All election results aren’t equally important, as some places may matter more than others. Consider Arapahoe County, Colo. Sitting just east of Denver, Arapahoe is a crucial county in one of the most important swing states on the electoral map. It’s the kind of place both Democrats and Republicans see […] Read more »
The Importance of Running Scared
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 »
A Surprising Unsurprising Election
We could call 2014 a surprising unsurprising election. Republican gains proved larger than most anticipated. But there were few shockers in statewide races; instead, Republicans simply won most of the competitive contests. For all the talk of anti-incumbency, only three sitting governors lost. The bigger surprise was the number of […] Read more »
A Wave—but No Tsunami
… Whenever a party easily beats the point spread with seats to spare, it has had a great night. There’s no denying Republicans had a great night. Sure, this was a wave. Whether to use a term like “wave” or even the one we coined in 1994—the “political tsunami”—is a […] Read more »
One Reason the Democrats Lost So Big in Midterms: Exceptionally Low Voter Turnout
When turnout falls, Democrats perform worse in elections. That general pattern is well known. In making their forecasts, pollsters try to estimate what that turnout will be on the basis of previous elections. This year, pre-election opinion polls were off by the largest amount seen in over 20 years. Could […] Read more »
Hispanic Voters in the 2014 Election
Democrats maintained a large edge among Latinos voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but in some states, Republican candidates won more than 40% of the Latino vote, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of National Election Pool exit poll data as reported by NBC News. Though Democrats comfortably won the […] Read more »