Sign in

Gabe Lenz

@gabelenz.bsky.social
984 followers 587 following 88 posts

Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley

PostsRepliesMedia
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Codex has taken the pain out of finishing a data-heavy book. Here’s a paragraph about it. Being able to talk to your book and data files feels Star Trek-like. Link to my agent instructions below. ...
1123
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
I just added up the number of years Americans have spent in prison 1979-2021: 48.5 million. In the figure below, each square represents a million years spent in prison, an unfathomable number. 1/4
100
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 11/07/2026
I wonder what tends to happen when the leader of your constitutional republic, facing no invasion, decides to bring a large number of soldiers into the capital city. Lets look at the historical examples and oh good Lord...
05423
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 06/07/2026
Basic macroeconomics teaches us that increases in productivity do not necessarily lead to any increase in the unemployment rate. Believing that they do is a form of the "lump of labor fallacy." Here is Paul Kurgman's explanation of the concept. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of...
914332
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
No one wants to remember just how common bridal kidnapping was before strong states. After covering it in class, an undergraduate told me his grandfather had kidnapped his grandmother from a neighboring village. Alice Evans' post just reminded me of that story. ... www.ggd.world/p/confining-...
ggd.world
Confining Insiders, Raping Outsiders
VENI, RAPUI, GENUI
100
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I understand the fear and anger. But also: 1) It is connected to the belief that AI is fake and going to vanish, which means that critics who should be helping shape AI use through policy and collective work are sitting it out 2) Lumping all AI criticism/talk into us vs. "tech bros" doesn't help
59912
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
New paper in PNAS: Your homicide risk follows you around the country. If you’re born in the historically violent Wild West, Appalachian Highlands, or Deep South, a higher risk of violent death trails you wherever you go. 🧵1/14
111339
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Incredible parallels in this Berinsky & @gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...
232299
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 11/09/2025
Research: Believing that the mass public in the opposing party supports undemocratic tactics leads people to be more supportive of undemocratic tactics themselves. Being assured that a majority of your opponents oppose such radical tactics increases support for democratic norms osf.io/my987/download
osf.io
47931
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 10/07/2025
I went on Washington Journal to talk about Elon Musk and third parties. www.c-span.org/program/wash...
Picture of Jonathan Ladd on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
2313
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Randy Besco @randybesco.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Don’t trust an observational model with a bunch of arbitrary control variables @gabelenz.bsky.social @alexandersahn.bsky.social Lenz, Gabriel S., and Alexander Sahn. "Achieving statistical significance with control variables and without transparency." Political Analysis doi.org/10.1017/pan....
doi.org
Achieving Statistical Significance with Control Variables and Without Transparency | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core
Achieving Statistical Significance with Control Variables and Without Transparency - Volume 29 Issue 3
1101
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
New paper. What happens when a presidential candidate steps way out of line, not only with the public, but even with his own voters? And on a highly salient issue? Candidates typically don’t do that—they’re too strategic. But Trump isn’t. He’s good for social science. 🧵
112143
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 29/03/2025
Everything indicates that the Tesla protests are really eroding his wealth and are the only thing causing enough business/financial pain to him to possibly change his behavior. www.teslatakedown.com to find a protest near you this weekend. Something you can do to really make a difference.
teslatakedown.com
Tesla Takedown | Take action at Tesla showrooms everywhere.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. No one is coming to save us—not politicians, not the media.
820552
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 23/03/2025
One way to think about what's happening with Trump getting elected and then waging war on the Constitution and laws is that: It's taken less than 9 months for Trump v. U.S. to almost break the American republic. /1
329162
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Our institutions depend on a coalition of moderate Republican senators emerging. Give Schumer space to help it form.
121
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Buffy Wicks @buffywicks.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Permitting reform: sexy? Not so much. Important? Crucially. Red tape trips up so many critical housing, transportation, renewable energy & climate resilience projects — and we can fix this. Here I talk to my colleagues about why it’s so important that we do. www.youtube.com/shorts/v17C4...
youtube.com
Why should permitting reform matter to Californians in 2025?
YouTube video by Buffy Wicks for Assembly
4222
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
An underappreciated reason why Harris lost was flat real disposable income growth in the election year. RDI was above trend, but voters care about growth in the election year itself. Between Jan. and Nov. 2024, nothing happened.
131
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
New 2024 data: Over 50% of GOP fundraising now comes from just 100 mega-donors. Trump’s embrace of the billionaire class—and their embrace of him—will only supercharge this trend.
481070542
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 21/01/2025
More evidence for the long-term stability and persistence of party id. A change induced by a major early life experience does not decay.
0549
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 17/01/2024
Imagine if employees of the IRS could give out cards to their friends and family and those with cards didn't have to pay taxes. I could see an argument that this is even worse.
412928
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Joe Noonan @joenoonan.se · 05/01/2024
Since their rollout, I have made heavy use of the custom GPT tools in ChatGPT. Here is a thread of some of the tools that I use regularly (all of them require ChatGPT 4). I think they are most useful for people doing quantitative social science, but some are more general.
25215
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 03/01/2024
It's added to the fun of writing papers in markdown that copilot tries to write not only the R code but also the paper, suggesting what I should say next. The spooky part is that once in a while it guesses correctly.
050
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Matt Grossmann @mattgrossmann.bsky.social · 27/12/2023
