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Ryan Enos
Ryan Enos is a PhD candidate in political science at UCLA. He studies racial politics, group voting behavior, racial segregation, and how competition influences voters. He is involved in several projects that harness statistics and the power of experiments to understand how individuals make voting decisions. He has spoken widely at national conferences and provided commentary for BBC radio, MSNBC, and CNN. Ryan received his M.A. in political science from UCLA and A.B. in political science and history from UC Berkeley. Prior to coming to UCLA, he taught social studies at a public high school on Chicago's Southside and has been an education and teaching consultant in the Los Angeles Unified School District and in urban schools in London and Manchester in the United Kingdom. He also worked in Washington, DC for the State of California and a House leadership committee.Palin a 9.5, scientifically speaking
September 11, 2008
How good looking is Sarah Palin? I can tell you...exactly.
She is 0.75 on a scale of -1.2 to 1.06.
It seems like nearly every delegate at the Republican Convention last week, following Sarah Palin's introduction to the world, des...
Does it matter if smart people are in the White House?
September 14, 2008
There is supposedly a tension between the President you'd rather drink a beer with or President who is smarter than you. Which would make a better President? This is something we can actually leverage science to test.
Pundits are saying t...
Does IQ really matter for presidents?
September 18, 2008
Last time I wrote about whether the most powerful person in the world should also be smart. This seems to have struck a chord with a number of people. I claimed that when considering presidential job applications, an Ivy League degree might be a g...
Is John McCain afraid to debate?
September 25, 2008
Is John McCain afraid to debate?
Yes, in a manner of speaking.
Well, okay, since it's John McCain, I'll call it a strategic redeployment. McCain has a very good reason for trying to avoid the upcoming debate.
John McCai...
Red states, blue states, and circuses
September 26, 2008
Single? Would you rather be dating in a Red State or a Blue State?
Red staters are more romantic than Blue Staters - they will buy you flowers and take you to a drive-in movie.
Blue staters might take you to a liquor store and, i...
Racism and the mortgage meltdown
October 06, 2008
If you type “racial minorities mortgage meltdown” into Google, you will find a host of stories about how government pressure on banks to provide equal opportunity caused the financial crisis in this country.
This may or may not be true. I...
Will racial attitudes affect the election?
October 13, 2008
Those of us that study race in politics believe that race is always an issue in presidential elections. It just so happens that this year, with an African-American candidate, everyone is suddenly taking notice. Unfortunately, for a topic as compli...
Residential segregation and the race vote
October 15, 2008
As we continue to speculate about whether Obama's race will affect this election, it is instructive to examine a powerful consequence of race relations in the United States: residential segregation. The more segregated a state, the less like...
At some point, undecided becomes uninformed
October 20, 2008
Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama on Sunday will surely continue to draw media attention - at least through Tuesday. It seems unlikely though, that the endorsement will actually make a difference. There is not much political science evide...
Down ballot
October 31, 2008
My sample ballot in the city of Los Angeles tells me that I have dozens of votes to cast on Tuesday. Hmm...I will soon have a PhD in political science and I have no idea what most of these votes are even about. That makes me pretty normal.
With a...
McCain fights on in Nevada
November 02, 2008
Over the weekend, three of my colleagues and I finally broke out of the ivory tower to see the Presidential campaign live and in person.
We drove through the night – and dodged some food-poisoning - in order to arrive by 6:30 AM at an Oba...
Joy, tears and a historic moment
November 05, 2008
You can't measure joy.
In writing for this blog, I have tried to emphasize the scientific. This is my job as a political scientist. Unlike journalists and casual observers, I try to focus on what can be measured, tested, and potentially ...
Where change can occur and where it can't
November 06, 2008
Change has been the focal point of this election. Obama and McCain both used it as a theme. It was almost inevitable that change would be the focal point in a time of such anxiety and dissatisfaction. And that Obama personified a break from the st...
Never has a president come from a constituency of the urban poor
November 07, 2008
We have heard a lot about Barack Obama being from Chicago. This fact came up often, sometimes by his opponents because it conjures images of famously corrupt Chicago machine politics. Sometimes his supporters used it to demonstrate his toughness: ...