Vittorio Merola

How to Measure Public Support for Political Violence Abstract. With low but rising levels of violent political threats and violent acts by civilians in the United States, researchers increasingly want to meas

After nearly a decade measuring American public support for political violence, @nathankalmoe.bsky.social and I have published a somewhat comprehensive guide to measuring these attitudes. This includes historical comparisons and responses to common critiques. doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

Acquiescence Bias and Criterion Validity: Problems and Potential Solutions for Agree-Disagree Scales - Political Behavior Political Behavior - Scholars frequently measure dispositions like populism, conspiracism, racism, and sexism by asking survey respondents whether they agree or disagree with statements...

New w/@scottclifford.bsky.social.

Lots of work uses agree-disagree scales, and a lit review shows these are 1) frequently just measured in one direction (agree = higher trait) and 2) correlated with each other.

This has potentially big issues for conclusions.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An Audit of Social Science Survey Experiments Abstract. Survey experiments have become a popular methodology for causal inference across the social sciences. We study the efficacy of survey experiment

This is a belated post about our paper in @poqjournal.bsky.social.

We analyzed 100 survey experiments fielded by TESS (tessexperiments.org), using only information from the proposals to identify intended hypotheses.

Here are some of the things we learned:

One of the most lopsided results you'll ever see in a poll, from our weekend Washington Post poll www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

In all seriousness, what is the probability that the US invades Greenland by the end of 2028? At this point, maybe 50/50?

It would be extremely easy for the US to pull off, and there is zero chance that Denmark and its European allies would respond militarily.

Well, make no mistake, we're fully back to 19th century imperialism. Fake news meets might-makes-right.

I have a strong feeling that the worst is still yet to come too. This is so depressing.

EHBEA has a shiny new website and it looks lovely 😃

Many thanks to @amrotella.bsky.social for leading EHBEA through this change, with assistance from @pablovarase.bsky.social and @jeannebovet.bsky.social 🙏

Title and abstract of the accepted paper.

Over the moon 😍. My paper "Renewing Democracy:
How Exposure to Electoral Turnovers Reinforces Citizens’ Democratic Support" is accepted in World Politics. LINK: osf.io/preprints/os....

First paper fully conceived since my second child was born 4 years ago. For those who know, big milestone.

🧵
1/

1/ Does growing up poor always lead to political apathy?

Very happy to share my first paper published (open access) in @electoralstudies.bsky.social, where I show that parents' influence mitigates the poverty gap in participation, while economic mobility does not.

🔗 shorturl.at/p5Bac

A thread about being wrong:

5 years ago, we wrote a paper about how how newly enfranchised 16-year-olds vote in Austria. But we were wrong.

This year, @elisabethgraf.bsky.social, @schnizzl.bsky.social, Sylvia Kritzinger and I are setting the record straight: authors.elsevier.com/c/1juT5xRaZk...

UK Migration Policies 2025: Public Opinion, Politics, and Policy Alternatives

🎙️In this episode, @omarhgallego.bsky.social discusses public opinion and perceptions of migration, the recent migration policies of UK parties, and the politics behind them.
open.spotify.com/episode/4NwR...

new paper by Sean Westwood:

With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

Our study on public immigration misperceptions is out! Prior research overstated their prevalence due to flawed measurement. Our new approach separates real misperceptions from uninformed guessing — showing they’re less common than widely assumed and ideologically motivated.
doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

The Making of International Status Abstract. With great power rivalry on the rise again, many worry that struggles for status among states could lead to war. As a growing consensus indicates

Ever wondered why some countries get recognition while others struggle to be seen?

My book 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴 is finally out in the world!