Across 93 countries, the preferences of the lowest socioeconomic group, rather than those of the median or upper strata, are most predictive of realized redistribution. This finding contradicts the expectations of both leading experts and regular citizens. www.nber.org/papers/w31974
nber.org
Whose Preferences Matter for Redistribution: Cross-country Evidence
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
052
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 26/12/2023
NY Fed measure of underlying inflation also more or less says we won the war
513926
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 26/12/2023
Been working on the unicorn problem for years only to read it’s been solved by GPT-4. AGI must be close.
130
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 17/12/2023
We should adopt the phase planetary destabilization in place of global warming. It sounds worse and is the even greater threat posed by global warming. lhttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1259855
science.org
Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet
Developments in the planetary boundaries concept provide a framework to support global sustainability.
044
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 16/12/2023
In the aftermath of the financial crisis austerity advocates claimed that contractionary policy was actually expansionary bc of confidence — which I mocked as belief in the Confidence Fairy. It seems to me now that we're seeing a somewhat parallel myth: the Credibility Fairy 1/
412031
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 15/12/2023
The real threat to humanity is humans, not AI. Every decade technology makes it easier for a small group to wipe us out. Will AI improve fast enough to protect us from ourselves? Sure hope so.
020
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 12/12/2023
I'm curious to hear from IR scholars how much Trump's four years (and the possibility of more) lies behind this increase. How much of it is because Trump undermined the perception of a US backed world order? polisky
021
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 10/12/2023
Sure wish Elon Musk spent $44B on catching oumaumua then on wrecking twitter. phys.org/news/2022-01...
phys.org
If launched by 2028, a spacecraft could catch up with 'Oumuamua in 26 years
In October 2017, the interstellar object 'Oumuamua passed through our solar system, leaving many questions in its wake. Not only was it the first object of its kind ever observed, but the limited data...
210
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
simine vazire @simine.com · 09/12/2023
Very excited that @i4replication.bsky.social is going to be doing annual stress tests of papers published in Psych Science. It’s amazing to see what they’ve done in econ & poli sci, and great that they’re expanding to psych!
04320
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
An example of the ever present tendency of elites to extract from non-elites. Workers are being forced to pay thousands of dollars to quit. www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/m...
010
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 19/11/2023
Exemplifies two well established tendencies in American politics: 1. Knowledge about party positions is surprisingly low. 2. People over attribute responsibility for everything to the sitting president.
1419
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
Feature suggestion: Editorial Manager Clippy
310123
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 16/11/2023
Political Science should beat other fields to this obvious next step in improving transparency and reproducibility. Pre-register or justify! From a nice Data Colada post: datacolada.org/115
073
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · 12/11/2023
NYT covering Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark vs NYT covering Donald Trump’s “vermin” remark.
Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers ‘Deplorables,’ and G.O.P. PouncesTrump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction
502559990
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 09/11/2023
Suffering From Inflation™️ update, real wages edition
011
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 09/11/2023
Want your findings to replicate? Want to actually discover true things? This new study shows you should preregister, have high power, and open materials. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
High replicability of newly discovered social-behavioural findings is achievable - Nature Human Beha...
Four labs discovered and replicated 16 novel findings with practices such as preregistration, large sample sizes and replication fidelity. Their findings suggest that with best practices, high replica...
0175
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Eirik Eylands Brandsaas @eebrandsaas.bsky.social · 06/11/2023
Wildest thing about the American economy I've learned after two years at the Federal Reserve: Almost 1% of US GDP is residential realtor commissions! fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1b2IC
711656
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 03/11/2023
I just spent three hours reformatting a paper for submission after it sent back on technical grounds. Why do we do this to ourselves? Journals outside of political science often require formatting compliance only after acceptance. Stop the torture! Polisky
2425
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 02/11/2023
I love democracy
A series of tweets on the results from two Canadian polls. In the first, a plurality of Canadians would oppose the conversion of a single-family home into a triplex on their street. In the second, a majority of Canadians support increasing housing density broadly.
86610
Reposted by Gabe Lenz
Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 01/11/2023
“Overall, 73 percent of Gazans favored a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the eve of Hamas’s October 7 attack, just 20 percent of Gazans favored a military solution that could result in the destruction of the state of Israel.” www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/what-...
foreignaffairs.com
What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas
Before the war, Gaza’s leaders were deeply unpopular—but an Israeli crackdown could change that.
0103
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 27/10/2023
4/ I write this as much for myself as for others. “The first principle is not to fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” - Richard Feynman
020
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 27/10/2023
3/ If your findings are real, lower p-values will always be more common than higher p-values. If you're not seeing that in your work, you're not being honest with yourself.
020
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 27/10/2023
2/ Real phenomena yield lower p-values more often than higher ones. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
p-Curve and Effect Size: Correcting for Publication Bias Using Only Significant Results - Uri Simon...
Journals tend to publish only statistically significant evidence, creating a scientific record that markedly overstates the size of effects. We provide a new to...
020
Gabe Lenz @gabelenz.bsky.social · 27/10/2023
1/ In writing peer reviews and promotion letters, I notice p-values often hover near the 0.05 threshold. This pattern raises eyebrows. We know that such a p-value distribution indicates false positives, not genuine findings.
130