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China’s Chang’e-6 reveals why solar wind hits the Moon’s two sides differently
China’s Chang’e-6 samples have uncovered a surprising difference between the Moon’s two hemispheres. Solar wind particles penetrated deeper into the far-side soil because Earth’s magnetosphere slows the particles that reach the near side. Noble gases locked inside the lunar regolith preserved evidence of this uneven bombardment. These gases may even help scientists reconstruct the ancient history of Earth’s magnetic shield.
Penguins tied to trade interest in Seattle Kraken center
The Pittsburgh Penguins are being tied in potential trade interest to a young center this offseason. The Athletic’s Josh Yohe reported Monday “two different sources in the Penguins’ organization” told him Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas is “intrigued” by Shane Wright. Yohe noted, however, “the asking price for Wright is, to put it lightly, substantial, […]
Red Sox beats Orioles 6-5 to end Baltimore's 7-game streak
Caleb Durbin hit a tiebreaking homer over the Green Monster with two outs in the eighth inning, and the Boston Red Sox extended the second-longest winning streak in club history to 14 games, beating Baltimore 6-5 to snap the Orioles' season-best win streak at seven.
Michigan extends key tax breaks for billions of dollars of real estate development in Detroit
Real estate developers are breathing a sigh of relief now that state lawmakers have agreed to an extension of two key property tax abatements used for projects around Michigan.
New Super PAC with ties to Boston Mayor Wu draws rebuke from the senator she’s trying to defeat
A new Super PAC that appears to be aligned with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has emerged ahead of the state primary, where two Wu-backed challengers are vying to expel the two senators Wu blames for killing her tax bill.
SEC predicted order of finish for 2026 season
Sooners Wire predict the SEC order of finish for the 2026 football season.
Abacus Health Solutions Named Preferred Vendor of American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration
Abacus Health Solutions, a leader in chronic disease management solutions, has been selected to join the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration Preferred Partner Program (AP3), a trusted network of vetted organizations serving healthcare employers nationwide.
Missouri health facility failed to protect kids from sexual abuse, lawsuit says
Two former residents say they were abused by staff, while a third was assaulted under the facility’s care by a nursing home resident, according to the lawsuit.
49ers News: It’s “best shape of their lives” season
Your daily San Francisco 49ers news for Tuesday, July 21st, 2026
WordPress wp2shell Exploitation Grows as Public Exploit Fuels Mass Scanning
Attackers are exploiting two WordPress flaws as wp2shell, chaining them for unauthenticated RCE and deploying web shells and malicious plugins.
Parasitic infections likely linked to farming practices, not restaurants
Two state experts break down the mysteries around a complicated foodborne infection, Cyclosporiasis, that’s been gaining traction in North Carolina and across the nation.
YOHANNES WOLDEMARIAM - Liberation Gold and the New Politics of Extraction
Can political orders emerging from war build institutions strong enough to ensure that wealth becomes public capacity rather than a new form of domination?
Brooms Out: Brewers Sweep the Marlins
The Marlins travel to Milwaukee to take on the Brewers in a three game series. The Marlins enter the series 52-45 on the season and the Brewers enter the series 59-37 on the season. The Marlins sit in third place in the NL East trailing the first place team by five games and the Brewers…
Where to watch Georgia football at SEC media days
Coach Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs take the stage at SEC media days on Tuesday. Here is how to watch the event live.
Vikings Expected to Release Injury-Riddled TE
The Minnesota Vikings have an interesting situation brewing in their tight end room.The Vikings made some alterations to the contract of starting tight end T.J. Hockenson. The altered deal lowered his $21.3 million cap hit to $16.3 million. This $5 million cap savings also came with a change to the end of the existing contract. […] The post Vikings Expected to Release Injury-Riddled TE appeared first on HEAVY.
Atlanta Braves Make Correct Decision With Ronald Acuna Jr.
The Braves have a plan, and it's the right one.
Aaron Rodgers shares photos of reunion with estranged family
As Aaron Rodgers prepares for his final NFL season with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he has held bonding sessions in the past few weeks this summer. On Monday night, Rodgers posted three photos on social media – one with his mom…
Seattle Mariners Outfielder Exits Game Against Cincinnati Reds
Julio Rodriguez was pulled from Monday's game against the Reds after a throw hit him on the hamstring.
