… With Clinton’s lead in the popular vote still expanding, the national polls are going to wind up having been pretty good (they showed her winning by 3 to 4 percentage points, and she’ll eventually win by about 2 points). The state polls? Not so hot. What matters, though, is […] Read more »
Public Remains Sharply Divided on Future of the Affordable Care Act
The first Kaiser Health Tracking Poll since the 2016 election finds that Americans are largely divided on the future of the Affordable Care Act even though many of the law’s major provisions remain quite popular across party lines. The new survey finds that one fourth (26%) of Americans want to […] Read more »
Which election forecast was the most accurate? Or rather: The least wrong?
Few political observers saw Trump winning the presidential election. Afterward, some election forecasters ate crow. One actually ate a bug. But despite the inevitable lamentations — and recriminations — about election forecasts, there has been little rigorous evaluation of their performance. So we did one. CONT. Pavel Atanasov & Regina […] Read more »
In 2016’s Game of Musical Chairs, the Music Stopped at the Wrong Time for Clinton
… A tight election outcome might be said to have “100 fathers,” all of which may or may not have been decisive. … After the election, there have been several explanations offered for Trump’s surprising victory. These include Trump’s digital campaign efforts, the Clinton campaign’s neglect of the Rust Belt […] Read more »
How Republicans got polling right in 2016
Many pundits were surprised by Donald Trump’s win, prompting the question, ‘How did the polls get this so wrong?’ Indeed, particularly at the state level, a number of public polls missed the final results by a wide margin. But polls conducted for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) were among […] Read more »
The revolt of the dispossessed
… Turnout, fake news, voter suppression, emails and a hundred other things also mattered. But Donald Trump succeeded in eliciting support from a large minority of Americans, and it’s worth understanding why. … To say this election was just about the economy or culture though is to miss its broader […] Read more »