2017: At the Dawn of the Age of Trump

It’s already clear that the very strange political year of 2016 is bleeding over into the New Year. How could it be otherwise? President-elect Donald Trump, loved and hated by about equal numbers of Americans, continues to ignore or break with convention in a wide variety of areas. Just as […] Read more »

State pollsters, pummeled by 2016, analyze what went wrong

… The 2016 election, which rewarded the media’s love of hyperbole, made fools of almost every prognosticator. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, which had given Hillary Clinton a 71.4 percent chance of victory, came out better than most; Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Election Consortium, blew it so badly that he […] Read more »

The 2016 national polls are looking less wrong after final election tallies

UPDATE: This post from shortly after the November election has been updated to reflect accuracy of polls after states certified their vote counts. National polls were more accurate than they appeared immediately after the election, as Hillary Clinton’s two percentage-point advantage in the popular vote was similar to her three-point […] Read more »

Obama Bests Trump as Most Admired Man in 2016

Americans are most likely to name President Barack Obama as the man they admire most in 2016. Twenty-two percent mentioned Obama in response to the open-ended question. President-elect Donald Trump was second at 15%. … Americans named Hillary Clinton the Most Admired Woman for the 15th consecutive year and 21st […] Read more »