Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 15d

Depolarization is not "a scalable solution for reducing societal-level conflict.... achieving lasting depolarization will likely require....moving beyond individual-level treatments to address the elite behaviors and structural incentives that fuel partisan conflict" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

17 130 390

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · 15d

New in PNAS with @seanjwestwood.bsky.social and @ylelkes.bsky.social: Why depolarization is hard: Evaluating attempts to decrease partisan animosity in America

@prl.bsky.social @pnas.org

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

1 10 32

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 27d

Careful polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly reject political violence - see e.g. brightlinewatch.org/tempered-exp..., brightlinewatch.org/accelerated-..., and www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1....

Unfortunately, it only takes one person with a gun to create a tragedy like what've seen today.

1 36 160

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 27d

As scary as this moment is, remember that support for political violence went DOWN after the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump, not up www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

We need to make the same thing happen this time.

12 87 320

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · Jul 18

There are few people as kind and inspiring as Bob was, in political science or otherwise. His dedication to his students and to the city of Houston was unparalleled, and I am lucky to be one of many who would not be where we are without him as a mentor.

news.rice.edu/news/2025/ri...

news.rice.edu

2

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · May 21

There are too many folks to thank here, but some special appreciation to everyone at @prl.bsky.social for the most professionally productive postdoc I could imagine, and my committee at UCLA PoliSci for their continued support. Looking forward to starting this next professional chapter!

3

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · May 21

It's official -- I'll be taking my talents to Foggy Bottom this Fall! Excited to announce I've accepted an offer to join the Department of Political Science at the George Washington University as an Assistant Professor of American Politics!

1 29

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · May 8

The body and blood of Christ

55 420 1.9K

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Ethan Porter @ethanvporter.bsky.social · Apr 23

‼️ Two new post-docs at GW! Both affiliated with the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics, one will be more computational, the other more experimental. Links: www.gwu.jobs/postings/119...
and
www.gwu.jobs/postings/119...
Spread the word!

Postdoctoral Associate

The George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics (IDDP) seeks exceptional candidates for a full-time, academic research position at the rank of post-doctoral fellow. The mis...

www.gwu.jobs

5 10

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Political Science Research and Methods @psrm.bsky.social · Jan 16

🏫Do income and education shape people's priorities?

➡️Contrary to conventional wisdom, @ctausanovitch.bsky.social @derekholliday.com show that income and education are not strongly associated with differences in what people care about www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

2 7

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Polarization Research Lab @prl.bsky.social · Dec 20

Job alert! Interested in working with PRL as a postdoc next year? Apply by January 15! We offer the opportunity to collaborate on and lead projects related to democratic attitudes, elite behavior, and more! polarizationresearchlab.org/hiring/

Hiring

Visit the post for more.

polarizationresearchlab.org

12 14

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Polarization Research Lab @prl.bsky.social · Dec 16

How did American attitudes toward democracy shift with the election? Our final Path to 2024 report shows substantive changes in perceptions of accuracy, trust, and resignation toward democratic backsliding.

Read the full report: prlpublic.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/reports/Elec...

1 7 14

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · Nov 29

The attempted assassination of president Trump decreased support for partisan violence and did not increase polarization according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

The July 2024 Trump assassination attempt was followed by lower in-group support for partisan violence and increased group unity | PNAS

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump led to widespread concern that the event would escalate political violence between U.S. partisans. Whil...

www.pnas.org

1 15

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Polarization Research Lab @prl.bsky.social · Nov 26

Now published in PNAS! We had a survey in the field at the time of the first assassination attempt on Trump. We found that Rs became significantly less supportive of partisan violence and had increased in-party affect.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

2 29 61

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · Nov 22

That's probably correct, though this is subset to just partisan-identifiers/leaners, so at least not driven by pure independents.

We had an attention check that probably removes the worst of the satisficing/speeding, but I do believe that behavior is endemic in continuous scale responses.

