Even if you knew in advance about the “blue shift” that would occur in states like Pennsylvania — and we did know in advance about it! — it’s been hard to make enough of a mental adjustment for it this week. Numbers flashing across a TV ticker have a certain […] Read more »
Those Obama-Trump Counties
Though Joe Biden eked out a victory this week, it wasn’t because of the many former Democratic strongholds that unexpectedly swung for Trump in 2016. Of the 206 counties that voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012 but then went for Trump in 2016, nearly all of them—186 as […] Read more »
The First Question for Democrats to Answer About the Election: What Happened?
… The first step in any political inquest is to figure out exactly what happened. The Democrats’ struggles in local and statewide races will take more time to unpack, but there are data already available about the race at the top of the ticket that can offer some insight into […] Read more »
Biden May Have Won The Election — But The Deep Partisan Divide In America Remains
… A plurality of Americans, including the vast majority of Asian, Black and Hispanic voters, backed the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. A slightly smaller bloc, including the majority of white Americans and the overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants, backed the Republican Party’s candidate. … In short, what made Tuesday […] Read more »
Here are six big takeaways from the 2020 elections
… On average, the polls appear to have been off by about 2.5 to 3 percentage points this year. The absolute error in polls is not necessarily larger than in previous years. But, crucially, both public and private polls continued to overestimate Democratic vote share in Florida and in Midwestern […] Read more »
Where Polls Got It Wrong
In the run up to the 2020 election, many polls show Joe Biden and Democrats with a significant lead, both nationally and in multiple swing states. As NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben reports, pollsters are now confronting the question of how far off polls were and what caused it. NPR News The OPINION […] Read more »