Family stresses need for mental health resources after man's accused of killing his aunt
Columbus family members said they're morning two people - a woman who died and the man accused of killing her."It's just tragedy across the board, you know?,"
Suspect in 2 brutal attacks completed mental health diversion program before arrest, records show
A man accused of carrying out two violent attacks last week had a previous violent charge dismissed after completing a mental health diversion program five months ago, records show.
Mets fall behind Brewers early and never catch up
The offense continued to leave the few runners on base and the pitching allowed four home runs
Brewers Spoil Peralta's Return in Win Over Mets
The Milwaukee Brewers did not provide a fun homecoming for New York Mets right-hander Freddy Peralta.
SPAN Launches Refrigerant Working Group to Advance Science-Based PFAS Policies
The Sustainable PFAS Action Network (SPAN) announced on July 15, 2026, the formation of its Refrigerant Working Group, “a new initiative focused
Should Rangers Pursue Struggling Yankees Reliever?
The New York Yankees aren't traditional sellers, but they have a reliever in Camilo Doval who's been named a fit for the Texas Rangers.
Accel Entertainment expands Nevada c-store gaming footprint
Deal adds some 600 electronic gaming terminals to its Southern Nevada network.
Miami Dolphins Discussion: You Just Knew But Were Wrong Edition
We ask Miami Dolphins fans which past player they beieved would be a star for the team but ultimatly were busts.
‘The Odyssey’ Doesn’t Stop: Epic Bound For Best Monday YTD Stateside With $17M+
EXCLUSIVE: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey continues to dominate the box office, fueling a Monday that’s estimated to be $17.5 million. If those figures stick, that will be the best Monday year-to-dat...
Local food policy panel seeks two new members with healthcare backgrounds
The commission is designed to integrate the public and private sectors into an effort to improve food availability.
AI-generated political ad in St. Charles County raises deepfake questions ahead of primary election
With two weeks until Election Day, a fully AI-generated political ad targeting candidates in the St. Charles County executive race is drawing scrutiny over the role of deepfakes in local elections
William Contreras' Brother Linked to Brewers
A potential deadline blockbuster could see the Milwaukee Brewers bring the Contreras brothers together.
Fake Spa Listings Take Deposits, Then Send Customers to Real Businesses
Customers searching online for a late-night massage around Jackson, Mississippi, are finding spa listings with real street addresses, glowing reviews, and around-the-clock availability. The businesses...
UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans wanted one image to say, “Hey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,” I could provide that image. Here it is: (Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn’t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.) Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen “Top 30” list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June. So if you’re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that’s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week. Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I’ll explain today in the first part of this week’s Streaming Ratings Report—for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June—which is a double issue since I’ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+’s strategy, so it merited its own article. Let’s dive in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Check Out My Interview on UFC 250 at MMA Draw After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here: [ The MMA Draw Newsletter Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future… Read more a day ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold ](https://www.themmadraw.com/p/did-paramount-really-overpay-for?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) I never thought I’d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them. Check the article and their newsletter out! Paramount+ Has Its Best Sporting Event of All Time…But Was It Worth It? Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let’s talk about what we can’t say. Namely, let’s start with the lack of comparisons. First off, I’d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+…but we don’t have the data. This is the first time we’ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary datecdote (saying it had “an average minute audience” of 5 million “views”) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets. We also can’t compare this fight to other fights/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn’t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for TVision and VideoAmp, respectively. (This isn’t Paramount’s fault, but does still suck.) We also can’t compare to UFC’s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don’t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn’t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be apples-to-apples. Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be apples-to-apples. That didn’t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights. Duh. Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That’s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things “Econ 101” that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it’s not! Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially “free” if you’re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They’re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996…which is over $100 in today’s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight! Again, streaming is essentially “free”. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we’re talking about and what tier you’re on. No wonder more people are “watching”. (Plus, Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing also helps these numbers.) UFC Freedom 250 Did Well…But I Have A Lot of Worries So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.) That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then…I can compare this viewership to the NFL: And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I’d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it’s not impressive at all: We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup: Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours. We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of “is this a good investment?” and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs: The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now. Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that’s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they’re leaked to the press.1 I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I’d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren’t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite/pet show, and that just doesn’t make sense. The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount’s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport. UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar—say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon—but they’ll be fewer and far between. Was This Deal Worth It? All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it? In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount’s own data is to be believed. And it’s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller. And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA’s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it’s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn’t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad. But two overpays don’t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old cliché about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much. Share 1 I would love regular reports on subscriber additions by programs, but as is, it’s mostly leaked or rumored in haphazard ways.
Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian goods, citing disputes over autos, alcohol and cheese
The move, announced Monday, could unleash a new wave of economic chaos, with risks of higher inflation and further fraying of relations between two nations that had been closely woven together before Trump’s return to the White House.
Two deer cause thousands in damages at Peachtree City businesses
A wild morning unfolded in Peachtree City on Monday when two deer crashed through the windows of two separate businesses simultaneously.
Can 'One Man' Carry Seahawks' Super Bowl Repeat Hopes?
Last season, it was the Jaxon Smith-Njigba show on offense, but can he do it again?
Everything New in iOS 27 Beta 4
Apple is continuing to tweak iOS 27 ahead of its September launch, and the fourth developer beta is available as of today. There are fewer changes than in prior betas, but Apple is still adding new features. TV App In the Settings section of the Apple TV app, there's a new Automatic Downloads toggle. Turning it on will automatically download the next two episodes of shows you start in Continue Watching. They'll be deleted when you finish the episodes.
ESPN names two Texans players to 2026 All-Backup Team
The Houston Texans seem to have one of the more complete rosters entering 2026 among AFC contenders, so with a total staff, who would make the all-backup team this season?
White House rushes to further secure Trump’s new Air Force One — but he plans to keep flying it domestically
The White House is working to quickly upgrade the Qatari-donated jet that has newly started serving as Air Force One, a development that comes after administration officials internally discussed the need for President Donald Trump to avoid flying it in high-threat areas, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Philadelphia rug maker turns handcrafted designs into global business
A Philadelphia rug maker turned handcrafted designs into a global business.
iPhone 18 Pro’s new A20 chip rumored to bring two major upgrades
The A20 Pro chip for this fall’s iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra sounds like it could be extra special. Here are its two big rumored upgrades.
CAITLIN CLARK, PAIGE BUECKERS, AND OLIVIA MILES HEADLINE USA SPORTS’ THREE WNBA GAMES ON USA NETWORK THIS WEEK, BEGINNING TONIGHT WITH LYNX-STORM AT 10 P.M. ET
A global media and technology company.
Miami Heat become new favorites in LeBron James sweepstakes
Could LeBron James really be headed back to Miami? The idea isn’t as far-fetched as some would like to believe, especially when you consider the talent on the roster, familiarity with the coaching staff, and let’s face it, who wouldn’t…
Trump and Burnham: Can the two leaders work together?
The BBC's Sarah Smith looks at how the new UK prime minister will manage his most crucial, and perhaps the trickiest, international relationship.
Apple Watch Series 12 Coming in September With These New Features
With the Apple Watch Series 12 now just two months away, we have created a recap of rumored new features, with some more likely than others. Below, we have outlined everything rumored so far for the Apple Watch Series 12. More Likely New Chip After One-Year Hiatus While the Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple Watch SE 3 all contain the same S10 chip as the previous year's models, leaked Apple code showed the Apple Watch Series 12 will get a new chip.
DeSean Bishop discusses Tennessee's offensive potential in 2026
Running back DeSean Bishop discusses Tennessee's offense at SEC media days.
Dodgers make first trade deadline move, pick up injured reliever Seth Halvorsen from Rockies
New England Patriots Named 'Logical Landing Spot' for Jadeveon Clowney
Could the New England Patriots sign Jadeveon Clowney?
Monkeys are surprisingly good at geometry
They may understand shapes as well as your toddler.
Texas football’s new indoor practice facility near completion
Texas football has a lot to look forward to. Not only does the program have one to two additional years of Arch Manning working under center, head coach Steve Sarkisian is also locked in for the long-haul thanks to a contract that likely keeps him at Texas until at least 2031. And for the next […]
I Wasn't Actually Trying to Fix Tommy Fleetwood's Hat
The hats were intentionally ridiculous. The conversation they started wasn't.
