Asst Prof @UConn, PhD @psupolisci. Research on affective polarization, intergroup relations, state/local politics. Nutmeg State native. 🗽 🗳️ ⚾

Storrs, CT
Joined September 2018
🚨 New article alert! 📈 "Partisan Wishful Thinking in Polarized Times" is now out at @PolBehavior. Nearly 90% of today's voters expect their party to win, a sharp increase from two decades ago. Rising partisan animosity can explain much of the increase! link.springer.com/epdf/10.10…
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Excellent write-up of my new piece at @PolBehavior from @WakeUp2Politics. The title is particularly apt: "Everyone thinks they're going to win!" Link to the research below... wakeuptopolitics.com/p/every…
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"Partisan Wishful Thinking in Polarized Times," now online at @PolBehavior: link.springer.com/epdf/10.10…
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Thanks to to @johnmsides and @goodauth for taking a look at my new article at @PolBehavior!
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My first national media quote, on the convicted CT bribe-guy who drove down to FL before sentencing, took a boat to the Bahamas, flew to London and then his native Greece and won't stop talking about it. (He is now angling for a Trump pardon, obviously.) wsj.com/us-news/the-convicte…
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Seth Warner retweeted
Today we're sharing some initial data on how Americans use Claude for politics, based on aggregated conversation data analyzed with differentially private methods. A couple interesting takeaways: *Almost no one asks AI how they should vote* About ~5.75% of conversations in the US touch on some kind of political or social issue in a recent one-week period, and less than 0.01% of conversations involve asking how to vote. *Political conversations have many goals* These conversations have wide-ranging goals, everything from research and writing assistance to learning, fact-checking, and arguing. We are continuing to make progress on improving how Claude talks about these topics---steadily increasing our performance on our even-handedness evals and partnering with a range of outside organizations to develop new measures of political bias---and I hope that sharing information about the shape of these conversations will help people outside the company evaluate AI's political bias, accuracy, and other criteria in ecologically valid ways. I'd love to discuss this with people who are interested, as it was a huge priority for me before joining. This was a big joint effort as part of our work preparing for the midterm elections @AnthropicAI. Full post is here: anthropic.com/news/2026-us-m…
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PhD is learning that “open problem” can mean either “exciting research opportunity” or “people smarter than you already gave up.”
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Partially related, but now that AI is producing more reviews, they really capture the cadence of a typical "rigorous" review... Paragraph of qualified compliments, followed by two excoriating pages on small-to-trivial items before recommending revise.
Yes, very good, although in my discipline at many journals, reviewers are encouraged to believe they are de facto editors because they will approx never be “overruled” and can hold up publication ~indefinitely in the rare circumstance that they are
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Having reffed a dispiritingly bad AI slop paper, my bold/impractical suggestions are: - As much AI as you want - But 1 submission per year to a journal, so make it good - A third-party org that gets reviews and "shops" qualified papers to appropriate journals
Journals should have a zero tolerance policy for AI writing. I know we can think of justified cases, but these will be swamped by an avalanche of slop that will demoralize referees and kill journals entirely. The bad money drives out the good.
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Very cool and interesting work!!
👵 Do pension expansions mobilise older voters? ➡️ @GanslmeierM, M. Klymak & T. Vlandas find that a 36% pension increase in Illinois had no effect on turnout, challenging expectations that material gains increase political participation doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2026.10…
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Surprisingly easy to pick out political scientists from others at the Prudential Center. Older than the teens, poorer than the fin bros, richer than commuters. Also s/o to all my colleagues trying to find something healthy from the protein bar/dried fruit aisle in CVS.
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Glad we're talking about this. In addition to down-weighting homework, I am also reluctantly returning to pop quizzes.😥
Fwiw my solution to this is: (1) Down-weight these assignments. (2) Give 100% for anything they turn in. (3) Traditional in-person blue-book exams that someone who did the assignments in good faith will do well on. Very little incentive for thoughtless use of AI.
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Delighted to share my new work on issue ownership in @PRQjournal. Issue ownership fascinates me b/c it's a partisan bias, just not THE partisan bias. Here, I share evidence that when Rs (Ds) are in power, people think crime and fiscal (public health) conditions are better!
Seth B. Warner examines whether party “issue ownership” shapes how Americans evaluate conditions related to different political issues when that party is in power. “Governing Party Issue Ownership and How Citizens Assess Conditions“ 🔗 Link in bio 📷 Radio Metro AS/CC BY-SA 4.0
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I've been thinking along these lines in light of Arday's tragic death, plus @Tyler_A_Harper's piece, and @AOC's comments on "Woke 1." What is the best way to support equality, and acknowledge diversity, when the primary thing we should be doing is *our jobs*?
Of all the takes on Arday, this one seems the most devastating to me. Arday was a prop, used to demonstrate political progress and advance a political agenda orthogonal to truth-seeking. It makes clear that merit must be the only thing that matters in academic hiring.
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Notably, academic jobs are implicitly (just not explicitly) aligned w/ DEI principles. We consider varying perspectives, and try to articulate their value! So, if we prioritize something over simply *doing that job,* we may inadvertently undermine diversity and equality!
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That said, it may be worth revisiting "Woke 1" to separate wheat from chaff. Among the sea of studies saying unequal outcome X demands immediate change w/o acknowledging countervailing goals or upstream inequalities... it seemed like some genuinely found "win-win" solutions.
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I’m at Hershey Park with the family, considering the hypothesis that the “amusement park vote” might be a reasonably strong correlate for the presidential swing vote. As goes Six Flags…
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From our FirstView: Beyond Belief Change: The Persuasive Returns of Targeting Attitude–Relevant Beliefs by @YamilRVelez, @patrickpliu and SCOTT CLIFFORD. doi.org/10.1017/S00030554261…
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I slightly like it! Elite socialization today seems to select on people whose talents/background predict success in an unequal, knowledge-based economy. Voters intuit that folks who successfully ran that gamut may not represent them well. It's just descriptive representation!
there's a broad anti-striver strain in American politics and culture and while I understand it, I do not like it
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Now, can we thoroughly vet our everyman candidates first? Sure! And I suspect burnt out, faux working-class guys from rich families are sadly less likely to pass those checks. But the pool gets small when you play identity politics this hard. (They started with lobstermen!)
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P.S. My cousin would be a great candidate in this ilk. He is assistant manager of grocery store in a Rust Belt city. I don't think he would have much interest, as it goes with anti-striving, but then again... who has thought to ask?
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