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Will Marble

@wpmarble.bsky.social
962 followers 304 following 59 posts

Political scientist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford || williammarble.co

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Reposted by Will Marble
Political Analysis @polanalysis.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Currently in FirstView: In “Improving Small-Area Estimates of Public Opinion by Calibrating to Known Population Quantities,” @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton provide a framework for incorporating known population data to improve estimates of small subgroups in MRP models.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
None taken! Claude Code adds itself as a coauthor for git commits by default, not sure what the norms are on disabling this "feature" or leaving it on...
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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
New in @polanalysis.bsky.social, @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton have an extension of MRP for small area estimation of polling data calibrated with election results. If you toss around the term "logit shift" in casual conversation, this one is for you www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Probably the last time I'll be able to say this: I wrote all the implementation code myself; Claude Code just refactored a bit for better tidyverse style and wrote unit tests after the paper was accepted :) Please let me know if you try out the package / find any issues!
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Michael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Building affordable housing ➡️ support for funding housing. Nearby homeowners ⬆️ support; renters ⬇️ support. Both are “the policy adjacent”—secondhand recipients & drivers of policy feedback. Forthcoming @ajpseditor.bsky.social ( doi.org/10.1111/ajps...) w/ A. Magazinnik & @msands.bsky.social 1/9
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Rory Truex @rorytruex.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Yesterday I recorded an ep with @danieltavana.bsky.social, one of the few political scientists with an active research agenda on Iran. We spoke at length about the regime, divisions in Iranian society, the prospects for democracy in Iran. One of my best episodes to date. Link in replies.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
nice point. I also think people just got used to the very low (sometimes near 0) inflation we had for a decade post-recession, making the 2022 inflation seem even more anomalous. Groceries (like gas prices) are a salient heuristic
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Yep! Different estimation framework entirely but similar in spirit to this approach. I haven't read the paper you linked but looks like it builds on this one which influenced my thinking on this problem academic.oup.com/restud/artic...
academic.oup.com
Combining Micro and Macro Data in Microeconometric Models
Abstract. Census reports can be interpreted as providing nearly exact knowledge of moments of the marginal distribution of economic variables. This informa
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
In principle yes. Data requirements are: individual level Y1, Y2, X (survey); ground-truth joint distribution of X (census); known marginals of Y2 (auxiliary data). Also need svy to include relevant geographic vars to link to ground-truth Y2 (though this can be relaxed, see sec 5 of the paper)
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
This post has some more discussion of other methods for incorporating known ground-truth margins in an MRP framework, based on some validation exercises in osf.io/preprints/so...
osf.io
OSF
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
This package is a companion to my paper with Josh Clinton on MRP calibration (osf.io/preprints/so...) Please let me know if you try it out the package and email me or file a github issue if you find bugs. Thanks!
osf.io
OSF
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
This function also works to implement the "logit shift" calibration with a single outcome — e.g. to ensure your subgroup estimates of vote choice are consistent with known election outcomes.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
The package supports both full Bayesian calibration (i.e. calibrating each draw from the posterior) as well as a plug-in estimator which works with posterior summaries.
Picture of R package documentation for argument called "method": 

