CPS faculty Jowei Chen has provided expert testimony in North Carolina’s redistricting case. He ran 1,000 simulations to create valid maps that equalize populations, minimize county splits and maximize compactness – traditional goals for drawing the maps.

Nicholas Valentino, an expert on partisanship at the University of Michigan, said the American public is even more polarized now than it was in Clinton’s time, and that may further insulate Trump politically.¶¶“There are fewer moderates in the Republican Party now that will be offended by anything Trump does,” Valentino said.

The sister of the king of Thailand will run for prime minister, upending the palace’s tradition of eschewing politics & setting up a surprise contest with the leading military-backed candidate. @umisrcps Allen Hicken joins the conversation:

CPS faculty member Brian Min uses satellite imagery to determine whether a place has electricity. His research reveals that certain places get brighter shortly before elections, suggesting politicians lean on power companies to minimize blackouts.

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.