IRCPPS in the Links: Are Smarter Presidents Better Presidents?

Johns Sides considers this question in the Monkey Cage:

...Simonton measured various qualities of presidents by noting about 300 adjectives used to describe them in their biographies.  He then used a method of data reduction (factor-analysis) to reduce this long list of adjectives to 14 personality traits.  He demonstrates correlations between various of these traits and previous efforts at rating presidents on similar dimensions. Of course, no such effort is beyond reproach.  But Simonton’s is, on its face, a credible effort.  One of the dimensions he identifies is “intellectual brilliance”—precisely what we are discussing regarding Rick Perry.  He finds that a president’s intellectual brilliance is associated with a higher ranking by historians and others, controlling for other factors (years in office, the number of years the president presided over a war, whether the president was assassinated, beset by a scandal, or a war hero)...

IRCPPS in the Links: How Divisive is too Divisive in US Presidential Primaries?

Jonathan Robinson writes in the Monkey Cage:

The “Niggerhead” incident and related mudslinging among the GOP presidential candidates prompts the question: how competitive is too competitive when it comes to primaries? Political scientists have long studied what is called the divisive primary hypothesis, and John wrote a post back in early 2008 (see also the comments) that presented some relevant research. John suggested that divisive primaries had little effect on the nominee’s performance in the general election...

IRCPPS in the Links: Andrew Gelman and Nate Silver on Predicting Presidential Elections

via Gelman's blog and Silver's 538:

Both are responding to articles about Alan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University who offered up a model for predicting winners in his 1992 book 13 Keys to the Presidency, claiming in an interview that Obama is a lock to win in 2012.