Here’s one way to think about the 2016 election. We are witnessing a great race in this country between demographic and economic change that’s driving a new America, and reaction to those changes. On November 8, with a tremendous burst of speed, reaction to change caught up with change and […] Read more »
What happened to the polls?
Before diving into observations about the last Tuesday’s results, as a pollster, I feel compelled to write this first post-election column about the survey research misses. First, put the errors in perspective. CONT. Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill Read more »
Why We Need Empathy in the Age of Trump
… Emotions are at the bottom of anybody’s political beliefs. Those emotions are evoked by a story that feels true. So a deep story is a story that feels true. You take facts out of a deep story, you take moral judgments out of a story. Their deep story is […] Read more »
Americans Roll the Dice On Trump
If there is a contradiction in Tuesday’s presidential-election results, it’s that Americans desperately wanted change even as they felt things seemed to be changing too fast. Donald Trump didn’t get elected because voters saw him as a safe choice. When exit polls asked whether they felt Trump and Hillary Clinton […] Read more »
The Story of the Suburbs
The media has paid a lot of attention throughout the campaign and afterward on rural and working-class white America. Not nearly as much attention has been spent on suburban America, whose college-educated white voters (especially white women) were supposed to provide Hillary Clinton a bulwark to big losses among the […] Read more »
Anyone for a second helping of crow?
… In most elections, the responses to survey questions about candidate qualities and vote preference predict the outcome. But this year was different. What I didn’t understand, of course, was that enough voters in just the right combination of states were so frustrated and angry with the status quo that […] Read more »