The election is over. The results are (mostly) in. Time to decide what it all means. That’s a particularly popular activity in a year when Democrats pulled off something of an upset — their successes going against historical expectations and the popular narrative that suggested Republicans were set to sweep the House and Senate in the midterms. …
I’m not a politics reporter, but the search for election explanations has led me to think about which ones I — a science reporter with an anthropology degree who spends my work days observing the political natives — trust more than others, even as I give all of them a little side-eye.
Politics, I’ve noticed, loves a just-so story. A clear, coherent reason why the zebra got his stripes. But that’s a form of storytelling that isn’t as concerned with scientific accuracy as it is with passing down culturally specific ideas about how people should behave. So what’s a person to do when they care about both? Here are the tips I keep in mind: CONTINUED
Maggie Koerth, FiveThirtyEight
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