The 2016 US election forecasting field was mostly divided up between the political science modelers, pollsters and poll aggregators. Pollsters and poll aggregators use national and state-level vote intention polls to make their forecasts, and are continually updating their forecasts until Election Day. The political science modelers apply theory and […] Read more »
The candidate or the circumstances
… Trump’s failure to capture a plurality of the popular vote suggests he failed to live up to the potential created for him by situational factors over which neither he, nor Clinton, had any control. As I noted throughout the campaign, Clinton was running an uphill race based on the […] Read more »
Trump Maintains Post-Election Bounce, but No New Gains
After jumping from 34% in Gallup’s final pre-election poll to 42% right after his election victory, President-elect Donald Trump’s favorable rating from the American people remains at 42% today. The slight majority, 55%, still view him unfavorably. CONT. Justin McCarthy, Gallup Read more »
Why the polls missed in 2016: Was it shy Trump supporters after all?
Following the unexpected victory of Donald Trump, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced, “The polls clearly got it wrong … and already the chorus of concerns about a ‘crisis in polling’ have emerged.” Many forecasts based on polls were indeed wrong, but a closer look leaves us more […] Read more »
Where Were Trump’s Votes? Where the Jobs Weren’t
Did the white working class vote its economic interests? … Yes, the economy has added millions of jobs since President Obama took office. Even manufacturing employment has recovered some of its losses. Still, less-educated white voters had a solid economic rationale for voting against the status quo — nearly all […] Read more »
History repeats itself
A number of people have remarked on parallel between Donald Trump and Senator Joe McCarthy (e. g. this post from Andrew Gelman in June). In light of the election results, there’s another one: they both got more support among less educated people. In November, 1954, a NORC survey asked “all […] Read more »