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Articles by John Sides
Does vote buying even work?
Image combined on Canva. Earlier this month, Donald Trump pledged to send $5,000 to every American adult if the Republicans retained control of Congress after the 2026 midterm election. This has provoked more than a few questions and more than a little backlash, including from Republicans who questioned the sheer cost of such an effort. Trump’s pledge does not appear to be illegal on its face, according to legal scholar Rick Hasen.
Trump’s midterm super PAC is running out of time. But Democrats can’t celebrate yet.
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Trump’s midterm super PAC is running out of time. But Democrats can’t celebrate yet.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. With just 50 days until the midterms, Vice President Vance is campaigning in deep-red Kansas. Meantime. Alaska Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola is making high gas prices a key focus of her campaign. MS NOW Chief Political Reporter Chris Jansi Republicans have a lot to worry about right now: gas prices, the war with Iran and especially the unpopularity of their party’s president.
Trump’s midterm super PAC is running out of time. But Democrats can’t celebrate yet.
Republicans have a lot to worry about right now: gas prices, the war with Iran and especially the unpopularity of their party's president. But Donald Trump has been causing even more fear in the GOP for a different reason: whether he'll spend his massive campaign fund to help Republican candidates in the upcoming elections. Trump's super PAC, which had accumulated $450 million, is only now beginning to use that money, with $57 million heading to key House and Senate races.
I think I'm ready to buy my first property. Seasoned advice please
St. Louis, MO · Member since 2019 · 6 posts · 0 votes I think I’m finally ready to buy my first investment property. I’ve been working with a lender who is very familiar with working with real estate investors, and he also works with a few agents who regularly help other investors. I’m thinking it would make sense to reach out to one of those agents and have them help me start looking for properties in the areas I’m interested in investing.
What is important to being truly American
A naturalization ceremony in 2010 at the south rim of the Grand Canyon (cc) NPS photo by Michael Quinn. A new YouGov/Economist survey caught my eye (see cross-tabs; summary).
How people decide who’s deserving in politics
Photo by Leif Christoph Gottwald on Unsplash. One way to think about public policy is whether you support the means or the ends. Evaluating, say, tax rebates for electric vehicle purchases means deciding whether you want more EV purchases and whether tax rebates are the right way to incentivize them. Another way to think about a policy is how you feel about the people who benefit from it. Do you think those people deserve it? This is the “deservingness heuristic.” It’s a familiar idea, to be sure.
The perfectly predictable pattern in partisanship
(cc) DonkeyHotey, via Flickr. It’s always a bit self-aggrandizing to do “I told you so” takes, but hopefully, you will forgive me. Here I was in 2024, tweeting away about U.S. party identification, or PID: The context for that tweet was a 2024 Pew Research Center survey showing that the percentage of Americans who identified as Republican had increased and was equivalent to the percentage who identified as Democrats. That spawned the usual hot takes that I referred to in the tweet.
250 years later, the British still aren’t so hot on American independence
Home > News > 250 years later, the British still aren’t so hot on American independence 250 years later, the British still aren’t so hot on American independence A minority says American independence was a good thing.
New voices join Good Authority in 2026
Image created on Canva. We are thrilled to announce the third cohort of Good Authority fellows. We look forward to sharing with you their insights across the wide range of their expertise, from opposition parties to inequality and organized crime as well as activist exiles, among other topical areas. Our fellows’ research and expertise offer more coverage and analysis on important events in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and, of course, the United States.
Americans are becoming less morally permissive
Image generated by ChatGPT. Since 2000, Gallup has asked Americans whether they consider a range of personal behaviors and certain policies to be morally acceptable or morally wrong. Many, but not all, of these are in the domains of sex and reproduction. The most recent survey that included these questions was conducted in May 2026.
Young Republicans are becoming more conservative
Image generated by ChatGPT. There is something unusual happening in American public opinion. Social issues that were once thought to be “settled” are not so settled anymore. A liberal consensus that emerged over decades is breaking down – and it’s being led not only by Republicans but also by younger Republicans. I know of three issues where we see this basic pattern: gender roles, gay marriage, and marijuana legalization.
