All In is the third free eBook preview chapter from John Sides and Lynn Vavreck’s groundbreaking Fall 2013 book, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Picking up where the second chapter, “Random, or Romney?” left off, “All In” continues the story of the 2012 Republican primary, […] Read more »
Political ads: Not as powerful as you (or politicians) think
In the weeks before the 2012 election, pundits debated the impact of President Obama’s team’s unorthodox advertising strategy and Mitt Romney’s side’s last-minute “ad bomb.” Now, with the election returns in, we can begin to assess just what the presidential candidates and their allies got for the hundreds of millions […] Read more »
The Economy and the Campaign
Income growth was slow through most of 2012, and prospective voters were correspondingly pessimistic about the state of the economy. So how was Barack Obama reelected? An important part of the answer is that perceptions of the economy became significantly less pessimistic in the fall than they had been in […] Read more »
After a Highly Partisan Election Year, Survey Finds Less Group Conflict
After a divisive presidential campaign that focused on such polarizing issues as economic class and immigration, a new Pew Research survey finds that the American public perceives less conflict between groups at the center of these debates now than before the campaign began. [cont.] Rich Morin & Seth Motel, Pew Read more »
Transcript of Nate Silver’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ on Reddit
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight took questions Tuesday on the popular social news site Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” section. What follows is an edited transcript, with the questions and answers sorted into several subject areas. [cont.] New York Times Read more »
Holy Grail of Voters
After covering eight presidential and seven midterm election campaigns, I still manage to learn new things or come to view things differently. For many years, I have been fixated on independent voters as the political equivalent of the holy grail. But now I believe voters who describe themselves as moderates […] Read more »