Mark Mellman

Pew’s study of political polarization yields such rich data that I, like many others, will be mining it for a long time to come. But because you will likely be…

I’m going to defend the indefensible and attempt to explain the inexplicable. I’m unwilling to throw up my hands and blame statistics or incompetence for the failure of polls to…

I was a modeler before it was cool. Our firm brought modeling to Democratic poll data in the early 1980s, created the first micro-targeting models in the middle and late 1980s,…

Isolationism is extending its grip on public opinion. The last time I made that argument, friends critiqued me, with some justification, for basing the conclusion on voters’ stated reluctance to…

For the last several weeks I’ve been trying to correct a meme that has been abroad in the land among journalists, academics, donors and even campaign strategists. In only slightly…

For several weeks I’ve been exploring an argument increasingly heard in the press and some political circles: Persuasion is wasted effort, at least in a midterm race; increasing turnout is…

Last week I began discussing, some might say attacking, a meme heard with increasing frequency: Persuasion is a waste, it’s all about turnout. The latest entrant in this vein was…

Lynn Vavreck is a brilliant political scientist from whom I’ve learned a great deal and from whom I still hope to learn much. However, I do hope Democrats do not…

A set of New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation polls on Southern Senate races and ObamaCare created quite a brouhaha last week, eliciting a level of vitriol not seen since the “unskewers”…

It’s a refrain that troubles me: “Nobody likes paying taxes.” Especially for people like me who never served in the military, taxes are the contribution we make to our country,…