There's quite a bit of data-anlytics type stuff in quantitative poli-sci these days. Now whether it's good science or not varies, much like in the rest of "big data", where there's no guarantee that either the data or the analysis is always good. There's some very careful stuff, and a lot of data-dredging on datasets of convenience (or over-extrapolation from limited data sets).
More traditional poli-sci is scientific in the sense of the social sciences, which has a fairly long history of epistemological debate I'm only vaguely familiar with. I think I would probably call it scientific in a certain sense, but maybe a different word is needed. I'd group it vaguely with disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics as areas with quite a bit of methodological diversity, but still a more empirical orientation than you find in the humanities. Part of the issue is that there is data, but how to interpret the data is complex ("there is no such thing as raw data"). Though for mostly institutional reasons there are some people who are more philosophers or historians who also happen to be in poli-sci departments.
Exactly. We had two extremes at my department where one professor felt PS should be regarded as a hard science, and one that felt it belonged in the Humanities department.
More traditional poli-sci is scientific in the sense of the social sciences, which has a fairly long history of epistemological debate I'm only vaguely familiar with. I think I would probably call it scientific in a certain sense, but maybe a different word is needed. I'd group it vaguely with disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics as areas with quite a bit of methodological diversity, but still a more empirical orientation than you find in the humanities. Part of the issue is that there is data, but how to interpret the data is complex ("there is no such thing as raw data"). Though for mostly institutional reasons there are some people who are more philosophers or historians who also happen to be in poli-sci departments.