… There have been times when a special congressional election told us something about the national political environment, but those instances are few and far between. More often, the districts bear little resemblance to the country as a whole, or the circumstances of a race are so extenuating that any […] Read more »
Mark Sanford’s political redemption
When he left office two years ago, it seemed unlikely that Mark Sanford’s future would hold another successful bid for elected office. Since 2009, when the former governor of South Carolina admitted that his absences from the state to allegedly hike the Appalachian Trail were, in fact, trips to Argentina […] Read more »
Bad News for Terry McAuliffe: Virginia’s Only Purple Every Four Years
… In an off year, Virginia is not a blue state: It leans Republican. In Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial election, non-whites represented 22 percent of the electorate—down 8 points from 2008, while 18- to 29-year-olds represented just 10 percent of voters, down from 21 percent in 2008. Obama comfortably won Virginia […] Read more »
South Carolina Special Election Won’t Tell Much About 2014
Here’s a prediction: If not on Tuesday night, then certainly by Wednesday and maybe even through Thursday or beyond, one party will be crowing that its victory in the special election for now-Sen. Tim Scott’s former seat in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District is a sign that it is doing […] Read more »
Does Gomez Have a Real Chance in Massachusetts?
A common cognitive bias in political analysis is what Daniel Kahneman calls the availability heuristic: the tendency to focus on recent or familiar examples as opposed to the broader course of history and the richer volume of precedents. There is some risk of this in Massachusetts, where the Democrat Martha […] Read more »
Why It’s Difficult to Predict the Outcome of Sanford vs. Colbert Busch
Presidential elections are relatively easy to analyze. The economic fundamentals provide an early handicap of the outcome, and by the end the countless polls are so accurate that you often need to try to get presidential elections wrong, as hopeful partisans do. A special congressional election with two unusual candidates—in […] Read more »