Podcast with Kenneth Lowande about diversity in Congress

Nine of the settlement districts were identified in court records as among the most “partisan outliers,” according to an analysis by University of Michigan professor Jowei Chen, who used a computer program to run thousands of simulations to compare the maps to possible alternatives.

Legislators from underrepresented groups disproportionately advocate for these communities¶¶Article authored by study authors: Kenneth Lowande, Melinda Ritchie and Erinn Lauterbach ¶¶Study: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/lowande/wp-content/uploads/sites/581/2019/01/dr-v3.pdf

Jowei Chen analyzed re-districting plans using a simulation that generated 1,000 of each alternative Congressional districts, state house and state senate districts. He found that nine of Michigan’s 14 Congressional districts were “partisan outliers.”

However, these blunders are not entirely the fault of the algorithm’s programmers and blame can honestly be assigned to the algorithm itself, according to Christian Sandvig, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, who spoke to NPR in 2016.¶¶”The systems are of a sufficient complexity that it is possible to say the… Continue reading Google Tweaks Email Program That Assumed An Investor Was Male

With insights from Josh Pasek, a political scientist who’s just to the north at the University of Michigan, here are reasons why such a 2020 showdown might happen. And why it probably won’t.

Josh Pasek and Michael Traugott wrote the article

What voters were focused on seemed to have major consequences in 2016, when Gallup found the word “email” dominated what people said they heard about Hillary Clinton during the campaign. “Indeed, the second-, third- and fourth-most-frequently used words associated with Clinton also relate to emails: “FBI,” “investigation” and “scandal,” wrote Gallup’s Frank Newport and Andrew… Continue reading Those who love Trump and those who hate him are paying the most attention to him

The experts are: Shawn Parry-Giles, director of the Mark and Heather Rosenker Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership at the University of Maryland; and Ted Brader, a political science professor at the University of Michigan and the author of “Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work.” They look at… Continue reading Political ads aim to steer your emotions. Here’s how they do that

All that said, there are a few potentially troubling outcomes even if Democrats take one or more houses of Congress. Mickey noted that such a development runs the risk of encouraging more unilateral action from Trump, a kind of “constitutional hardball” that contributes to a concentration of power in the presidency, itself a democratic risk… Continue reading Rob Mickey speaks to Vox about the possibilities of the midterm elections and “backsliding”