… Four years ago, when Mr. Obama became our first African-American president by putting together an impressive coalition of white, black and Latino voters, it might have appeared otherwise. Some observers even insisted that we had entered a “post-racial” era. But while that cross-racial and ethnic coalition figured significantly in […] Read more »
The Demographic Excuse
… Reliable Republican constituencies — whites, married couples and churchgoers — are shrinking as a share of the electorate. Democratic-leaning constituencies — minorities, recent immigrants, the unmarried and unchurched — are growing, and voting in larger numbers than in the past. But Republicans are also losing because today’s economic landscape […] Read more »
The Building Blocks of Re-election
President Obama secured a second term by preserving much of the diverse mosaic of voters who rallied around him four years ago, overcoming weakened support in his coalition. Women, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, voters under 45, liberals and moderates, those living in the Northeast and the West, and urban dwellers gave […] Read more »
Why Romney Never Saw It Coming
Mitt Romney says he is a numbers guy, but in the end he got the numbers wrong. His campaign was adamant that public polls in the swing states were mistaken. They claimed the pollsters were over-estimating the number of Democrats who would turn out on Election Day. … When anyone […] Read more »
Social science takes spotlight bow in election
Polls, and pollsters, took a star turn on this year’s election night, calling the presidential election days ahead of the outcome. … Polling expert Jon Krosnick of Stanford University called it, “a victory for survey research. The surveys accurately anticipated the election outcomes, just as they routinely have in recent […] Read more »
What went wrong? Lots.
… Pollster Neil Newhouse, whose internal polls were premised on an electorate that was D +2 or 3 rather than D +6 (leaving the candidate and the rest of the campaign stunned when Romney-Ryan lost) acknowledged that the Obama team did its job targeting 18- to 29-year-olds, whose percentage of […] Read more »