Ozean Political Blog
A political blog about digital media, data, research and consulting.
Blog Challenge: How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons and become the party of the majority again?
This is a question that needs to be broken apart. How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons? Why would we? A celebrity or popular business person begins with one or two the most valuable things in politics - name ID & money....
Blog Challenge: Regulators and Authority
The question asked is "What will it take for federal regulators to actually exercise their authority? (e.g. DoJ & Antitrust, SEC & insider trading, EPA & fracking/pipelines)?" Ahhhh, regulators. One the most boring, yet critical functions of...
Blog Challenge: How do you change someone’s mind in politics?
This one is basically asking me to distill a seemingly lifetime of work into a blog post. Let’s say upfront that I am going to speaking in sweeping generalities. Human behavior is complicated, nuanced, messy, and at times unpredictable. Attitudes or Behavior I...
Blog Challenge: Religion in America
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of...
Blog Challenge: What is the most important messaging challenging facing Republicans? Same for Democrats?
I like this question because it forces you to think about Republicans and Democrats in context. It is a question that deserves a lot more time than I have today, because of FuBball! (GO USMNT!) While I will write a more detailed post for each party on messaging...
Political Behavior and Schools of Fish
I was on my walk today, and a decent metaphor explaining political behavior came to the surface: a school of fish. I think I was imagining myself standing in a cold stream being mocked by trout, but that morphed into a school of fish. The underlying psychology of...
Why are politicians so afraid to vote for what’s best for our country as opposed to what their party wants?
I think some it is explained by sincere differences in policies. “Best for the country” is up for true debate. There are those that truly believe ‘an unregulated militia’ is ‘best for the country’. Others believe a ban on war-like weapons is...
What is the solution to extreme divisiveness?
Oh, now you have stepped into one the greatest modern debates in political science. Abramowitz versus Fiorina. Sorting versus polarization - and now we have calcification. Let’s get ready to rumble!!!! In broad strokes, Morris Fiorina has...
Blog Challenge: What do you do?
My father and I have started meeting for breakfast once a week. No agenda, just eggs and chatter. We were chewing the fat about it being busy at work, and he looks at me and asks “What is it that you guys do?” That hit hard – my own father doesn’t know what we do....
Blog Challenge: Will there ever be a “multi-party” system (i.e. 5-10 parties) or are we stuck here?
Will there ever be a "multi-party" system (i.e. 5-10 parties) or are we stuck here? Short answer, we are stuck – at least for the foreseeable future. There are roughly three types of party government – single parties (China), two party (USA), and multi-party,...
Best Books of 2022 for political practitioners
Introduction So begins the 30 day blogging challenge. My thought is to start with an easy one and ease into it. A graduate student asked me what book I read this year that I would recommend to practitioners of political affairs. Seeing that I have seeming spent a...
Alachua County and Single Member Districts
Overview For the most part, voters in Alachua County performed about as one would expect. Of all campaigns that were partisan and county wide, Democrats averaged 58% and Republicans averaged 42% of the vote. This is in-line with historic returns going back to 1996....