Twitter Poll: Before, During, and After the First 2016 Presidential Debate Thanks to those who participated in our Twitter poll conducted before, during, and after the first 2016 US Presidential Debate on 26 September 2016. Working with Jay Blumler and his colleagues at Leeds University, who studied the leadership debates in the UK*, we sought to investigate citizens’ expectations of the US Presidential debate and the debaters and to what extent they were or were not met by their experience of watching the debate. While expectations were low, they might have been met or exceeded from the perspective of those […]
Well, no, actually there isn’t (at least not yet). But there are some intriguing and potentially important efforts underway to give democracy a much needed boost via Internet-based applications and platforms. It’s certainly not hard to make the case that some help is needed, and the sooner the better. A short and incomplete list of problems plaguing the U.S. political system includes campaign finance reform, gerrymandering, the Senate filibuster, voter disenfranchisement, and the apathy and non-voters all this engenders. Speaking of the latter, one data point recently brought to my attention is that only 10% of California’s eligible voters aged […]
