Christopher Wlezien

The declarations of independents: Open‐ended survey responses and the nature of non‐identification - Allamong - American Journal of Political Science - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

@adamgendzwill @UniWarszawski @WNPiSM @pobvidubuw Hi from Krakow, Adam, circling back to let you know that I had a great time visiting; I want to thank you and the others, especially my host, @NLetkiNatalia, and also say that I look forward to collaborating!

Next week at @UniWarszawski @WNPiSM @pobvidubuw❗️ Prof. Christopher Wlezien on policy responsiveness

Excited about a new paper with x.com/s_soroka in x.com/polcommjournal: "durable biases in information processing, by media organizations and humans more generally, can produce misinformation and misperceptions..." tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@NLetki @WNPiSM @UniWarszawski @adamgendzwill @Maciej76718052 Hi and looking forward!

Prof. @CBWlezien (University of Texas at Austin) will give an open lecture "On Policy Responsiveness: Conditions for Effective Demand and Supply", Wed March 11 at 1.15 pm Sala Komisji - Pałac Kazimierzowski, @WNPiSM @UniWarszawski Everyone welcome! @adamgendzwill @Maciej76718052

Breaking News: The U.S. trade deficit rose sharply in November, as President Trump’s tariffs generated intense volatility. nyti.ms/4q5d2Ly

@jmrphy Hi there Justin, happy new year, and congratulations; I really look forward to reading!

OK back to normal now... This thing is finally, finally ~done... Just a private test copy sent to my house but I think I'm maybe 15 focused hours from shipping to doorsteps. Six original studies on the economic lives of Plato, Montaigne, Spinoza, Samuel Johnson, Emerson, and Nietzsche. ~210 pages. This thing has killed me. Spent about 2 years on this while trying to build my own business and creative-direct @nockchain. Yes my kids are more important, no I don't think I'm some genius, it's just one humble contribution. But it's my humble contribution. And if you know how hard it is to write a book, a real book, let alone with two small children, maybe you'll understand why I blew a gasket this week. Love you all, especially the haters for giving me fuel. If you pre-ordered I'm so sorry for the delays. It's coming. I love you.

Fake news tend to be more negative. "variation in accuracy is associated with variation in the tendency to overweight negative information relative to positive information". researchgate.net/profile/Christ…

@acllive @robertearlkeen Was a great show!

The road goes on forever, and the party is back in Austin tonight! Looking through the archives of REK at ACL Live—So many legendary nights, and we’re adding another one to the books tonight. @robertearlkeen 7PM - Doors 8PM - Show 🎟️Grab tickets at acl.live/rek

The US economy is in a hiring recession. Almost no jobs have been added since April. Wage gains are slowing. 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024. November +64,000 jobs October -105,000 (impacted by shutdown) September +108,000 August -26,000 July +72,000 June -13,000 May +19,000 I believe it's a combination of tariff impacts, AI, and cost cutting. Americans are feeling it. #jobs

The obsession with getting your kids into an Ivy+ college is overrated. The same kids who are able to get into an elite school will earn just as much money if they get into a good public school. The income gain is literally 0% Why are people obsessed with it then? Because those schools offer access to the *most prestigious* jobs, like elite law firms and grad schools. academic.oup.com/qje/advance-ar…

@JakeMGrumbach Thx for posting. Changes have put a lot of pressure on voters, that's for sure!

The Eric Schickler essay in Larry Bartel's symposium on "What Trump Has Taught Us About Political Science" is one of the most insightful pieces I've read in 2025. US Constitution & institutions turned out to be weak, and we have to rethink conventional wisdom.

Tracks with public polling data showing a spike in the share of voters saying Republicans are too extreme. Policy overreach has consequences! But we can't get complacent—voters still trust Rs more on their top three issues, and a greater share still see us as "too liberal."

@ahall_research @namalhotra @robinhanson Thx and looking forward to reading!

@CBWlezien @namalhotra @robinhanson Here's a link to the post: freesystems.substack.com/p/inside-the-m…

Two weeks ago I spent election night in NYC in a room with traders betting on real elections. Normally obscure off-cycle election races saw $400M in volume. Markets swung wildly on social media rumors. Prices became “proof” that candidates won. Today I'm publishing what I learned about how to design and govern prediction markets that make us smarter about politics—and launching my newsletter, Free Systems.

@JakeMGrumbach In "academic political science"?

An empirical observation: Ezra Klein is also the most influential public intellectual within US academic political science. Dude might be the most influential American public intellectual right now period

@ChazNuttycombe Greater choice; more to respond to/balance...?

I say this a lot, but to paraphrase Machiavelli: the people are fickle.

I think we are in, or entering, an era of American electoral politics where thermostatic public opinion has never been harsher and more reactive, starting in 2016. Whether this is a blip due to inflation under Biden or how elections'll be for remaining decades remains to be seen.

@ahall_research Hi and thx, and this now-dated article might be of some interest: academic.oup.com/poq/article-ab…

An underappreciated potential value of prediction markets for elections is that they directly provide a probability of victory, though it's an open question whether these are better than what you could create with polling right now. Polls provide an expected vote share, which is NOT a probability of victory, no matter how often people mess this up. Example: in AtlasIntel's most recent poll, Zohran's estimated 44% vote share does not translate to a 0.44 probability of victory, duh. His probability of victory is much higher than that. Converting an estimated vote share into a probability of victory requires some sort of model for variance, and this has proven hard to get right (remember when Sam Wang said Hillary Clinton had a 99+% chance of victory?) ChatGPT kindly made me the below diagram to explain this basic logic. Of course, prediction markets can also be used to extract vote share estimates when they list contracts on margin of victory or vote share. So, a good question for research will be: are the probability of victory estimates from prediction markets superior to those extracted from poll estimates with modeling assumptions?

@gelliottmorris Sure, (referendum) fundamentals matter, but choice does too...

now here's a good take

@lispop Thx and agree, and here's a related article (with Matt Grossmann) that might interest: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… PS Public also can react to executive action, which can dominate policymaking in certain domains, e.g., immigration.

With a low starting approval rating and unambiguously conservative policies, it would seem that there are reasons to think the thermometer will swing and that the midterm elections will not be pretty for the Republican Party. /4

We break down the latest Trump approval numbers compared to other contemporary presidents from @gelliottmorris in the context of the 2026 midterm elections. lispop.ca/nexus/trump-in… /1

@ahall_research Thx, and here's another paper in the space that might interest! sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Prediction markets for elections are a huge deal today and have long been beloved by political economists---but I had no appreciation for how deep their historical roots go. Did you know that there were large betting markets for American elections long before polling, with volumes sometimes exceeding the stock market? Amazing paper I stumbled on. And they did a solid job of predicting winners, even without access to polling data.