The election of Donald Trump came as a shock to many Americans, but perhaps most of all to those in the business of calling elections. The pollsters on both left and right had confidently predicted Hillary Clinton would walk away with the race. They got it wrong. But one man […] Read more »
Where did all of the Democratic voters go?
Hillary Clinton and other party leaders are asking that question after her stunning upset loss to Donald Trump. … Clinton leads the popular vote, but she received about 5 million fewer votes than President Obama did in 2012. At the same time, Trump won about as many votes as Mitt […] Read more »
Will The Electoral College Doom The Democrats Again?
Last week’s election produced the widest gap between the Electoral College and the popular vote in a generation — a result of Hillary Clinton racking up huge margins in populous coastal states such as California and New York while narrowly losing several Midwestern battlegrounds to Donald Trump. Were this pattern […] Read more »
‘Demographics Aren’t Destiny’ And Four Other Things This Election Taught Me
The 2016 election is in the books. Donald Trump won; Hillary Clinton lost. But it will take a while — weeks and months — to sift through the results, so be wary of any stories drawing sweeping conclusions about the country (it’s still the same nation that elected President Obama […] Read more »
How Donald Trump Won and Almost All of Us Missed It
… Political polling nationally and in crucial swing states like North Carolina and Florida showed a tight race, but the polling in Pennsylvania and sparse data from Wisconsin and Michigan showed Clinton with a solid edge. So what happened? The polls hit Clinton’s support dead on but underestimated key Trump […] Read more »
The Importance of Embracing Ambiguity — and What Comes Next for Polling
Instead of offering definitive answers to the country’s biggest questions, the 2016 election results provoke even larger questions. How could the forecasters and the campaigns themselves been so wrong? What and maybe who did all the pollsters miss? Was there a late breaking voter phenomenon that was hard to measure? […] Read more »