IR and Political Science links threads

[Cain]

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/the-overrated-vice-presidential-home-state-effect/

In the chart below, I've run these comparisons for all major-party vice presidential nominees since 1920. We compare the ticket's R.V.I. in the year the vice presidential candidate was on the ticket to the next and previous election cycles in which he was not on the ticket and when there was also no one else from his state running for president or vice president.

For instance, in looking at the R.V.I. for the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1992, Al Gore, the comparison years are 1988 (when Mr. Gore was not on the ticket, and nobody else from Tennessee was) and 2004 (since Mr. Gore was again the vice presidential nominee in 1996 and was the presidential nominee in 2000, disqualifying those years). There are also a few cases in which there were multiple candidates on the ticket in the same state in the same year. Richard Nixon's vice presidential nominee in 1960, for instance, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., was from Massachusetts, the same state as the Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy. We simply throw out these years, since Mr. Lodge's performance might have been more a reflection of Kennedy's strength in Massachusetts than his own strengths and weaknesses.

Over all, the benefit provided by a vice presidential nominee has been quite paltry under this method. On average since 1920, he has produced a net gain of only about two percentage points for the top of the ticket in his home state.

[hirley0]

[Cain]

Interesting.  Probably flawed/oversimplified/going to be used by hack partisans

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/finding-the-limits-of-empathy/?

The more interested in politics a conservative is, the lower his (or her) level of empathy. Liberals move in the opposite direction: the more interested in politics they are, the more empathetic.

In the 2010 election, 42 percent of voters identified themselves as conservative; 38 percent said they were moderate; and 20 percent said they were liberal. If that division obtains in 2012 and beyond, the proportion of conservative to liberal voters in the electorate should give liberals pause, especially insofar as they expect elected officials to propose and pass legislation the underlying purpose of which is to help those most in need...