… In August, Gallup published an extensive study on the roots of Donald J. Trump’s support. While the study made waves for complicating the narrative that Mr. Trump’s voters were motivated purely by economic anxiety, one of the paper’s conclusions received little attention: that Mr. Trump draws heavily from veterans […] Read more »
Donald Trump’s Fragile Hold on America
… On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote lead over Trump crossed 2 million; several analysts tracking the remaining votes—which are mostly in California—believe her final advantage will near 2.5 million. Clinton will win the popular vote by more than John F. Kennedy in 1960 or Jimmy Carter in 1976, and could […] Read more »
How to recover from the polling disaster of 2016? Look beyond polls.
Planes rarely crash because one instrument fails or one gauge gives a bad reading. Rather, the right combination of things fail in tandem — a mechanical problem paired with bad weather, a backup system malfunctioning at the same time as a pilot error — leading to catastrophe. The disaster of […] Read more »
This Election Was Not About the Issues. Blame the Candidates.
If you think back to this year’s presidential campaign and recall a lot of articles mentioning Hillary Clinton’s email troubles and Donald J. Trump’s various controversies, you wouldn’t be wrong. If it seems there were fewer articles about jobs, the economy and taxes, that’s because there were. The temptation to […] Read more »
National Polling Accurately Nails Popular Vote
This was a complex election since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the Electoral College. In terms of forecasting, being “right” means two different things, depending on whether you were estimating the former or the latter. … In terms of predicting the national popular vote outcome, […] Read more »
Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs
Back in May, the longtime chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party sent a private memo to leaders in Hillary Clinton’s campaign warning that she was in grave danger of losing not just Ohio but also Pennsylvania and Michigan unless she quickly re-tooled her message on trade. His advice went […] Read more »