Whisky, contraception, cannabis: many of the Washington State University studies that garnered the most attention from news media in 2023 seemed to involve human pleasures—and their consequences. That focus may say something about the global mood in the first post-pandemic year, but it also speaks to the real-world impact of WSU’s research enterprise. Three initiatives […]
Eighty-one WSU students from the Pullman, Global, Tri-Cities and Vancouver campuses traveled to the Washington State Capitol in Olympia to lobby in front of Washington State’s legislature Monday. The students were led by Collin Bannister, ASWSU legislative affairs director and second-year philosophy and political science pre-law major. After training consistently throughout the semester, the team met with […]
Some local politicians and political experts say the Colorado Supreme Court made a historically unprecedented decision Tuesday in its ruling to ban former president Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot. The United States has not been this polarized since the Civil War, former Republican Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman said Tuesday evening. […]
A team of five researchers from Washington State University and the University of Arkansas surveyed more than 1,200 registered lobbyists in each of the country’s 50 states, asking them questions related to how the legislators in their state generally behaved towards one another. The results show the extent to which state legislators behave in a […]
Travis Ridout is a political scientist who studies political advertising in the United States, and he spent the first six months of 2023 in Australia as a Fulbright scholar. He interviewed campaign staff and political consultants about their use of various campaign techniques in state and federal elections. A key reason Barack Obama won the […]
In an era of rampant misinformation, Washington State University’s public policy institute announced it has launched an initiative to promote election integrity and civic engagement. A national rise in conspiracy theories surrounding elections and threats to poll workers — including suspicious envelopes sent last week to elections offices in at least four Washington counties — […]
Washington State University’s Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service is joining more than three dozen nonpartisan political institutes nationwide in helping promote election integrity and civic understanding as the United States prepares for next year’s presidential races. “The deeply concerning rise in threats of violence and harassment directed at election administrators and […]
Heading into election day this week, school board candidates in Spokane’s surrounding suburbs are raising money not often seen for a local volunteer board. Though they were once sleepy contests where longtime incumbents often sailed to re-election without a challenger, they have become some of the most hotly contested races. In Eastern Washington, such attention […]
WSU’s Travis Ridout and others are working to bring more transparency to the sophisticated, evolving advertising campaigns politicians are doing online With a little more than a year to go until the 2024 general election, voters can expect to see a tsunami of political ads in the coming months. AdImpact, a firm that tracks ad […]
Last August, as she was seeking reelection to a sixth term against a well-funded Republican challenger, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray stopped by an intimate political fundraiser at a swanky Washington, D.C., town house. The host of the event benefiting Murray’s campaign was Gabe Bankman-Fried, the younger brother of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. A few […]