Associate Professor of Economics, @MTSU. member of @PERIatMTSU. Formerly @colgateECON. I study economic history, the postal service, and weird aspects of voting
Nashville, TN
Joined April 2023
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FWIW, I've never been contacted by the PERI funders. I probably have more freedom than if I was pidgeon-holed within a specific field of study
The only way I feel that the "ideology" of the PERI has affected my work is it helped fascilitate research in criminal justice reform
@ErikSherman, this is one of the reading groups I did. I asked a socialist professor across campus to choose the socialist readings, but he refused to work with me. Next time, I will likely use @PhilWMagness's The Best of Marx, which offers an excellent and affordable compilation of his most important economic writings (I assign it in my history of economic thought courses). My favorite pairing ever was a reading group with Why Not Socialism? (Cohen) and Why Not Capitalism? (Brennan).
Of course, if he is willing to provide the funds, I'd be happy to have @khrachvik choose whatever selections he wants from Marx as long as I get to choose the contrasting readings. Preferably, he could pay to bring in a Marxist academic to serve as the discussion leader.
Let's put these ideas side by side by giving each a fair presentation.
This is strong evidence AGAINST fraud. Hacking 2,500 voting systems is impossible. Here's what fraud would look like:
Republicans lose, but it's due to an anamolous surge that's JUST big enough in the fewest counties possible
This is just voter opinion shifting
I keep seeing this agrument, but it ignores the fact that Democrats already have 214 seats.
In 94, Republicans had 176 seats
in 10, they had 178.
Democrats will end up with more seats than Republicans had after either wave
A Democrat is going to win Mississippi, against an incumbent with no scandals, with a spoiler candidate getting 2%. Truly a tail event
This suggests that most of the people who voted for the fake Dan Sullivan knew he was fake and were having fun with their votes.
That's more plausible than someone wanting to vote for the real Sullivan, not know which one is which, and putting Peltola 2nd
NYT published an analysis showing this! Peltola gets a plurality of the decoy’s second choices and even a decent number of Heikes’
Of the Peltola second-rankings, an overwhelming majority go to the decoy
nytimes.com/2026/11/05/us/al…
You can say it whenver you want, because it's still not true. RR Commissioners Christi Craddick and Wayne Christian, and 5 elected Supreme Court positions are held by Republicans. He knows this
Cruz is a smart guy, but I just don't know why he just lies like this
This is why the recent gerrymandering scheme will be dead, dead, dead. Indiana Republicans wisely passed on it. They lost 1 seat while NC is seeing 6 flips.
Now back to the old gerrymandering method of packing all minority party voters into as few districts as possible
This is insane! Here is a map of yesterday’s Indiana House results if they were drawn under the attempted Republican gerrymander map from last Fall. Thank you to @Vulst3 for breaking down the data to make this map. The gerrymander could’ve netted us a 9-0 or 8-1 map potentially!
This is such a unique political moment, because the GOP-drawn Gerrymander helped DEMs. So you have a party that just benefited from gerrymandering pushing to end the practice. If these were DEM-drawn maps, I doubt the same motivation would be there
The empirical literature has found that term-limited officials, especially in developing countries, engage in more corruption, as they face no re-election pressure
I think this is important context for understanding Trump's last 2 years, and his next two years
Election losses always lead to panicked soul-searching. I bet the GOP is really worried about their bench. The 3 top 2028 options are Vance, Rubio, DeSantis. All three really struggle in national campaigns. Though of the three, DeSantis is probably the one who can turn it around
To all those saying it was just Iran and tarrifs that cost the GOP the election, consider:
The 3 districts that swung the hardest to the left are AZ3 (47 pt swing), TX28 (46 pts), TX15 (42 pts)
They are, on averge, 73% Hispanic
I am very curious what this does to the Trump sycophant ecosystem. The right has been a strange place for a while, and I think we are going to see many people scrambling to rebrand and find their new lane
Steven Sprick Schuster retweeted
Mid-decade gerrymandering is a terrible, norm-busting precedent, and I welcome the karma that resulted.
Things looking very dire for House Rs. They’ve lost three of the four of the House seats in FL that Rs gerrymandered to block Dem path to majority. The fourth, Dem Rep. Soto’s race, is in a dog fight with Soto up by about 0.5 point with 96 percent in.
Spartz is also trailing
cnn.com/2026/11/03/politics/…
Steven Sprick Schuster retweeted
Republicans seem to have gerrymandered themselves out of seats by creating close districts that they are losing in a blue wave. If this result holds, the poetic justice will live in infamy forever.
Steven Sprick Schuster retweeted
Ahem.
I've long been saying that the GOP jerrymander of Nashville was an own goal. You don't gerrymander to create purple districts. This might happen. Now the other two seats (barely held by the GOP) will have to become more moderate if they want to keep them
nashvillebanner.com/2026/11/…
Candidate quality doesn't often matter in elections. This cycle is showing that it does in close races. Candidate quality is keeping DEMs alive in AK, REPs alive in ME while dragging them down in SC. If El-Sayed is successfully selling progressive stances in a purple state
Ok as promised, my predictions for margins:
🔵 GA: Ossoff +11
🔵 NC: Cooper +11
🔵 NH: Pappas +8
🔵 MN: Flanagan +7
🔵 MI: El-Sayed +6
🔵 OH: Brown +4
🔵 AK: Peltola +3 (final round of RCV)
🔵 TX: Talarico +3
🔵 ME: Jackson +3
🔵 KS: Hamilton +1
🔴 IA: Hinson +0.5
🔴 SC: Graham +3
🔴 NE: Ricketts +5
🔴 MS: Hyde-Smith +6
🔴 FL: Moody +7
🔴 LA: Letlow +7