Political Circus

Political Circus presents: Election Season!

Elections are complicated and complex and make us both excited and stressed out. Lucky for us, political scientists have been studying pretty much every aspect of how they work for a long time. In this series, you’ll learn the biggest ideas and most important concepts that actually help us better understand the madness. You’ll learn things like: why is it hard to design a truly fair election? What actually gets people to vote (and why don’t they?), and where do our political beliefs even come from (and, hypothetically, how could we change someone else’s beliefs)? This show is a graduate course in the most influential and classic research on American politics – but much cheaper (financially and psychologically), and (probably) more fun.

Check back here after each show for more information and reading lists!

About the host

Andrea Jones-Rooy holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan, a bunch of low self-esteem from years of doing standup comedy, and a series of physical injuries from decades of being a dancer and circus performer. She wields all these confusingly unrelated things at once in her monthly show at Caveat: Political Circus. When she's not doing that, she's the Director of Undergraduate Studies at NYU and the professor of their flagship course, Data Science for Everyone. She also consults and speaks with organizations about social & data science and previously contributed to FiveThirtyEight as a quantitative researcher. This video sums the whole thing up pretty well.