Q&A with Solomon Messing of Pew Research Center’s Data Labs
A conversation with the director of the Center’s Data Labs team on their new report on congressional communications and the uses and misuses of “big data.”
Publications
-
-
Partisan Conflict and Congressional Outreach
A new analysis of more than 200,000 press releases and Facebook posts from the official accounts of members of the 114th Congress uses methods from the emerging field of computational social science to quantify how often legislators themselves “go negative” in their outreach to the public.
-
U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries
American students continue to rank around the middle of the pack, and behind many other advanced industrial nations, in international assessments of math, science and reading.
-
Younger Supreme Court appointees stay on the bench longer, but there are plenty of exceptions
Justices who were younger than 45 when they took the oath of office served an average of 21.6 years on the court; those who were ages 45 to 49 served an average of 19.4 years.
-
Obama issued fewer executive orders on average than any president since Cleveland
Obama has issued 35 executive orders per year in office, slightly fewer than the 36 per year in office that George W. Bush issued and the lowest average in 120 years.
-
Trump’s Cabinet will be one of most business-heavy in U.S. history
Assuming all of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are confirmed, he will have one of the most heavily business-oriented Cabinets in U.S. history. Five of the 14 people Trump has nominated to be Cabinet secretaries have spent their entire careers in the business world, with no public office or senior military service on their resumes.
-
Fewer Americans plan to watch inauguration this year than in 2009
About seven-in-ten Republicans and Republican leaners say they will watch the event, versus just 30% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.
-
Blacks and Hispanics face extra challenges in getting home loans
Black and Hispanic mortgage applicants are denied more frequently than whites and Asians, and when they do obtain mortgages they tend to pay higher rates.
-
Federal prison population fell during Obama’s term, reversing recent trend
Obama is on pace to become the first president since Carter to leave the White House with a smaller federal prison population than when he took office.
-
5 facts about the minimum wage
While the idea of raising the minimum wage is broadly popular, efforts to do so at the national level have stalled. We gathered key facts looking at the issue.
