While you can’t prove causation, the study demonstrates correlation and eliminates other possible causations. Inflammatory Political Campaigns and Racial Bias in Policing by Pauline A. Grosjean, Federico Masera, Hasin Yousaf :: SSRN Abstract Can political rallies affect the behavior of law enforcement officers towards racial minorities? Using data from 35 million traffic stops, we show that the probability that a stopped driver is Black increases by 5.74% after a Trump rally during his 2015-2016 campaign. The effect is immediate, specific to Black drivers, lasts for up to 60 days after the rally, and is not justified by changes in driver behavior. The effects are significantly larger among police officers who were initially more stringent towards Black compared to White drivers, in areas that score higher on present-day measures of racial resentment, those that experienced more racial violence during the Jim Crow era, and in former slave-holding counties. Mentions of racial issues in Trump speeches, whether explicit or implicit, exacerbate the effect of a Trump rally among officers who were initially more stringent towards Black drivers.
Yes, if all of your references are skewed or lean one way only, then I’m sure that the overall study will lean that way too.
This is a slight deviation from the op, but I'm watching storm coverage yesterday, I was compelled to watch a lot of political ads. A lot of them are placed in advance in the news, because that makes sense to reach likely voters. And I rarely watch television news and would not except for the storm. Obviously some were specific to the race or candidate. But in terms of broad themes, Republicans are all anti-abortion with no rape and incest exception, and Democrats are too friendly with gay people and too forgiving of illegal immigrants
