Big Sky Political Analysis

This past week, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak released the government’s 2021 budget. Included in the package was an announcement of a £1 billion Towns Fund and notification of the 4...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-uk-towns-fund-did-conservative.html

Working with Maritsa Georgiou at NBC Montana, I analyzed the removal of post boxes in the state of Montana and found that Democratic vote at the precinct level is associated with a higher probabi...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-removal-of-montana-post-boxes.html

Today, the Department of Political Science celebrated its graduates at our traditional Friday-Before-Graduation party. Alas, this year--because of COVID-19--we had to celebrate via Web Ex. We lau...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-charge-to-msu-class-of-2020-citizen.html

In political science, there's a well-known phenomenon known as the "Rally Around the Flag Effect". Quite simply, when the nation is under threat, the public turn to and give their support to the ...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-covid-19-might-transform-montana.html

NOTE: I re-titled the blog after watching Senator Daines' recent comments on impeachment on the Senate floor. The ignorance extends to him as well, apparently. Senator Lamar Alexander’s expl...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-profound-ignorance-of-senator-lamar.html

This is a special guest post by Kal Munis, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia. Kal is a lifelong Montanan, and is an alum of both Montana State and the University of Montana. I expe...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2018/04/carhartt-bloodlines-and-place-of-birth.html

Yesterday, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece written by Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines about the awful wildfire season we’ve been experiencing here in Montana and the West...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2017/09/correlation-does-not-equal-causation.html

I’m a political scientist—with an emphasis on the science.  I’ve viewed my role in the public sphere as inserting into debates what political scientists have learned about political proce...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2017/08/our-republic-we-better-start-keeping-it.html

How does one measure influence and the effectiveness of legislators? This is not a trivial question, as voters have to make sense of competing claims during election years when deciding whether ...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2017/06/legsilative-effectiveness-and-influence.html

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren rose Tuesday night to register her objections to Senator Jeff Sessions’ nomination to the Attorney Generalship. In the course of reading a letter from th...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2017/02/daines-was-right-to-shut-down-warren.html

I guess I should be used to folks taking the work that I do out of context. It comes with the territory when you are a scholar engaged in the public realm. Normally, I shrug it off because both ...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2016/09/jesse-laslovich-is-not-socialistand-i.html

I have been watching politics unfold for a long time—first as a young idealist hopeful to make the world a better place, later as a student of history interested in understanding the stories o...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-fathers-day-reflection-on-politics-of.html

On Election Night, both Mike Dennison and I were struck by the vote totals obtained by Terry Nelson, who was running for the Republican nomination for Governor, and Eric Mills, who was running fo...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-did-terry-nelsons-performance-last.html

Vox had an interesting piece today examining the relationship between income and age expectancy. You can read it here . As one might expect, they report that growing income inequality is related...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-true-costs-of-denying-public-access.html

This Sunday, you’ll get to watch Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte face off with me and Mike Dennison in the MTN studios on Face the State. I'll post a link once it has been up...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2016/01/montana-49th-in-wages-not-exactly.html

This evening, Congressman Paul Ryan announced his willingness to serve as Speaker if House Republicans agree to unite behind him. As Congressman Ryan Zinke has already indicated he would support ...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/10/speaker-zinke-redux-still-too-liberal.html

Montana's lone Congressman, Ryan Zinke, has recently been floated as a possible candidate for House Speaker. Apparently, the Congressman is taking the possibility of a campaign for the Speakershi...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/10/congressman-ryan-zinke-too-liberal-to.html

Summer is my favorite time of year in the Gallatin valley, perhaps because it is so fleeting (which makes it ever-so precious). I hike, bike, and run about town in the wonderful sunlight, surrou...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/08/hate-forest-fires-in-montana-then-lets.html

What's more than the number of NFL players at team can have on the field? The number of Republican candidates who have formerly announced their campaign for the presidency in 2016. That's 16 ...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/07/2016-is-there-republican-not-running.html

In case you've been wondering where that Parker guy went, you may want to check out my new blog (with today's inaugural post): Montana Yankees in King Arthur's Court I've been working furio...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-new-adventure-and-new-blog-to.html

Members of Congress go to Washington and establish reputational styles which help explain to constituents the work that they do while on Capitol Hill. There is no one way to “correctly” repre...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/02/is-ryan-zinke-aiming-for-united-states.html

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate passed after extensive debate a bill greenlighting the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The final vote was 62-32 in favor, two votes more than the 60 vote thre...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/01/roll-calls-lies-and-keystone-xl.html

Do campaigns really matter? Can politicians, much as Merida tried to do in the Disney movie Brave, change their "fate" and win elections despite unfavorable fundamentals? Or are they destined to ...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-midterms-unpopular-president-and.html

The folks at the Western Political Science Association are re-branding their blog, the New West. And yesterday, a professor who does field experiments posted a thoughtful reaction to the Stanford...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2014/10/mailergate-considered-response.html

Updated: Edited for grammar and to spell John Adams' name properly. In my role as political analyst for MTN, I sat down on August 14 with Republican House candidate Ryan Zinke and asked him abo...

http://bigskypolitics.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-democratic-republic-requires-trust.html