Calibration method, either "plugin" or "bayes". Plug-in estimates use posterior means of predictions and correlations across outcomes to compute logit shifts for calibration. Bayesian estimates compute the logit shifts separately for each posterior draw, which are then summarized. Defaults to "plugin".
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
calibratedMRP provides a high-level interface for doing this type of calibration. First, specify a `brms` multilevel regression model. Second, call the `calibrate_mrp()` function to calibrate cell-level estimates to known geographic margins. Third, poststratify to the target groups.
Example code that implements a brms multilevel model with multivariate outcomes. example of syntax for calibrate_mrp() function
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
calibratedMRP implements a calibration procedure that accounts for known margins of Y2 to improve estimates of Y1. Intuition: if your MRP model overestimates Biden vote share, it probably overestimates liberal policy attitudes too. The method implemented here accounts for this discrepancy.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Suppose you have a survey that measures policy attitudes (Y1) alongside demographics (X) and related behavior (Y2). You have population data on the joint distribution of X from the census, but only coarse geographic aggregates (e.g. election results) of Y2.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Folks doing public opinion research: I wrote an R package called `calibratedMRP` that implements methods to calibrate MRP estimates to known geographic-level ground truth (e.g. election results) github.com/wpmarble/cal...
github.com
GitHub - wpmarble/calibratedMRP: An R package with tools to generate small-area estimates from survey and administrative data
An R package with tools to generate small-area estimates from survey and administrative data - wpmarble/calibratedMRP
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British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
NEW - Foreign Policy Failures and Global Attitudes Towards Great Powers: Evidence from the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan - cup.org/3YSsX4N - @rachelmyrick.bsky.social & @wpmarble.bsky.social #OpenAccess
BJPolS abstract from a scholarly article about the perceived foreign policy failures of the US in Afghanistan and its impact on global perceptions of US leadership. The text mentions a survey across 24 countries and findings on changes in favorability after the fall of Kabul on 15 August 2021.
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shira mitchell @shiraamitchell.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
blog post: 3rd helpings of the logit shift You have multiple outcomes, but only some have aggregate truth to shift to. How can we calibrate our estimates of p(y_1, y_2 | X) to aggregate data about E[y_1] ? @wpmarble.bsky.social and Josh Clinton have ideas !
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Reposted by Will Marble
Mashail Malik @mamalik.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
New paper in @ajpseditor.bsky.social. Is descriptive representation good for substantive representation? Why do voters stay loyal to corrupt and poorly governing ethnic parties? I argue that we ought to focus less on patronage and more on dignity concerns. Defiant pride can come at a price. 1/🧵
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
I have never seen Casablanca [embarrassing admission] but am resolved to watching it this week
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social: Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain. Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 07/10/2025
Why most polls overstate support for political violence www.gelliottmorris.com/p/most-polls...
gelliottmorris.com
Why most polls overstate support for political violence
Misperceptions about the popularity of violence increase public support for it — but you can help change that.
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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Absolutely momentous day for California. We're turning the corner on housing at the very moment America needs us to.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Job/life update: Today was my last day at Penn, where I've been lucky to teach amazing students and work with great colleagues for the past 3 years. This fall, I'll join @hooverinstitution.bsky.social as a Hoover Fellow—I'm excited to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community of scholars there.
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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
I made an event timeline to try to make sense of all the federal overreach at @georgemasonu.bsky.social and whoo boy. When you lay it out like this, the executive over reach comes into focus. open.substack.com/pub/misofact...
open.substack.com
Authoritarians are attacking universities. Here's how it's going at one public school.
I'm publicly documenting an event timeline to help bring order to the chaotic nature of events and help other schools plan the responses they are likely going to need.
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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...
Screenshot of title page.

"The Long-Run Effects of Colleges on Civic and Political Life" by Michael J. Andrews, William Marble, and Lauren Russell.

