Do Protests Affect Elections?

In the last few weeks, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and many other black people at the hands of police have driven nationwide protests. To be true to the mission of our show, we want to look at this complex moment through the lens of political science research.

There’s almost no paper getting more attention at this moment than Princeton Assistant Professor Omar Wasow’s “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting”. We decided to devote this entire episode to our interview with Omar during which we discuss the substance of the paper, what it can and can’t say about our current moment, and the controversies that have surrounded it.

Paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/agenda-seeding-how-1960s-black-protests-moved-elites-public-opinion-and-voting/136610C8C040C3D92F041BB2EFC3034C