Good Authority on Substack
Conservatives are getting sicker, and mistrust of doctors is a plausible cause. The headline of this post is taken from the title of a new piece of research by Elizabeth Elder and Neil O’Brian. Their finding is striking: Political conservatives didn’t used to have worse health than political liberals. But now they do. Here’s why. Elder and O’Brian use a dataset called the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.
The political polarization of health outcomes in the U.S.
Photo by Etactics Inc on Unsplash. The headline of this post is taken from the title of a new piece of research by Elizabeth Elder and Neil O’Brian. Their finding is striking: Political conservatives didn’t used to have worse health than political liberals. But now they do. Here’s why. Elder and O’Brian use a dataset called the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. This study has been tracking a large group of people who were adolescents in the 1990s.
The hidden effects of the Voting Rights Act
Marchers with signs at the August 1963 March on Washington. Photo by Marion S. Trikosko; colorized by Jordan J. Lloyd (Library of Congress, via Unsplash). Partisan gerrymandering is intensifying only days after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. Here in Tennessee, Republicans quickly voted to eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held U.S. House district. Other states are moving in the same direction.
More funding for space exploration is not that popular
Spectators watch the launch of the Artemis II mission on April 1, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida (NASA/Keegan Barber). The Artemis II mission to the moon elicited a fair amount of excitement and positive news coverage, at least in my casual reading. And on top of that comes another popular movie about space exploration. But despite this recent excitement, space exploration remains a low public priority, as decades of U.S. survey data show.
Charting almost 50 years of public attitudes toward suicide
Photo by Ann on Unsplash. We live in a country in which rates of suicide are, unfortunately, increasing. This graph shows you the trend from 2003 to 2023: The statistics for 2024 suggest a continued increase: 14.4 deaths per 100,000 people versus 14.1 in 2023. This puts the United States at odds with the trend in at least some developed countries.
Here’s new evidence on American support for political violence
Trump supporters attempt to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, seeking to overturn the 2020 election (cc) Tyler Merbler, via Flickr.
The deep complexity of public opinion about abortion
Abortion rights protest in 2016 in front of the Supreme Court, Washington, D.C. (cc) Jordan Uhl, via Flickr. Polling about abortion, like polling about a lot of issues, is beset by some pretty vague questions. Whether you’re “pro-life” or “pro-choice.” Whether abortion should be legal or illegal in “all cases” or “most cases,” or under “any circumstances” as opposed to “certain circumstances.” Certainly, those questions can serve a purpose.
More Republicans now support “strong leaders” who “bend the rules”
Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash. In new survey data from the Americas Barometer project, respondents were asked whether this was a good or bad form of government: “Having a strong leader in the government, even if the leader bends the rules to get things done.” The question was asked twice under Biden and once under Trump. Here are the results: Some key findings: In the 2021 and 2023 surveys, support for strong leaders who bend the rules was relatively low among both parties.
Fewer people think the American dream is alive - but they disagree on why
Image courtesy of American University’s School of Public Affairs. Polls and headlines keep suggesting that fewer Americans think the American Dream is still attainable, especially amid housing costs and economic anxiety. A new book, Debating the American Dream, discusses how Americans explain this sense that the American dream is slipping away – and how politics plays an important part.
Women in Congress are wealthier than men in Congress
(cc) Paolo Rosa, via Flickr. Here is a fact that I think most of us didn’t know: Women members of Congress are wealthier than men in Congress. That is the central finding of a new article by political scientists Rachel Bernhard, Andrew Eggers, and Marko Klašnja, titled “A Rich Woman’s World? Wealth and Gendered Paths to Office.” They built a database of U.S. House members’ wealth from 1980 to 2018, drawing on their financial disclosures.
Good Authority’s top 10 posts of 2025
Photo © QLide Photography. As we wrap up 2025, here’s a closer look at the posts that caught readers’ attention this year. #10 Three big takeaways from that “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Sarah Binder explained how the bill got passed, how Senate Republicans quietly nuked the filibuster, and what the bill means for our fiscal future. #9 How to explain the weird ideas of RFK Jr. What explains a guy who wants environmental regulation and organic food but not vaccines?