📘 academic.oup.com/book/61560

This article provides a minute-by-minute analysis of how Trump (Granger) causally contributed to violence on J6 doi.org/10.1098/rsif... @anthonymkreis.bsky.social In light of sum of evidence I remain unconvinced that BBC got things (very) wrong @jagolinzer.bsky.social @profsanderlinden.bsky.social

Just published in @bjpols.bsky.social: @sergipardos.bsky.social and I show that inter-regional moves in pursuit of employment security reduce individual worries about immigration—a mobility pattern that, in the aggregate, reinforces spatial polarization in anti-immigration sentiment. cup.org/3XiB6yD

Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms | PNAS In recent years, social media has become increasingly fragmented, as platforms evolve and new alternatives emerge. Yet most research studies a sing...

"While high-quality content is posted more and receives more total engagement across platforms...a given author attracts higher levels of engagement when they post lower-quality content"

"pattern we find seems to be driven more by an underperformance of particularly popular high-quality outlets"

BJPolS abstract discussing the relationship between asset accumulation and voting patterns in Britain, focusing on the Conservative Party and generational differences in political behavior.

From April 2025 -

Does the Accumulation of Assets Shape Voting Preferences? Evidence from a Longitudinal Study in Britain - cup.org/42JWcZl

- Justin Robinson, @pavlosvas1.bsky.social & @sofiavasilopoulou.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Wish I was still living in Brooklyn, so I could have voted yesterday. Would have been the first time in my entire life that I was actually excited and hopeful about casting a vote. So proud of New York City right now.

Left parties’ strategies and working-class vote in contemporary Western Europe (2002–2020) What should the left do strategically to retain workers' vote? This paper provides extensive empirical evidence on the relationship between left parti…

🆕 Latest article out @electoralstudies.bsky.social! Left parties' higher salience on cultural issues associated w/ higher support from working-class voters. Social democrats much more sensitive to different strategies, should pursue more left/salient economics www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A massive study on the effects of social class tested 35 hypotheses in 4 countries (N = 33,536)

Only 50% of findings replicated

Hypotheses based on differences between social class contexts in terms of constraints, uncertainty & status were supported:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Monty Python understood p-hacking

Romani ethnic identification attenuates with educational attainment

www.nber.org/system/files...

Currently in FirstView: In “Balancing Precision and Retention in Experimental Design,” @gustavodiaz.org and Erin Rossiter study how experimental design choices can increase precision when estimating treatment effects. Specifically, they examine block-randomized and pre-post designs.

Simulate Data from a DAG and Associated Node Information Simulate complex data from a given directed acyclic graph and information about each individual node. Root nodes are simply sampled from the specified distribution. Child Nodes are simulated according...

I'm starting to explore {simDAG}, a nifty #rstats package that has a nice API for specifying DAGs and then simulating data from them: robindenz1.github.io/simDAG/

Affective polarization and habits of political participation Affective polarization, or relative dislike of opposing partisans, is associated with several negative outcomes for democracy. However, a number of st…

@electoralstudies.bsky.social If you’re interested in academic studies of political polarisation we have loads of great papers at Electoral Studies. Check out this one by Joseph Phillips www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is a highly interesting, timely and great initiative - a new diamond OA journal for #replication research! It is interdisciplinary, but #PolSci is specifically invited. Hence, if you or someone you know has an interesting replication paper, do not hesitate to submit!

Cover titled "The Power of the Crowd" by Sabrina Stöckli, Benjamin A. Lyons, and Hannah Krekler, published by Cambridge Elements in Political Science. The cover features a vibrant, multicolored geometric background.

NEW - 'The Power of the Crowd: How the Public Can Both Spoil and Improve Social Media as a Source of Information'

This Cambridge Element by F. Stöckel, S. Stöckli, B.A. Lyons, H. Kroker & @jasonreifler.bsky.social is free to read for 2 weeks.

cup.org/4344Tyl

#cambridgeelements #politics #Polisky

A Brief History of Men are Becoming Less Manly

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A major step forward for large-scale survey research from our own Thomas Robinson & @patricksturg.bsky.social: SOCbot is a powerful AI tool for open-ended survey items—fast, cheap, reduces burden, and tackles longstanding measurement error in social science & labour stats
Paper: tinyurl.com/2yxcbshs