Vaguely interesting (Aug 18)

(1)  The quandary of testing political knowledge in online surveys in the age of Google.

(2)  “Ironically, however, the most likely outcome is that despite all the discontent, anger, and disdain for politics and politicians roiling the electorate in 2016, something close to the status quo will prevail: a Democratic president with politics nearly identical to Obama’s facing Republican House and perhaps Senate majorities adamantly opposed to the president but hamstrung by internal divisions over policy and tactics.”

(3)  “More than one-quarter of Americans who voted in 2012 did so in ways other than visiting a polling place on Election Day.”

(4)  “According to the study, if white and black drivers were held to the same standard, there would have been more than 30,000 fewer searches of black drivers (or one-third of searches of black drivers) and 8,000 fewer searches of Hispanic drivers (or more than half of searches of Hispanic drivers) over the six years in the data set.”

(5)  “The point of acknowledging the possibility that economic factors have contributed to Trump’s rise is not to excuse his supporters’ decision to back a hateful demagogue. Rather, the point is to identify the conditions that allow such demagoguery to flourish.”