The perils of election prediction markets
Photo by Anastasiia Nelen on Unsplash. The prediction market company Kalshi recently inked a deal to become a partner with CNN and then CNBC. The goal is to share real-time prediction data with these media outlets, like the probability that the Democratic nominee will win the presidential election or that the Fed will cut interest rates. There is reason for caution, however, about the value of prediction market data.
The week’s links
Image created on Canva. List #1: A list of acts of Republican resistance to Trump through October 2025 (courtesy of Matt Green). List #2: A list of judicial concerns about the legal filings of the Trump administration. Chatbots informing voters “A significant positive association between right-leaning self-placement on the left/right scale and fertility is found in Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Spain, whereas the association is non-significant in the other 12 countries.” Paper here.
Announcing the 2026-2027 Good Authority fellows program!
Photo in image courtesy of © janniswerner via Canva.com. We invite political scientists interested in writing for a broad audience to apply to be part of the second cohort of Good Authority non-residential fellows. Selected fellows will draw on insights from research – theirs and that of other political scientists – as it relates to timely events and evergreen political and policy issues.
The political impact of Thanksgiving dinner
So, “Politics at the Dinner Table” is not just what many of us experience at our Thanksgiving meal. It’s the title of a new paper by economist Kirsten Cornelson.
White Democrats increasingly support Black candidates
New research from Anna Mikkelborg: Equitable representation of minority groups is a challenge for democratic government. One way to resolve this dilemma is for majority-group voters to support minority-group candidates, but this support is often elusive. To understand how such inter-group coalitions become possible, this paper investigates the case of white Democratic Americans’ growing support for Black political candidates.
The week's links
The week’s links Home ownership, household incomes, five-string guitars, and more. Image created on Canva. Related
Have our personal networks become more politically segregated?
Do you talk about politics with the same number of people as you did, say, 25 years ago? Fewer? More? And what political views do those people have? Similar to yours? Different? When we think about people’s personal political networks, there are two common concerns. One is that people just don’t talk politics – that is, they’re unengaged. The other is what’s known as homophily: We talk mostly to people who agree with us. Birds of a feather, and all that.
The week’s links
The week’s links A rare survey of federal judges tops the list. Image created on Canva. Related
The populism horseshoe
The horseshoe theory is a venerable idea about how political ideas work. The gist is that at the endpoints of the ideological spectrum, you start to find similarities. The spectrum “bends” like a horseshoe and the far left and far right suddenly look kind of alike – and maybe more similar to each other than they are to those in the political center.
Depressed people are more likely to support Donald Trump
When we hear about mental health and politics, there’s a lot of focus on how liberals appear to have worse mental health than conservatives. That may or may not be true, as Brian Schaffner and his co-authors have noted. See Derek Thompson for more on this. But there’s been less study of a different question: Does mental health correlate with how you view political figures? Some new research by Matthew Baum and a group of political scientists sheds some light.
The week’s links
The week’s links The GOP and science funding, music, and more music. Image created on Canva. Related
The week’s links
Image created on Canva. Here are this week’s links: Related
The real problem with the Biden-era Democratic Party?
Sam Rosenfeld and Danny Schlozman: A party facing an erosion of working-class support might pursue, as one alternative path, new material investments in organizational and civic activity distinct altogether from the development of new public policies, whether in the form of party-building, support for allies in civil society, or even old-style patronage. The Democratic Party failed meaningfully to pursue any of these options either in the lead-up to Biden’s election or during his presidency.
The week’s links
Image created in Canva. Here are this week’s links: Related
Why economic crises help right-wing parties
From a new paper by Yotam Margalit and Omer Solodoch: How do voters respond to economic crises: Do they turn against the incumbent, reward a certain political camp, polarize to the extremes, or perhaps continue to vote much like before? Analyzing extensive data on electorates, parties, and individuals in 24 countries for over half a century, we document a systematic pattern whereby economic crises tend to disproportionately favor the right. Three main forces underlie this pattern.
Autocracy or democracy? More and more people are ambivalent.
Last week, Donald Trump told reporters, “A lot of people are saying maybe we’d like a dictator.” Rather than dwell on what’s deeply problematic about that sort of offhand comment, I want to explore the specific question: How many people might like a dictator? The word “maybe” is going to be very important here.
