In a widely cited study, Healy, Malhotra, and Mo (henceforth HMM) report that college football games influence elections. We reassess this surprising finding and conclude that, despite arising from a sound research design, it is a false-positive result that arose by chance. HMM responded to our...

Despite extensive research on voting, there is little evidence connecting turnout to tangible outcomes. Would election results and public policy be different if everyone voted? The adoption of compulsory voting in Australia provides a rare opportunity to address this question. First, I collect...

Social capital and community activity are thought to increase voter turnout, but reverse causation and omitted variables may bias the results of previous studies. We exploit saint’s day fiestas in Mexico as a natural experiment to test this causal relationship. Saint’s day fiestas provide...

Survey researchers have long known that Americans fail to meet the democratic ideals of an informed electorate. The consequences of this political ignorance, however, are less clear. In two independent settings, we experimentally test the effect of political information on citizens’ attitudes...

An introduction to data science or statistics shouldn’t involve proving complex theorems or memorizing obscure terms and formulas, but that is exactly what most introductory quantitative textbooks emphasize. In contrast, Thinking Clearly with Data focuses, first and foremost, on critical...

This article examines the negative effect fallacy, a flawed statistical argument first utilized by the Warren Court in Elkins v. United States. The Court argued that empirical evidence could not determine whether the exclusionary rule prevents future illegal searches and seizures because “it...

Do college football games influence U.S. elections? Healy, Malhotra, and Mo (2010) found that college football outcomes are correlated with election results. Fowler and Montagnes (2015) found that the estimated effects of college football games do not vary in the ways we would theoretically...

Despite extensive research on voting, there is little evidence connecting turnout to tangible outcomes. Would election results and public policy be different if everyone voted? The adoption of compulsory voting in Australia provides a rare opportunity to address this question. First, I collect...