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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

Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

i also dig into the numbers from PA to look at how Shapiro and Fetterman differ...everyone sees Fetterman as more moderate than the Democratic Party, but only Republicans view Shapiro as more moderate than Dems (who they see as quite extreme, of course) 2/3

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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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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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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 · 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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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

it is actually a question to respondents, though I think YouGov grabs the meta data and it lines up closely with how people respond to this item. the question is available in public releases, variable name is comptype, I believe. curious to see what you find!

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

we also tested an experimental intervention where we flagged respondents' contradictory responses to one set of items, but that intervention did not produce more attentiveness on subsequent items in the survey compared to the control group

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

while these low rates of inattentiveness are ignorable for analyses using the full sample, inattentive respondents tend to become a bigger share of small subgroups and can affect those subgroup estimates more.

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

respondents who were consistently inattentive moved through the survey much quicker, were more likely to straight-line and take the survey on a mobile device and less likely to answer the post-election wave and be validated voters

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

we utilize two pairs of items for which it would be logically inconsistent to indicate support for both items. about 5% of respondents gave logically inconsistent responses to these items and just 2% gave inconsistent responses on both sets of items

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

the outcome of the 2024 election increased confidence in U.S. elections among Trump voters, but they still lagged behind Harris voters...newest @goodauth.bsky.social post with Caroline Soler goodauthority.org/news/many-tr...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

in a new @goodauth.bsky.social post with Caroline Soler, we use vote validated CES data to show that nonvoters preferred Trump over Harris for president but Dems over Reps in down ballot races goodauthority.org/news/trump-a...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

the 2024 election was also a watershed moment among non-voters who, for the first time since we've been collecting data preferred the republican nominee over the democrat. this means increasing turnout would likely have made Trump's victory bigger.

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

it is especially striking to see how non-religious the Democratic Party has become over the past two decades

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

the trends when it comes to religion are especially notable. non-evangelical vote preferences have remained stable over time, but democrats continue to lose vote share among evangelicals, especially black and hispanic evangelicals

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

we see significant shifts away from the democrats among both black and hispanic voters for black voters, these shifts came particularly among born again christians and men among Hispanic voters, the rightward shift was mostly isolated to those living in urban areas

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

in 2008, Conservative Jews voted similarly to Reform/Reconstructionist Jews but by 2024 there was more than a 20-point gap between those two groups

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

another Cooperative Election Study conference in the books! new mountain resort, same great vibes! we had a special time honoring Steve Ansolabehere who is stepping down from his leadership role, 20 years after founding this incredible innovative project that has done so much for the discipline.

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

most notably, our experiment shows that when you ask Americans about their overall mood rather than their mental health, the gap between conservatives and liberals vanishes

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

another great year of Tufts Public Opinion Lab in the books and a great chance to honor graduating seniors. really gonna miss this group!

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

and these gaps only get bigger when you look at younger Democrats

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I'm not going to say that this is definitely why Democrats lost vote share among Black and Hispanic voters in 2024, but I will say that the coalition of (mostly secular) white Democrats with (mostly religious) Black and Hispanic Democrats definitely has some fault lines

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Harris was perceived as more liberal than Biden, Clinton, or Obama had been when they ran. And while people saw Trump as more conservative than they had previously, they were still closer ideologically to him (1.62 points away) than Harris (2.06). cooperativeelectionstudy.shinyapps.io/Ideology/

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

clear evidence in the CES that ideology is beginning to overcome Dem party loyalty among black and hispanic voters: 2016 to 2024 swing in Dem support: conservative black voters: 80% -> 51% moderate hispanic voters: 79% -> 60% conservative hispanic voters: 30% -> 9%

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

the CES vote trends app has been updated with 2024 data! explore how a wide variety of different groups voted in 2024 and compare to previous elections. something you'd like to see in the app? we take requests, so let us know! cooperativeelectionstudy.shinyapps.io/VoteTrends/

