… While many expected the low favorability ratings of the two candidates and the divisiveness of this election year to keep young voters home, 2016 saw similar rates of young adult turnout as 2012. On election day, Hillary Clinton won the youth vote (55 percent) while Donald Trump only garnered […] Read more »
Trump Won Despite Being Unpopular, So Can He Govern That Way?
President-elect Donald Trump was the least-liked major-party presidential nominee since at least 1980. He won the Electoral College even though most Americans held an unfavorable view of him — the first time that’s happened since pollsters first began consistently asking the favorable/unfavorable question. That raises a reasonable set of questions: […] Read more »
Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump
Sometimes statistical analysis is tricky, and sometimes a finding just jumps off the page. Here’s one example of the latter. I took a list of all 981 U.S. counties with 50,000 or more people and sorted it by the share of the population that had completed at least a four-year […] Read more »
Low Marks for Major Players in 2016 Election – Including the Winner
For most voters, the 2016 presidential campaign was one to forget. Post-election evaluations of the way that the winning candidate, the parties, the press and the pollsters conducted themselves during the campaign are all far more negative than after any election dating back to 1988. The quadrennial post-election survey by […] Read more »
After 16 Years of Voting, Tiny Margins Divide Battleground States
In Macomb County, Michigan, voters are united by their desire for better-paying jobs, and an upturn to their long-suffering cities. Meet the Press, NBC News Read more »
As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power
… The Democratic candidate for president has now won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections. But in part because the system empowers rural states, for the second time in that span, the candidate who garnered the most votes will not be president. … “If you’re talking […] Read more »