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ralphscott.bsky.social
Ralph Scott
@ralphscott.bsky.social
2.3K followers 1.7K following 650 posts
Leverhulme research fellow in politics at Bristol uni. ITV psephologist.

Investigating the effect of education on political attitudes and behaviour, among other things.

ralphscott.co.uk
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ralphscott.bsky.social
Ralph Scott @ralphscott.bsky.social · Jul 14
📣 NEW PAPER ALERT! 🚨

"School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support"

Just published in @wepsocial.bsky.social with @nspmartin.bsky.social and @rolandkappe.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

🧵👇
Article abstract, which says: The educational cleavage is restructuring electoral competition in many democracies, yet there has been insufficient attention on how variation in educational content affects this. In order to address this, this article combines English administrative school records with a unique representative panel of adolescents to estimate the within-individual effect of studying different subjects at school on political party preference. This analysis finds that studying arts and humanities subjects leads to greater support for socially liberal parties, whilst studying business and economics increases support for economically right-wing parties. Students who study technical subjects become more likely to support socially conservative and economically right-wing parties. These relationships between particular subjects and party support also persist into adulthood. As such, this article provides new evidence on the importance of subjects taken in secondary school for political socialisation, during the impressionable years of adolescence.
ralphscott.bsky.social
This does feel like a dangerous new low for Farage and Goodwin
samfr.bsky.social Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 10h
Another triumph for Goodwin's campaign. No doubt he'll continue to pretend he cares about anti-semitism.

www.thejc.com/news/uk/matt...
February 17, 2026 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
samfr.bsky.social
Another triumph for Goodwin's campaign. No doubt he'll continue to pretend he cares about anti-semitism.

www.thejc.com/news/uk/matt...
February 17, 2026 at 2:52 PM
ralphscott.bsky.social
50% target for skilled trades is proper galaxy brain stuff, incredible scenes
peterwalker99.bsky.social Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 13h
Braverman says social transitioning would be banned in all schools, "no ifs or buts". She says the 50% target for university education would be replaced with a 50% target for kids going into trades like electricians and plumbing. As ever, I'll believe it when it's the MPs' own kids who do this.
February 17, 2026 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
stephenkb.bsky.social
Whereas this metaphor I think is exactly right. (Right down to we do on occasion close a park or a space to children in order to give us more time to fix the space)
naomialderman.bsky.social Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social · 1d
and you won't be able to see that that's what's happening.

the park should not be full of broken glass.
you can't just ban children from the play area and call the problem solved.
1) they now have no play area
2) everyone else is still getting cut to ribbons
February 16, 2026 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
jburnmurdoch.ft.com
Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding:

Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere.

samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...
February 16, 2026 at 12:14 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
lottehargrave.bsky.social
Check out the post below by @philipjcowley.bsky.social, who’s written a great summary of ongoing work by me, @hannahbunting.bsky.social, @cerifowler.bsky.social, @jess-smith.bsky.social, and @annasanders.bsky.social on gender gaps in “don’t know” responses👇
February 16, 2026 at 9:38 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
gabrielzucman.bsky.social
The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering

The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory
February 15, 2026 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
cjterry.bsky.social
But I thought Matt would debate anyone, anytime, any place 🤔
We’ve also requested a sit down interview with Matt Goodwin, during which we would have raised these points in person, but have yet to hear back.
February 15, 2026 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
jwsal.bsky.social
Total terrorism offences in the UK: 2002-2025. public.flourish.studio/visualisatio...
Total terrorism arrests in the UK
A Flourish data visualization by John Lubbock
public.flourish.studio
February 13, 2026 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
fintwitter.bsky.social
UK DECISION TO BAN PALESTINE ACTION AS TERROR GROUP UNLAWFUL, LONDON'S HIGH COURT RULES
February 13, 2026 at 10:05 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
tobyn.bsky.social
Where do parents find the time to parent? Less sleep, work and screens.

Amazing chart feat. in @alphaville.ft.com Further Reading.

homeeconomics.substack.com/p/where-do-p...
Difference in time use between working parents of small children vs working non parents. Areas above zero are activities parents do more of; areas below are what they give up. Compiled by analyzing the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey. Analysis and chart by Aziz Sunderji, https://homeeconomics.substack.com/p/where-do-parents-find-the-time
February 13, 2026 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
nathankalmoe.bsky.social
I'm still SHOCKED by the obscene rise in billionaire election spending since Citizens United in the NYT piece, despite already knowing that election corruption w/ $ was profound. (Recall that BCRA fought dangerous campaign $ in *2002*)