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

in our @goodauth.bsky.social post we extend this analysis to the 2018 midterms and show that people punished Republican House candidates in 2018 when they had suffered a job loss during the previous year ... given the current economic uncertainty, things could go poorly for the GOP in 2026

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

however, even co-partisans will vote against their incumbent president when the personal economic shock is significant enough. in both 2020 and 2024, people who suffered a job loss or pay cut in the year before the election voted against the incumbent president, even when they shared the same party

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

we look at the extent to which having these economic vulnerabilities lead voters to vote against the incumbent president in both 2020 and 2024. controlling for lots of factors, we find that independents are particularly sensitive, with more vulnerability leading to more anti-incumbent voting

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

one of the nice things about the CES is that we ask a bunch of questions that go beyond income to get at an individual's discrete economic circumstances. here are the items we use in our article

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

i have a new @goodauth.bsky.social piece with Caroline Soler on immigration attitudes. an increasing plurality of Americans support both a path to citizenship and increased border security but this group is also becoming increasingly polarized on party lines goodauthority.org/news/surpris...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

another semester of the Tufts Public Opinion Lab in the books with our traditional end of term lunch!

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

polls missed big in 2016, but pollsters spent the past 8 years adapting to those misses and these adjustments worked pretty well in 2024. my new @goodauth.bsky.social piece with Caroline Soler goodauthority.org/news/pollste...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 16/10/2024

just a reminder that the CES website has a host of shiny app tools for quickly analyzing data on various topics tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 02/10/2024

when we try to unpack how these matter for the margins polls are reporting, we find that weighting to education and community type (rural/suburban/urban) does the most to shrink Harris's margin over Trump, while weighting to 2020 vote or party affiliation appears to matter less

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 02/10/2024

weighting to education is now almost as common as weighting to age, race, and gender. more notably, about two-thirds of national polls are weighting to either 2020 vote or party affiliation

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 13/09/2024

when he first ran in 2016, voters weren't too sure how to place Trump on the ideological scale, but his presidency offered a great deal of clarity. new @goodauth.bsky.social piece by me and Caroline Soler. goodauthority.org/news/trump-c...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 12/09/2024

new publication from the Tufts Public Opinion Lab by Thomas Hershewe and Asher Smith just dropped in American Politics Research. really interesting and important work on partisan priming and rural identity! #soproud #tpol4eva journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 07/09/2024

the past is prologue so use the CES quick tools to track how various demographic groups have voted over the past couple of decades tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 04/09/2024

exciting upgrade to the CES shiny apps! you can now filter to certain subgroups when creating plots & download the data behind the graphs! all thanks to CES RA Caroline Soler. tischcollege.tufts.edu/research-fac...

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/08/2024

thanks to Caroline Soler, you can now break down support for every issue we asked about in the 2023 Cooperative Election Study using this tool cooperativeelectionstudy.shinyapps.io/2023issues/

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 07/08/2024

thanks to Caroline Soler's handiwork with the 2022 CES data, here is Tim Walz's approval rating among various key groups in Minnesota

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 23/07/2024

and when we break this out by party, we see that Shapiro, Beshear, Cooper, and Moore are the only candidates who Republicans in their states view as to the right of "liberal." independents see Besehar, Cooper, and Shapiro as most moderate.

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 23/07/2024

how well do these candidates distance themselves ideologically from the party? all are seen as different shades of liberal of course, but Shapiro, Beshear, and Cooper are perceived as significantly more moderate than Biden and the Dem Party. Beshear again most impressive here

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 23/07/2024

also useful to break this down by partisanship. Whitmer is most popular among Dems, but Moore, Beshear and Cooper perform best among independents. Beshear and Shapiro also win over a significant share of Republicans in their states, as do Moore and Cooper.

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 23/07/2024

b/c they represent different states, we benchmark their own approval ratings against Biden's rating in that same state. Beshear really pops, with an approval rating that's about 25 pts higher than Biden's in KY. Shapiro, Whitmer, & Cooper also do well here.

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