Simple surveys that ask people who they expect to win are among the most accurate methods for forecasting U.S. presidential elections. The majority of respondents correctly predicted the election winner in 193 (89%) of 217 surveys conducted from 1932 to 2012. Across the last 100 days prior to...

We assess how the PollyVote and its components performed in this election compared to the previous six (1992 to 2012). While always predicting that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote, across the 100 days leading to the election on average the PollyVote overshot the mark by 1.9 percentage...

This study seeks to identify the principal factors that influence the results of the House midterm elections. The regression findings suggest that Gallup presidential approval rankings, percentage changes in RGDP, and the results of Virginia’s gubernatorial elections enter positively in...

This study explores a basic idea in political economy: Trading money for political influence. Our focus is at the level of international institutions, where governments may exploit their influence in one organization to gain leverage over another. In particular, we consider the lending...

We compiled data on all United Nations General Assembly resolutions on which voting took place between January 1990 and June 2013 and find a preoccupation with one country: in 65 percent of instances in which a country is criticized in a resolution, the country is Israel, with no other country...

This paper provides new empirical evidence on policy-makers' voting patterns on interest rates. Applying (pooled) Taylor-type rules and using real-time information available from published inflation reports and voting records, the paper tests for heterogeneity among committee members in three...

What explains persistent political corruption in many young democracies? Focusing on the effects of corruption on individual-level attitudes, we present two hypotheses for why citizens might be willing to cast ballots for corrupt politicians. On the one hand, voters may simply lack information...