There’s an old saying that there are only two ways for an incumbent to run: scared or unopposed. Many incumbents raise money almost continuously—call it paranoid or just cautious—as if a multimillionaire self-funder were poised to announce a challenge at any moment. This year, an unusually large number of seemingly […] Read more »
How well could we have forecast the midterm election without polls?
One issue that animated some conversation during the 2014 campaign was not just whether the election could be forecasted accurately — it was — but how we should do it. Three of the forecasting models at media organizations — ours at Election Lab, The Upshot’s and 538′s — relied on […] Read more »
What 2014 does — and does not — tell us about Asian Americans’ voting
As midterm elections drew to a close on Election Day, news outlets released the final results of exit polls from the National Election Pool, which showed Asian-American voters about evenly split on their congressional ballots. This prompted celebration among some Republicans, who noted that the Republican vote among Asian Americans […] Read more »
How Democrats Owe Their Midterm Losses to Student Loans
… Younger voters did not show up on Election Day in the numbers necessary to avoid a Republican wave, and the younger voters who did show were not nearly as likely to vote for Democrats as they had been in years past. … One of Democrats’ struggles is that voters […] Read more »
Deal or no deal: Do voters want their representatives to compromise?
What is the lesson of the 2014 election and what does it portend about gridlock for the next two years? Based on 10,842 responses to online interviews conducted by NBC News through SurveyMonkey in the two days following Election Day, we can characterize the mood of the country and what […] Read more »
What Wave Elections Have Wrought
… In fact, if there were any mandate from voters this year, it was for an end to gridlock and partisanship. Newly elected members say they got the message. Post-election press conferences found GOP leaders and the President preaching the virtues of compromise or, at the very least, comity. But, […] Read more »