The Intersection is now on Substack
Discover more from The Intersection
The Intersection is now on Substack
Republican divisions on Ukraine, parenting after the pandemic, a look back on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and a new paper on Black conservatives
No. 258 | March 17th, 2023
The Intersection is Substack-official! After 6 years self-publishing this weekly newsletter on everything new at the intersection of polling, data, and technology, we’re now live on Substack. In addition to these weekly roundups, I will also be posting more-frequent original pieces here, including previews of the themes discussed in my book, Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP, coming out later this year from Simon & Schuster.
I’m excited for this new era of The Intersection and for the opportunity to engage with the reader community here on Substack.
📊 Polling & Public Attitudes
Kristen Soltis Anderson: Do Republicans really not care about Ukraine? (Codebook by Kristen Soltis Anderson)
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made news this week when responding to questions about his position on the war in Ukraine, indicating:
‘‘while the US has many vital national interests … becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.’
In this, DeSantis is positioning himself quite differently than, say, Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who offered an opposing view of the conflict:
‘America is far better off with a Ukrainian victory than a Russian victory, including avoiding a wider war…If Russia wins, there is no reason to believe it will stop at Ukraine. And if Russia wins, then its closest allies, China and Iran, will become more aggressive.’
This is not a new development. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake was on the case a month ago, outlining the different approaches of the two candidates.
But what is still developing is the slowly increasing view among Republicans that perhaps the war in Ukraine, while a tragedy, is not vital to American interests. And there’s polling looking at the same sort of framing Gov. DeSantis used - ‘vital U.S. interests’ - going back to the very start of the war.”
Margaret Talev: Two Americas Index: Ukraine divides conservatives (Axios)
“Four in five Republicans want the U.S. to remain the world's leading power — but fewer than half support giving Ukraine weapons and financial support to try to save itself from Russia, according to the latest wave of the Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index.
Why it matters: These conflicting findings come amid a diplomatic crisis after Russia forced down a U.S. drone above the Black Sea — and a GOP identity crisis shaping the 2024 presidential race.”
Patricia Tevington: Americans Feel More Positive Than Negative About Jews, Mainline Protestants, Catholics (Pew Research Center)
“Far more Americans express favorable than unfavorable views of Jews, mainline Protestants and Catholics, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey that measures U.S. adults’ broad sentiments toward several religious groups.
At the other end of the spectrum, more Americans express negative than positive attitudes toward atheists, Muslims and Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).
Some survey respondents may find it strange or difficult to be asked to rate an entire group of people. Indeed, most Americans give a neutral response – or choose not to answer the question – when asked about some religious groups. For example, about six-in-ten U.S. adults (59%) say they hold “neither favorable nor unfavorable” views of Muslims or “don’t know enough to say,” while 17% express very or somewhat favorable views of Muslims and 22% express very or somewhat unfavorable views of the group.”
Daniel Cox: What is Behind the Generational Jump in Bisexual Identity? (American Storylines)
“The number of Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is on the rise. A recent Gallup poll found that seven percent of Americans are now LGBT. Over the past 10 years, the number of LGBT Americans has doubled in size.
But that’s not the most interesting part of Gallup’s report. There is a fascinating generational pattern as well. Young adults express far greater fluidity in their sexual preferences and identities than previous generations. One in five Gen Zers are LGBT. What’s remarkable is how much this increase is driven by the rapid growth of bisexual identity. The vast majority of Gen Z LGBT people are bisexual. This is not true for Baby Boomers—the majority of LGBT Boomers are either gay or lesbian.”
👫 Demographics
Claire Cain Miller: Fathers Gained Family Time in the Pandemic. Many Don’t Want to Give It Back. (The New York Times)
“During the lockdowns of spring 2020, men took on much more of the work of raising children and running households than they had before. Most fathers, particularly when schools reopened, largely reverted to their old division of labor, according to an analysis released last week. It is based on a continuing survey since April 2020 of 4,550 parents living with opposite-sex partners (roughly 500 have participated in all the surveys).
But a sizable share, one fifth, has continued to do more child care than before, and one quarter has continued to do more household work, the survey found. It asked respondents if they were spending more, less or the same amount of time on various domestic tasks compared with prepandemic days and compared with their partners.
For these fathers, the pandemic offered a chance to reorganize their lives to be more involved in family life — and now, they don’t want to give it up.”
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux: Democratic Dads Think It’s Gotten Easier To Raise Kids. Democratic Moms Disagree. (FiveThirtyEight)
“There’s nothing like bringing a baby onto the House floor to get the country’s attention. Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez went viral in early January when he showed up to vote for the new House speaker wearing his son Hodge strapped to his chest in a baby carrier. Later that month, Gomez and other Democratic fathers of young kids tried to turn that viral moment into a new political interest group, forming a congressional “Dads Caucus” to draw attention to policies that affect parents, like paid family leave and child tax credits.