Abstract: Social theorists and education advocates have long argued for the civic benefits of education. As large, durable institutions, universities are especially likely to affect the civic life of their communities. We investigate how the establishment of a university alters the civic and political trajectory of the surrounding area. For identification, we leverage historical site selection processes in which multiple locations were considered for new colleges. We bring together data on social capital, political preferences, and elections to assess the long-run impacts of college establishment. Communities with colleges exhibit higher levels of civic engagement and greater social trust today, relative to “runner-up” locations without colleges. These counties are also more politically liberal — a gap that has grown substantially since 2000. Our findings suggest understanding universities as place-based policies that shape the long-run civic and political development of their communities. They also shed light on current political battles over higher education policy.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Nothing more American than getting a head start on work by taking a meeting in your car while you commute to work by yourself
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Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Very cool paper about how important social networks are in driving movement conference.nber.org/conf_papers...
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Josh Chafetz @joshchafetz.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
I just posted a new paper on @ssrn.bsky.social, titled "The Chadha Presidency". Here's the link, and I'll post the abstract in the next post. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
The <i>Chadha </i>Presidency
<p><span>Where is Congress? Why hasn’t it reined in some of the worst abuses of the Trump Administration? This Article argues that a significant part of the ans
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Been a busy year in the data mines.📊 Just published my mid-year roundup: 29 data visualizations on the state of US democracy, tracking everything from judicial resistance to billionaire influence to why Dems have a mobilization crisis, not a moderation problem. All charts free to use:
open.substack.com
On Data and Democracy (Mid-Year Roundup): Charting the Assault on American Democracy and A Path Forward
A narrative of a democracy in the balance, told through 29 data visualizations.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
The current administration's attacks on universities risk undermining engines of civic life, just as they harm innovation and prosperity. Places with colleges are more liberal, yes, but colleges also promote the types of social capital that we need.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
These results contribute to a literature that understands universities as place-based institutions. We know that they profoundly affect the local economy, as economists (including my co-authors) have shown. This paper documents how universities contribute to the civic life of a community as well.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Are universities distinctive, or would any large public investment generate the same results in the long run? Using a subsample where the runner-up location got a "consolation prize" (eg a state capital or penitentiary), we find that universities are indeed distinctive on most of our outcomes.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
There are also differences in contemporary public opinion: people living near colleges are more liberal on a range of issues. These attitudinal differences are not solely driven by the presence of students nor by differences in the average educational attainment in the community.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
From Reconstruction through the end of the 20th century, there were minimal differences in voting patterns between places with a university and "runner-up" locations. Since 2000, though, a gap has emerged, with college counties becoming significantly more Democratic. In 2024 this gap was ~10pp.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
The establishment of a college also leads to a county casting significantly more votes in presidential elections—an effect that's explained by a population growth channel rather than a turnout rate channel.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
We find that places with colleges have significantly higher levels of social capital and trust today, relative to "runner-up" locations that were considered but not chosen.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
How do universities shape the surrounding community? Building on meticulous archival work by my co-author Mike Andrews, we answer this question by focusing on cases where multiple locations were considered for a major university and the winning location was chosen for idiosyncratic reasons.
To further illustrate this methodology, we describe several of the as-good-as-random site selection experiments here. In some cases, which of the finalist locations won the college was literally random, with the winning location drawn by lots (this occurred for the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University). In other cases, such as University of Illinois, Purdue University, and the University of Florida, multiple towns submitted similar bids to receive the college, with only one ultimately chosen. In still other cases, it took multiple rounds of balloting to find a winner (7 rounds of balloting for University of Mississippi, 8 rounds for Southern Arkansas University, 24 rounds for the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a whopping 111 for what would become University of Nebraska at Kearney). The fact that finalist locations were tied for multiple rounds of voting suggests that both the winning and runner-up locations were similar in terms of political influence and enjoyed comparable popular support. Site selection experiments occur as early as 1839 and as late as 1954, though the majority of experiments are concentrated in the 1880s and 1890s.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Decades of research documents differences (observational and sometimes causal) in turnout, volunteering rates, office-seeking, political preferences, etc., between those with and without college degrees. But universities are place-based institutions, the effects of which may extend beyond students.
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Will Marble @wpmarble.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...
Screenshot of title page.

"The Long-Run Effects of Colleges on Civic and Political Life" by Michael J. Andrews, William Marble, and Lauren Russell.

Abstract: Social theorists and education advocates have long argued for the civic benefits of education. As large, durable institutions, universities are especially likely to affect the civic life of their communities. We investigate how the establishment of a university alters the civic and political trajectory of the surrounding area. For identification, we leverage historical site selection processes in which multiple locations were considered for new colleges. We bring together data on social capital, political preferences, and elections to assess the long-run impacts of college establishment. Communities with colleges exhibit higher levels of civic engagement and greater social trust today, relative to “runner-up” locations without colleges. These counties are also more politically liberal — a gap that has grown substantially since 2000. Our findings suggest understanding universities as place-based policies that shape the long-run civic and political development of their communities. They also shed light on current political battles over higher education policy.
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Nate Ela @nateela.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Horrendous. In attempting to reclassify Head Start as “welfare” rather than education, the Trump administration is trying an end run around Supreme Court precedent that protects undocumented children from limits to education based on their immigration status. 🧵
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
War on universities, war on science, war on knowledge
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
A reminder of how the number of centrifuges in Iran soared after Trump’s 2018 JCPOA withdrawal. @brendannyhan.bsky.social
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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 14/06/2025
There are nearly 100,000 people at the rally in Philadelphia. #NoKings
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
She is saying, in effect: "We are going to liberate the city from its democratically elected leadership using the military"
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
What would you say if you saw it in another country? A senator from a coequal branch of government dragged away by security to prevent him from asking a question of a Cabinet official and arrested
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kim yi dionne (she/her) @dadakim.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Eyewitness account from someone arrested at a (small, peaceful) protest in L.A. The arrests of journalists should be particularly alarming: open.substack.com/pub/smotus/p...
open.substack.com
Arrested in L.A.
My interview with a fellow scholar who was recently arrested for participating in an anti-ICE protest
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