicans disagree on what political violence even is... The crux of the disagreement? Whether the government’s actions can constitute violence. Read why this matters here: goodauthority.org/news/democra...
goodauthority.org
Democrats and Republicans disagree on what political violence even is
The crux of the disagreement? Whether the government’s actions can constitute violence.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
earlier this month @tufts.edu senior Miles Kendrick and I fielded a survey with @today.yougov.com to better understand what acts people think are political violence. there are some points of agreement & some clear differences of opinion. goodauthority.org/news/democra...
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
earlier this month @tufts.edu senior Miles Kendrick and I fielded a survey with @today.yougov.com to better understand what acts people think are political violence. there are some points of agreement & some clear differences of opinion. goodauthority.org/news/democra...
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Lee Drutman @leedrutman.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
This feels like a pretty significant development that's not likely to reverse.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
in conjunction with this report, we are also today releasing the data for the 2025 CES common content. includes interviews with 17,000 American adults conducted in late 2025. dig in! doi.org/10.7910/DVN/...
doi.org
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
there's a new report out from YouGov using CES data to plot trends in partisanship over the past two decades. i've got a piece up today in @goodauth.bsky.social summarizing some key findings. check out both! GA piece: goodauthority.org/news/long-st... YouGov report: yougov.com/en-us/articl...
goodauthority.org
The long-standing Democratic advantage in party identification is gone
A new report shows how much the partisan landscape has shifted.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
we've put out the call for teams for the 2026 cooperative election study! be the unsung hero who organizes your colleagues for a module tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...
tischcollege.tufts.edu
About & Methodology
Learn about how teams can participate in the CES by purchasing survey modules, the sampling and weighting methods used to ensure representative data, and how the questionnaire is structured.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
we've put out the call for teams for the 2026 cooperative election study! be the unsung hero who organizes your colleagues for a module tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...
tischcollege.tufts.edu
About & Methodology
Learn about how teams can participate in the CES by purchasing survey modules, the sampling and weighting methods used to ensure representative data, and how the questionnaire is structured.
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Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Most Americans don’t see compromise as central to good citizenship. Our election survey data reveal some surprising findings. The latest from @bfschaffner.bsky.social, see the data here: goodauthority.org/news/most-am...
goodauthority.org
Most Americans don’t see compromise as central to good citizenship
Most Americans don’t see compromise as central to good citizenship. Our election survey data reveal some surprising findings.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
in 2024, Trump improved most on his vote share in counties that saw the smallest numbers of people moving there. the newest @TuftsUniversity Public Opinion Lab blog post from Toby Winick. tufts-pol.medium.com/trumps-suppo...
tufts-pol.medium.com
Trump’s support increased the most in counties with the fewest transplants
by Toby Winick (class of 2026)
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
there are a lot of things that Americans think are important for being a good citizen, engaging in compromise is not one of them ... my latest post with @goodauth.bsky.social goodauthority.org/news/most-am...
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Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 11/02/2026
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
It must be very hard to publish null results
Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
in a new Tufts Public Opinion Lab post, Seona Maskara (class of '26) shows that LGBTQ liberals are more supportive of Gaza than other liberals tufts-pol.medium.com/queers-for-p...
tufts-pol.medium.com
“Queers for Palestine”: Ironic, or a representation of Queer Theory in action?
by Seona Maskara (class of 2026)
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Political Science Research and Methods @psrm.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
📝Inattentive respondents are a growing concern in online surveys. ➡S Blatte & @bfschaffner.bsky.social that 4 to 6% of respondents pass attention checks yet remain inattentive, biasing public opinion estimates for small subgroups www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView
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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Very interesting new study using CES data from Scott Platte and @bfschaffner.bsky.social new in @psrm.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
i have a new article out in @psrm.bsky.social with Scott Blatte exploring respondent attentiveness in the Cooperative Election Study. we find fairly low rates of inattentiveness but our intervention failed to nudge respondents to pay more attention (thread) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Surviving the screens: the problem of hidden inattentive respondents in online surveys | Political Science Research and Methods | Cambridge Core
Surviving the screens: the problem of hidden inattentive respondents in online surveys
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
i have a new article out in @psrm.bsky.social with Scott Blatte exploring respondent attentiveness in the Cooperative Election Study. we find fairly low rates of inattentiveness but our intervention failed to nudge respondents to pay more attention (thread) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Surviving the screens: the problem of hidden inattentive respondents in online surveys | Political Science Research and Methods | Cambridge Core
Surviving the screens: the problem of hidden inattentive respondents in online surveys
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Mia Costa @miacosta.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
If you need a cite backing up that issues commonly associated with African Americans (like criminal justice and poverty) *are actually perceived to be* associated with African Americans and we aren't just all talking out of our @$$ assuming that criminal justice=Black, Tatishe and I did the work:
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
in the newest Tufts Public Opinion Lab post, Miles Kendrick and Rachel Kuhn show that while Black Americans with college experience strongly support affirmative action, those without such experiences oppose it tufts-pol.medium.com/the-x-perien...
tufts-pol.medium.com
The X-perience Factor: What polls miss about Black experience with college and support for…
by Miles Kendrick (class of 20026) and Rachel Kuhn (class of 20026)
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
really interesting analysis from Tufts Public Opinion Lab alum Zoe Kava!
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
really interesting analysis from Tufts Public Opinion Lab alum Zoe Kava!
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
this deep dive on immigration attitudes from Tufts (and CES) alum Caroline Soler and her co-authors is really good! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/p...
nytimes.com
How Americans Feel About Immigrants and Immigration
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Dan Cassino @dancassino.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
This is out today in open access, and while it's very much a methodology piece, I think it's really important to building the foundation for how we move forward with understanding the role of gender in politics.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
worth noting that some of this tension was clear in the NYC mayoral, as exit polls show that Mamdani received 79% of the secular white vote, but just 56% among black voters.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
atheist/agnostic Americans are now the biggest single voting bloc in the Democratic Party, and their leftist views may be alienating another of the party's traditional sources of strength ... new piece from me and Steve Ansolabehere @goodauth.bsky.social goodauthority.org/news/secular...
goodauthority.org
Secular Democrats are on the rise
Fewer Democrats identify as religious. That’s creating tension with Black voters.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
atheist/agnostic Americans are now the biggest single voting bloc in the Democratic Party, and their leftist views may be alienating another of the party's traditional sources of strength ... new piece from me and Steve Ansolabehere @goodauth.bsky.social goodauthority.org/news/secular...
goodauthority.org
Secular Democrats are on the rise
Fewer Democrats identify as religious. That’s creating tension with Black voters.
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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
the @nytimes.com recently profiled LGB Republicans, in the newest Tufts Public Opinion Lab blog post, Toby Winick explores what the data tells about this group and finds that they look quite different from other LGB Americans tufts-pol.medium.com/lgb-republic...
tufts-pol.medium.com
LGB Republicans look a lot like other Republicans and less like other LGB Americans
by Toby Winick (class of ‘2026)
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