The Democratic Party is continuing its postmortem after Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat. Many challenges and puzzles will need to be resolved. … Some have suggested that Democrats should abandon “identity politics” and focus exclusively on winning back white working-class voters. While Barack Obama won two terms — and left office […] Read more »
This is why Democrats lose in ‘rural’ postindustrial America
… In my earlier post I suggested that voters in rural areas and small industrial towns are often two rather distinct demographic groups that should not be conflated. Yes, Democratic candidates lost votes in both postindustrial towns and their surrounding rural environs. But their losses were especially dramatic in the […] Read more »
‘Red’ America is an illusion. Postindustrial towns go for Democrats.
… Before the presidential election, I wrote an article pointing out that the homogeneity of “red” America is an illusion: Small and medium-size postindustrial U.S. towns routinely vote for Democrats — sometimes by very large margins. Few had noticed, because the largely rural counties in which these towns are located […] Read more »
New research of voters decisive to 2016 election outcome
Priorities USA commissioned Global Strategy Group and Garin Hart Yang to conduct polling and focus groups among two key groups decisive in the recent 2016 election – “swing voters” who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 and “turnout voters” who are Democratic-leaning voters, including African-American […] Read more »
Clinton’s Ground Game Didn’t Cost Her The Election
… So what went wrong with Clinton’s vaunted ground game? There are certainly some things to criticize. There’s been good reporting on how Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn ignored warning signs on the ground and rejected the advice of local operatives in states such as Michigan. And as I wrote in […] Read more »
Election autopsy: Latinos favored Clinton more than exit polls showed
Among the many surprises in the 2016 presidential election was the claim by the national exit poll that Donald Trump captured a larger share of the Hispanic vote than Mitt Romney did four years earlier. … As social science researchers, we decided to take a look at the official election […] Read more »