Little is known about his policy preferences.

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"It's especially common in primary races in which the candidates are unlikely to be easily distinguishable on the basis of their policy preferences, " said Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy at Fordham University.

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Vagueness about his housing policy preferences is a good political tactic for Romney because it allows him to criticize the president without having to either espouse more conservative positions, which will alienate some voters, or champion centrist positions, which will make criticism of the president appear hypocritical.

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It turns out that what you know may be a better predictor than who you are when it comes to policy and political preferences.

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Still, in my book, political preferences and policy prescriptions far outweigh gender in terms of importance.

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While the wooden Mr Gore chokes on the minutiae of policy, the languid Mr Bush sketches in broad preferences.

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These events are capable of bearing a different interpretation: that of a series of reactions, in which a skeleton foreign-policy crew responds to happenstance events in a way that reveals preferences, but stops short of laying out a clear new agenda.

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The waivers could be organized around the Republican-friendly idea of federalism through which states serve as policy laboratories to test different approaches to common problems tailored to unique state needs and preferences.

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Investors will have to determine their preferences for re-balancing between safe and risky assets as part of their investment policy.

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