Ben Ginsburg Hix

I analysed 40 years of British laws and found that society was the footnote. Dirty rivers, absurd train fares, families fighting for support: all share the same flaw: governments optimise the wrong things. Could software engineering offer a fix? laurenleek.substack.com/p/theres-no-...

Looking forward to kicking off the LSE's brand-new Political Methodology seminar! I will present new work with @tarasenkogeorgy.bsky.social and Andrey Tkachenko on detecting batch-generated responses in survey data delivered by third-party vendors. Get in touch for the Zoom link or the draft.

Very excited to announce the fantastic lineup of speakers for the Autumn Term of the inaugural LSE Political Methodology Seminar Series! Please reach out to myself or one of my amazing co-organisers Mara, Charlotte, and Elena if you’re interested in attending.

Very excited to announce a new Political Methodology Seminar Series co-hosted by the @lsegovernment.bsky.social, @lsemethodology.bsky.social and European Institute. This bi-weekly series is designed to support ECRs applying state-of-the-art methodological tools to political science research.

📢 CALL FOR PAPERS! We invite submissions for the Political Methodology Seminar Series on frontiers in empirical political science and CSS. We welcome research examining political behaviour, public opinion, comparative politics, and CSS. Research on adjacent topics are also highly encouraged.

Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls, with the AfD falling just short of a majority. Here are some takeaways based on the preliminary results across all 218 municipalities and local socioeconomic characteristics. A thread 🧵(1 /n) Full analysis + write-up: juliuskoelzer.de/saxony-anhal...

Die Linke pulled off a surprise win in Germany’s most recent federal election and has suddenly become one of the most closely watched parties in Europe’s progressive politics. Behind the success lies a continuing structural transformation of its geographic support base. A short thread🧵

Lots of rich and very interesting data from @persuasionuk.bsky.social. Shows (again) that Labour has only lost few voters to Reform and that Reform has benefitted from differential turnout. Among Labour defectors perceptions of Labour as "Tory-lite" dwarf concerns about immigration.

Just came across this paper in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Somehow missed it, but I think it’s genuinely important for social scientists - especially for anyone doing imputation or working with small, messy tabular data: a🧵

"Safeguarding data quality is no longer a single checkpoint but an end-to-end pipeline - one that reallocates substantial resources from sampling to continuous fraud monitoring" Read our new POAL Methods Brief by @laurenleek.eu on dealing with AI bots in surveys! Link: www.poal.co.uk/briefai.pdf

new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

"While testing one dimension at a time can yield simple results, those effects may not generalise to richer, real-world contexts." Read our new POAL Methods Briefs on Conjoint Experiments from Thomas Robinson! Link: www.poal.co.uk/research/met...

📊 now in English @fesonline.bsky.social: Gender gap in voting behavior in Germany📊 It's about the “big picture” since 1953 & current trends 2021-2025. The gender gap keeps growing, especially among the young. -> Longer trends are continuing & partly accelerating. library.fes.de/pdf-files/a-...

🧵/ Our major new study on young men, masculinity, and misogyny questions the extent to which Gen Z men are really more likely to hold misogynist views than older generations of men

How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality? Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Good news from the British Election Study: there's no sign of the reported uptick in sexism among young British men Bad news: what's going on with middle aged men?

NEW: updated long-run gap in voting between young men and women in Germany: Gender divide continues to widen, but contrary to what is often assumed, young men continue to vote roughly in line with the overall population, while young women have swung sharply left. www.ft.com/content/29fd...

New Working Paper: Teenage boys and girls in Norway are more ideologically polarized than ever. Using data for 130,000 high-schoolers over 34 years, I find that a surge in anti-feminism among boys is driving much of the recent trend.📈 Read: osf.io/preprints/os... Findings 🧵👇

New blog! Food for thought: local restaurant diversity meets migration. open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

Super important experimental study by @lcjacobs89.bsky.social and @jbpilet.bsky.social showing that mainstream parties signaling willingness to govern with radical right legitimize these parties with higher propensity to vote for radical right as a result journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

New Gender Update out in @ejpgjournal.bsky.social. With data from the new wave of the EES, I show a strong increase in support for the far right among young voters. Especially the share of young men who consider voting for the far right has exploded. bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...