Political Science and the Tea Party

So, spent a few days in Chicago for the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.  A good time was had by all.  I was on a really interesting panel (not because of my paper) about the Tea Party and public opinion.  A really impressive paper (not yet publicly available– I’ll definitely blog on it when they get it up on the website), found voluminous and persuasive evidence for racial resentment in driving the political opinions of Tea party supporters.  My favorite example: under George Bush racial attitudes had no relationship at all with opinions on the deficit.  Under Obama, racial opinions suddenly strongly predict your opinion on the deficit if you are a tea party supporter.  Hmmmm.  On another panel I heard about a list experiment where95% of tea party supporters endorsed the statement “Obama is deliberately trying to ruin America.”  Yowza.

Also found time to enjoy Chicago and the fabulous Shedd Aquarium.

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