The past three presidential elections have been head-snapping for many Americans: a sharp turn into what many people believed was the future of electoral politics with the elections of Barack Obama and an even sharper reversal with the victory of Donald Trump. People are still making sense of it all. […] Read more »
GOP gained ground in middle-class communities in 2016
The Republican Party made deep inroads into America’s middle-class communities in 2016. Although many middle-class areas voted for Barack Obama in 2008, they overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump in 2016, a shift that was a key to his victory. Meanwhile, Democrats had more success retaining a loose “coalition” of lower-income and […] Read more »
How Much Do ‘October Surprises’ Move The Polls?
People are already calling it an “October surprise” — an unexpected moment late in the campaign that could change the trajectory of the election. The news that the FBI is looking into a new batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails (found on the computer of Anthony Weiner) is certainly surprising. And […] Read more »
No, disgruntled primary losers won’t vote for the other party in November
… Some scholars say hotly contested primaries encourage voters to support the final candidate in a general election; others say that bitter partisans may support alternative candidates. To explore this question, we looked at vote choice in the 2008 presidential election, which, as is true in 2016, had no incumbent […] Read more »
A Tale of Two Elections: Clinton’s 2016 Primary Performance Versus 2008
One striking aspect of the Democratic primary race was the stark role-reversal in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance compared with her narrow loss to Barack Obama in 2008’s Democratic nomination battle. Whereas she ran against Obama in 2008, she positioned herself as his successor at every turn during her race against […] Read more »
Will Bernie Sanders supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton now? Here’s what we know.
Hillary Clinton’s declaration of victory this week has officially set in motion the effort to mend the wounds of a sometimes bitter primary contest. Party leaders hoping that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s backers will support Clinton this fall have at least one reason for optimism: There are apparently fewer hard feelings […] Read more »