vanessabaird.bsky.social
vanessabaird.bsky.social
vanessabaird.bsky.social
@vanessabaird.bsky.social
Mom to three sets of twins (four kitties); political science professor at CU, Boulder.
Ask me about TILES, my teaching technique, some clean data sources, and why Dobbs is worse than we think.

https://vbaird.com
Overheard someone (apparently not on purpose) mispronouncing Hegseth's name as HegsDeath.

I thought I would pass it on.
December 2, 2025 at 4:14 PM
“Guide”
Today is a good day to remind you that none of the classic vote studies thought very highly of women's political competence.
November 26, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
If this conversation intrigues you, check out Will's book from @uncpress.bsky.social:
Jesus Springs
In the years after World War II, American evangelicals flocked to the once-sleepy mountain town of Colorado Springs. Drawn by cheap property, beautiful scene...
uncpress.org
November 25, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
This is the first story I ever did that got more than a million views
November 19, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
My live interview with Ian Silverii about how Democrats should be running and what kinds of candidates they should be finding begins in just a few hours!
LIVE SOON: Live with political consultant Ian Silverii
Starting Nov 17 at 5:15 PM EST
open.substack.com
November 17, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Shout out to CU media historian prof whose book was discussed by John Oliver.

Congratulations!
Had a great time consulting with the “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” team over the past couple months, and they kindly gave my book a shoutout during the episode.
November 17, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Consultants for Democratic candidates who argue for moderation: fire them. They were likely educated in the 1990s and believe the spatial model as fact, despite two decades of evidence to the contrary.
got to post-Zohran blog @thecut.com — multiple election outcomes on Tuesday showed that refusing to fold on trans people, migrants, Muslims, and marginalized communities while pushing kitchen table issues is a winning strategy. the pundit class’s “Decision to Win”-style arguments can be put to bed
Welcome to Woke 2.0
Democrats won by running on kitchen-table issues and accepting or embracing trans people and immigrants.
www.thecut.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
Looking to hire a political science PhD? UH has some great candidates on the job market right now. Over the next few days we’ll be highlighting them.

Today’s candidate is Grace Cho, a political theorist who studies religion and secularization.
October 8, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
If you've ever wanted to learn how to recode variables using xlookup in Google Sheets/Excel I have a webpage for you now: kevinreuning.com/resources/re...
Recoding Data with xlookup – Kevin Reuning
kevinreuning.com
October 7, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
Why most polls overstate support for political violence
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/most-polls...
Why most polls overstate support for political violence
Misperceptions about the popularity of violence increase public support for it — but you can help change that.
www.gelliottmorris.com
October 7, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Anyone who teaches methods should use this as a case study in obvious confounding. Viruses, fevers, and of course wealth are likely causes of Tylenol use AND have been shown to be associated with autism.
People don't take Tylenol to cause or prevent Autism. They take Tylenol to treat ailments and those ailments are well-established causes of adverse pregnancy outcomes.
npr.org NPR @npr.org · Sep 24
The science on Tylenol and autism isn't clear, despite President Trump's claims. Here's what parents need to know to make their own decisions about acetaminophen.
September 24, 2025 at 4:45 PM
You know what would be great?

If we had a legal principle that prevented lawmakers from targeting a discrete and insular community for disfavor.
If Trump bans trans people from owning guns, it will be fascinating to watch the Supreme Court uphold that law or order, given their recent 2nd Amendment rulings.

Hopefully the trans community will keep this in mind when voting, even if they don't like all the Democrat's positions.
September 4, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Not good at internal consistency.
One of the biggest funding challenges when it comes to caring for the mentally ill in hospitals and institutions is… <<drumroll>> Medicaid.

Which he just gutted…
President Trump wants to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize people experiencing homelessness for longer periods of time.

The executive order says shifting those with mental illness and addiction into long-term institutions will restore public order.
July 24, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Maybe they believed the Supreme Court when it said that discrimination against transgender people was sex discrimination. Non-transgender children are free to get these treatments, so this is NOT an issue of safety.
This is like the third story put out by the New York Times since Skrmetti rubbing transgender people's faces in it.

The paper got the ruling it asked for.
June 19, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Wouldn’t this require overturning Romer v Evans?
Today, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing Trump's anti-transgender military ban.

Under it, Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth's Pentagon almost certainly will quickly begin kicking trans people out of the military for no reason other than their being transgender.
Supreme Court allows Trump's anti-trans military ban to go into effect
The order, with no reasoning, effectively overturns two district court rulings blocking the ban. The liberal justices objected.
www.lawdork.com
May 7, 2025 at 1:08 AM
Reposted by vanessabaird.bsky.social
The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants.

www.spencer.org/grant_types/...
Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program
In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...
www.spencer.org
May 2, 2025 at 9:07 PM
In which Trump learns that the American has no idea what he said during the campaign.
April 30, 2025 at 12:52 AM
Two dudes, seeming bro-dudes, are sitting in the booth in front of me, non-ironically complaining about misogyny.

From what I can tell, this is not because their wife or girlfriend had experienced something negative.

They are actually complaining about misogyny in society.
April 30, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Can we for the love of humanity stop calling it deportation.

When we deport people, they are free when they arrive.

When we kidnap people who haven’t committed crimes and send them to forced labor for life, this is a trans-hemispheric slave trade.
April 21, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Cardinals’ thermostatic response may work just like the public as thermostat
Heaven forfend (literally): “Hungarian Cardinal Péter Erdő, appears to be a likely candidate [to become Pope]. Erdő was mentioned as a potential successor in 2013 and is praised by Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.”

www.politico.eu/article/pope...
Who are the favorites to succeed Pope Francis?
Will the Italians get the papacy back? Or is it time for the first African in the modern era? A conclave will gather in the weeks ahead to elect a new pontiff.
www.politico.eu
April 21, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Retaliation against [any one who criticizes current scientific practices but especially against grad students, non senior faculty] “is antisocial and scientific misconduct.” Platt taught us to be disputatious without being jerks. We ought to hold disputatiousness in the highest regard.
“Those who hold power in a discipline benefit from the idea that one must wait to engage in serious critique. Graduate students and those otherwise new to the field often have the ability to see things as they truly are.”
The Time for Criticism is Now — by @syeducation.bsky.social

This is about being critical about poor research, but I take the message more broadly as well that sometimes you've got to be very direct about what you believe.
April 19, 2025 at 1:05 PM
In case you have people in your timeline posting the number of vaccines we take and it's "effect" on autism, I made a response, using real data.
April 19, 2025 at 1:06 AM