The idea that dads could be effective spokespeople for the tribulations of modern parents is appealing to politicians and advocates who want more government support for working families. After all, men at high levels of power tend to get bonus points in the workplace for becoming a parent, while women in similar positions are penalized. And fathers in heterosexual relationships, who have long lagged behind mothers in time and energy spent on child rearing, only started to catch up a bit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But there’s a pretty obvious reason why Gomez’s “Dads Caucus” isn’t bipartisan — and isn’t likely to draw Republican support anytime soon. Like mothers, fathers are a large and diverse demographic group with competing views of what families need and what society owes them. Divisions over how families should be structured and the kinds of support they should receive remain some of the most powerful in American politics today. In fact, there are deep disagreements among Americans about how to even define parents’ issues.”
🗳️ Elections
Nate Cohn: Why Fox’s Call on Arizona, Which Was Right, Was Still Wrong (The New York Times 🔒)
“If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, my guess is you’d be interested in my colleague Peter Baker’s article about the drama at Fox News in the aftermath of its decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.
Here’s the short version: Fox News executives, news anchors and pundits were enraged over the call, with messages and a recording showing they thought it hurt ratings and threatened to “impact the brand” by alienating Donald J. Trump’s supporters.
Most people would agree that political and branding concerns shouldn’t dictate an election call by a news organization. But the article has nonetheless rekindled an old debate about whether Fox News was really “right” to call Arizona for Mr. Biden on election night in 2020.”
🗺️ Data Visualization
Emily Badger, Larry Buchanan: So You Want to Turn an Office Building Into a Home? (The New York Times)
“There’s an appealing simplicity to the idea of converting office buildings into housing. The premise suggests cities could solve two problems — an office glut and a housing shortage — at once. In the process, they could limit the waste of demolition, create new homes with minimal opposition, and renew neighborhoods without radically changing how they look from the sidewalk.
The idea, however, is less like a sweeping fix and more like a set of intricate puzzles — a different one for each building. Each one must solve for local rules that say what counts as a bedroom, for structural columns and elevator shafts that shape where walls go, for construction costs and land prices that affect rent rolls. And they must solve, above all, for access in every unit to fresh air and sunlight.
For many offices, this puzzle may be unsolvable, at least for now. But for others it is not impossible, even in large modern buildings, even on pricey Manhattan land. And to understand the potential of conversions — and why older buildings often make easier ones — it’s useful to look closely at a pair of buildings constructed 40 years apart, and the evolution of the American office that runs through them.”
🏀 Sports
Josh Katz, Alice Fang: N.C.A.A. Bracket Picks: Where Fans and Experts Diverge (The New York Times)
“Picking a perfect N.C.A.A. tournament bracket is all but impossible.
Whoever wins a bracket contest — whether a small office pool or a big national one — needs at least a little luck. But there are ways to improve your chances, especially in a large pool. One avenue is examining the differences between the forecasts of mathematical models and the collective choices of fans.
The table [below] shows the collective picks of a pair of large public bracket contests for the men’s tournament — from ESPN and Yahoo — along with expert forecasts from FiveThirtyEight, Jeff Sagarin, Ken Pomeroy and ESPN. Experts use models to assign probabilities of advancement for every team in each round.
But the public brackets, representing the wisdom of the crowd, and models do differ widely in some ways. Fans tend to rate No. 1 seeds or well-known teams as more likely to win the tournament than experts do. For example, fans are much more likely to have Kansas and Alabama in the Final Four than the experts.”
🖥 Digital Data
Katie Harbath: Cambridge Analytica Five Years Later (Anchor Change)
“The Cambridge Analytica scandal exploded into the political class’s consciousness five years ago this week. The idea of political persuasion and data mining suddenly felt very close to every Facebook user, and the aftermath of the scandal included rethinking the ethics of data privacy and the growing impact of social media on electoral politics. Cambridge Analytica still impacts the digital democracy space today.
On March 17, 2018, the Guardian and New York Times broke the story about a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, saying that the company had utilized 50 million Facebook profiles to do their modeling. Facebook tried to pre-empt the stories by announcing it had suspended access to everything on Facebook for Cambridge Analytica and an affiliate organization - the SCL Group. They also took issue with the media calling it a “data breach,” given the information in question wasn’t hacked or stolen and was indeed provided through the API to developers with users’ consent.
BPC is convening a panel of top technology and political experts on March 29th to discuss if the countless studies, reports, hearings, laws, and products created in the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica have made user data safer. Join Katie, Alex Lundry, the Co-Founder of Tunnl and Deep Root Analytics; Matthew Rosenberg, a Washington-based Correspondent for the New York Times who helped break the story; and, our moderator Justin Hendrix, the CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press.”
🔬 Academia