Embracing populism doesn’t hurt right-wing parties. It may help them.
A big debate – especially in Europe but even in the U.S. – is how to neutralize right-wing populism. In the U.S., perhaps the most common debate is whether and how much the Democratic Party should now moderate on the “social issues” or “cultural issues” that were allegedly central to Trump’s win in 2024. In Europe, the question is whether mainstream center-left and center-right parties should adopt right-wing populist views, particularly on immigration, in order to weaken radical right parties.
Americans’ views of the opposite party have declined even further
It’s not news that people tend to have an unfavorable view of the opposite party. But it’s a tendency worth monitoring – and the newly released 2024 American National Election Study (ANES) provides an update on this trend. The ANES asks respondents to rate the “the Democratic Party” and “the Republican Party” on a 0-100 scale called a “feeling thermometer.” Here’s how that’s described to respondents: We’d also like to get your feelings about some groups in American society.
Can the GOP pass Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’?
OK, so Congress seems back in business! What is the Big, Beautiful Bill, exactly – and will the GOP cut taxes, bolster spending on immigration and defense, and slash social welfare spending to defray the costs? Check out our discussion of how GOP members of Congress are doing all they can to keep tight control over the reconciliation process and congressional funding decisions.
Do moderate candidates really do better in elections?
If you haven’t heard, there’s been a wee bit of debate about whether ideological moderation helps candidates win elections. Mainly, this is a debate within the Democratic Party, which only intensified after Trump’s win in 2024. Here is one summary of the debate, from Ezra Klein in 2021. On one side are “popularists” who argue that candidates win more votes when they take popular positions – specifically, because those positions win over swing voters.
The chronic misperception of Americans’ abortion attitudes
“Most Americans are pro-life.” So said the conservative group Heritage Action in 2022. It’s not surprising that a conservative group would want to believe that most Americans are conservatives. What may be more surprising is that many people are like Heritage Action. There is a chronic tendency to believe Americans are more pro-life than they really are. It’s true for state legislators.
On trade, public opinion is already moving away from Trump
A while back, Good Authority contributor Alexander Kustov wrote the definitive explainer of thermostatic politics. Here’s the shorthand: The public often reacts against the policies being pushed by a president’s party – just like how a thermostat warms a room when it’s too cold or cools a room when it’s too hot. Right now, Trump is telling Americans that trade is a threat to the U.S. economy. But increasingly Americans disagree.
How women should behave
The 2024 election felt like more than just a victory for President Trump. It felt like a victory for a traditional view of gender roles. Trump certainly shares that view. During the campaign, he declared that women liked him because he was their ‘protector.’ He called the satellite radio host Howard Stern a ‘BETA MALE’ after Stern criticised him.
Meet our 2025-2026 Good Authority fellows!
We are thrilled to announce the second cohort of Good Authority fellows. We look forward to sharing with you their insights across the wide range of their expertise, from political campaigns to corruption and international interventions as well as separation of powers, among other topical areas. Our fellows’ research and expertise offer more coverage and analysis on important events in Africa, Asia, Europe, and of course, the United States.
Republicans Really Do Care More About 'Masculine Energy' Original
The 2024 election felt like more than just a victory for President Trump. It felt like a victory for a traditional view of gender roles. Mr. Trump certainly shares that view. During the campaign, he declared that women liked him because he was their "protector." He called the satellite radio host Howard Stern a "BETA MALE" after Mr. Stern criticized him.
How to explain the weird ideas of RFK Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at a February 2024 campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona (cc) Gage Skidmore, via Flickr. Senate confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began yesterday. The controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services has only intensified. This week, a new letter from his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, criticized his anti-vaccine statements and called him a “predator.” Another common reaction to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is just … bafflement.
Our top 10 posts in 2024!
With the year almost over, we’re pleased to present our top 10 posts of 2024! #10. Danielle Lupton’s playlist of presidential campaign songs was a fascinating compilation of campaign songs and other music that presidential candidates have used. Al Gore and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, anyone? #9. “Why replacing Biden with Harris may not mobilize Black voters,” by Samantha Canty and Michael Tesler. This piece, published before Biden dropped out of the race, appears pretty prescient. #8.
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