New Eugene burglary tied to ring targeting Asian business owners
Eugene police are investigating another burglary that they said is tied to a crime ring targeting Asian business owners.
Why The Widening Gender Pay Gap Is Becoming A Business Risk
The gender pay gap widened two years in a row for the first time ever. Here's why it's a business risk and what HR leaders should do about it now.
Apple Seeds Fourth iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 Betas to Developers
Apple today seeded the fourth betas of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 to developers for testing purposes, with the update coming two weeks after Apple released the third betas. Registered developers can download the betas from the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad by going to the General section and selecting Software Update. iOS 27 introduces Apple's smarter version of Siri, Siri AI.
Beer Nut: Two local pilsners hit the spot for summer
Local drinks from Brick & Feather Brewery and Little Willow Brewing Co. help mark what columnist George Lenker calls "the summer of pilsner."
3 storylines for Alabama football entering 2026 SEC media days
Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer is likely to speak on a variety of topics at 2026 SEC media days, most notably the Crimson Tide's quarterback battle.
Mets rumors: Freddy Peralta trade potential gets concerning update
The New York Mets' pursuit of a trade partner for pitcher Freddy Peralta is encountering a significant roadblock.
Trump ally to run for two offices at same time, including Lindsey Graham’s seat
The South Carolina Election Commission clarified last week that candidates can appear on general election ballots for multiple offices.
Disability inclusion in health systems and emergency management remains uneven across Latin America and the Caribbean, new report finds
Washington, D.C., July 20, 2026 (PAHO) — Despite progress in laws, policies and programs aimed at advancing the rights of persons with disabilities across Latin America and the Caribbean, many continue to face barriers to accessing health services and emergency care on an equal basis with others, according to a new report released by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Inter-American Network of Persons with Disabilities and Their Families (RIADIS).
One prediction for Cowboys training camp, DL edition
This is the year of Donovan Ezeiruaku.
You can still get into Morgan Wallen’s Michigan Stadium shows for under $130
The country star brings his "Still the Problem Tour" to Ann Arbor for two nights on July 24 and 25.
Yankees must consider trading these 5 players after Dodgers series
New York must have a busy trade deadline to keep their World Series hopes alive.
Pirates' Esmerlyn Valdez continues strong start to big league career
Esmerlyn Valdez’s strong start to his major league career is showing no signs of slowing down.
Hackers are exploiting recently patched WordPress bugs, putting millions of websites at risk
Two critical security flaws in WordPress’ software have given hackers the chance to remotely take over tens of millions of websites, according to an estimate by a cybersecurity researcher.
City of Buffalo exploring ways to curb chaos in Chippewa Entertainment District
This comes after Buffalo Police responded to reports of violent altercations on Chippewa Street two weekends ago.
The latest and biggest Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 image leak comes two days before launch
Samsung has a scheduled event set for July 22, which is where the company is expected to announce the Galaxy...
Four TWICE Members Reportedly Exploring Departures From JYP Entertainment
Jihyo, Tzuyu, Chaeyoung, and Jeongyeon are all said to be weighing individual agency moves while staying committed to TWICE group activities under a reported "separate but together" model.
ESPN re-signs Tim Tebow to multiyear extension
One of the most recognizable college football analysts on ESPN airwaves will remain with the Worldwide Leader for the foreseeable future. Former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow has signed a multiyear extension with ESPN to continue serving as a college football analyst on SEC Network, the network announced on Monday. Tebow will remain one of…
Android Auto is finally getting the Google Maps feature drivers have wanted
Google Maps on Android Auto gets a speedometer two years too late.
ICYMI: See a teaser for Ariana Grande's new video
At the end of her concert Saturday night in Brooklyn, New York, Ariana Grande premiered the trailer for the video for "petal," the title track of her new album. She later shared the teaser on Instagra...
Two Broncos Linemen Named To ‘All-Backup’ Team
The Denver Broncos have plenty of depth, and these two linemen were recognized for it in a different way.
Pair of Dolphins make ESPN's All-Backup Team for 2026
The Dolphins have some veterans who are entering training camp as backups but could start if they were on another team or if the starter went down.
Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process
[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
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