The article data didn't have a graph, so I made one to show it.
Chart showing billionaire election spending from 2000 thru 2024. 2000: $18 million 2004: $13 million 2008 $16 million 2010: Citizens United supreme court case 2012: $231 million 2016: $682 million 2020: $1.2 billion 2024: $2.6 billion
February 12, 2026 at 2:26 PM
ralphscott.bsky.social
Ok now I get tiktok
wafflecut.bsky.social Waffle 🧇 @wafflecut.bsky.social · 6d
“I’ve reviewed over 50 sticky toffee puddings” is an incredibly powerful way to begin a video
February 11, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
ryancbriggs.net
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
February 11, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
lucienheurtier.bsky.social
On the difficult situation of young UK researchers 🧪🔭

Thanks @fionamcintyre.bsky.social and @isaacbarbosa1.bsky.social for the interview & excellent article.

#stfc #ukri #saveSTFC @ukri.org

UKRI funding changes ‘pushing junior researchers abroad’ www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
UKRI funding changes ‘pushing junior researchers abroad’ - Research Professional News
Disruptions to core funding streams raise fears for a “generation” of early career researchers
www.researchprofessionalnews.com
February 11, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
helenbarrett.bsky.social
Martin Wolf is very clear on trad wives:
above replacement. Where I do agree is that the reactionary right's idea that the answer is to put women back into the kitchen and nursery is wicked and stupid. Only the Taliban thinks it is clever to deprive women of education. Moreover, if even the Chinese Communist Party cannot force women to have children they do not want, nobody can. What is more, only an imbecile would suppose you would get more children by arguing that women treat their husbands as their masters, yet again. We would get still fewer marriages and fewer children.
February 11, 2026 at 6:30 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
benansell.bsky.social
If Starmer wants a reset - and not yet another U-turn when the parliamentary party balks at a policy - here is his chance.
bm.wel.by Benjamin Welby @bm.wel.by · 7d
300,000 children face 10-year wait for settled status under UK plans, says IPPR

The consultation closes on Thursday. What is being proposed is dreadful. Can I encourage you to engage with the consultation and put your dissent on record?
February 10, 2026 at 7:23 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
mattblackwell.bsky.social
One of the biggest wastes of academic productivity is the variation in page/word limits across journals in the same/related fields.
February 9, 2026 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
owenwntr.bsky.social
The untold story that is told constantly and isn’t really true
February 7, 2026 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
dsquareddigest.bsky.social
in which, I try to remember why so many IT types hate Excel so much and what it might mean for the future of AI backofmind.substack.com/p/snobby-abo...
snobby about excel
AI and the end user effect
backofmind.substack.com
February 6, 2026 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
jim.londoncentric.media
so a month ago I was reading @markpackuk.bsky.social’s speech on Twitter in the lords and there were obviously fake stats the government used to justify Twitter’s UK reach and its continued importance to British audiences

Rob has now found the source of the data was… Twitter
robminto.bsky.social Rob Minto @robminto.bsky.social · 11d
UPDATE: I've had a response from the Cabinet Office!
"the statistics cited ‘19.2 million British citizens registered with X and 10.8 million families using the platform’ were provided by OmniGov, the government's media buying agency, who received this data directly from X itself."
provided by OmniGov, the government's media buying agency, who received this data directly from X itself.
February 6, 2026 at 9:50 AM
ralphscott.bsky.social
I remember when Orban started doing this in the UK about 10 years ago. Far right grifting just became yet more profitable!
oldtrotter.bsky.social David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 11d
Remember the controversy when Obama was accused of intervening in UK politics? This is the current US government openly seeking to undermine liberal democracy in Europe.
The US state department is set to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities across Europe to disseminate Washington's policy positions and challenge perceived threats to free speech. Senior state department official Sarah Rogers travelled to Europe in December to meet influential rightwing think-tanks and has spoken to key figures in Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK party about deploying a pot of money to spread American values, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The funding was linked to the 250th anniversary celebrations of US independence later this year, the people said. It is likely to cause consternation among Washington's allies, particularly centre-left governments such as Labour in the UK, which will be concerned that US government funds are being deployed to undermine their policies.
February 6, 2026 at 7:30 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
professormusgrave.bsky.social
Killing the CIA World Factbook might seem like small potatoes, but it was a touchstone of curated facts in a sea of disinformation.
February 5, 2026 at 5:58 AM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
drhannahwhite.bsky.social
Delighted that we at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk are once again supporting this annual online event aimed at reaching people currently under-represented in the think tank sector… please share with your networks…
February 4, 2026 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Ralph Scott
youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com
this is vicious and correct www.economist.com/britain/2026...
February 5, 2026 at 9:35 AM