2

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · Nov 22

I'll also mention that in our random forest models, the variable that always popped (even accounting for cardinality) was age: young Americans are significantly more antidemocratic. I imagine there's an interesting relationship to explore between age, affpol, and support for democracy.

Age is the most predictive factor in random forest models predicting support for antidemocratic norms.

1 4

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · Nov 22

In our PNAS we don't necessarily find a negative relationship between affpol and antidemocratic norm support, but certainly a non-linear one (appendix fig. below).

Personally, I think FT measures have some pretty major empirical oddities we're still evaluating

🔗 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Non-linear relationship between affective polarization and support for 4 antidemocratic norms

2 5 17

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Polarization Research Lab @prl.bsky.social · Nov 21

PRL's annual conference is in Salt Lake City, May 1-2, 2025 🎉Apply by 12/31 to present/attend! We are looking for work on democratic attitudes, broadly defined, and preference complete/near complete studies for talks. Details and application: polarizationresearchlab.org/annual-meeti...

Annual Meeting

Visit the post for more.

polarizationresearchlab.org

6 9

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Ross Dahlke @rossdahlke.bsky.social · Oct 24

Despite so much focus of the U.S. Election on a few battleground states, affective polarization is actually geographically uniformly distributed across states, finds
@derekholliday.com @ylelkes.bsky.social & Westwood
@prl.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Affective polarization is uniformly distributed across American States

1 3 9

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Shana Gadarian @sgadarian.bsky.social · Oct 24

The nationalization of news is a big part of this phenomenon. See colleagues Johanna Dunaway and Josh Darr on the importance of local news in slowing polarization. www.cambridge.org/core/element...

2 8

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · Mar 18

So happy to see this now published at PNAS! This paper, coauthored with Shanto Iyengar, @ylelkes.bsky.social, and Sean Westwood, was my first project for @prl.bsky.social, and there will be many more coming soon! 🥳

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

1 5 18

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Chris Warshaw @chriswarshaw.bsky.social · Dec 19

Our paper introducing the "American Local Government Elections Database" is online at Scientific Data. The data includes 78,000 candidates in 57,000 electoral contests in races for seven distinct local political offices in most medium and large cities and counties over the last three decades.

American local government elections database - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - American local government elections database

www.nature.com

7 68 150

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Polarization Research Lab @prl.bsky.social · Nov 6

Interested in working with PRL? We're looking for postdocs for 2024-2025! Apply by Jan 15, 2024. We're an interdisciplinary lab studying democratic attitudes and partisan animosity. Data skills required 📈
polarizationresearchlab.org/hiring/
polisky

Hiring

Join our lab About the Positions We are looking for postdoctoral fellows (up to five) to join our team for 2024-2025 and collaborate on and develop projects related to polarization and anti-democra…

polarizationresearchlab.org

1 4

Reposted by Derek Holliday

Polarization Research Lab @prl.bsky.social · Nov 1

Today's the day! PRL is now accepting paper proposals for our fully funded Annual Meeting in NOLA, March 20-22, 2024. We look for innovative work on partisan animosity, broadly defined. Apply by 12/15.

Can't wait to see what you are working on!
polarizationresearchlab.org/annual-meeti...

polisky

Annual Meeting

Meetings and Events Annual Meetings The 2024 PRL Annual Meeting will take place in New Orleans on March 21-22, 2024! This boutique conference brings together the best and most innovative wo…

polarizationresearchlab.org

7 9

Derek Holliday @derekholliday.com · Oct 24

"Assistant Speaker" implies the existence of adjunct speaker, associate speaker, full speaker, emeritus speaker, and endowed speaker

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · Oct 24

We can't elect a speaker. What should we do?
MCCARTHY: How about two speakers?

Amid the speaker impasse, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy is floating a plan that would reinstall him as speaker and make conservative Trump ally, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the assistant speaker, according to three sources familiar with McCarthy’s pitch.

Asked why this idea — which lacks key details like how it would be enacted and if it could even gain enough traction to happen — was being floated now, one GOP lawmaker replied: “We’re desperate.”

1 6