A political cleavage created by disparities in educational attainment has emerged among voters across the democratic West. In this year’s presidential election, Donald Trump attracted a large share of the vote from whites without a college degree, receiving 72 percent of the white non-college male vote and 62 percent of […] Read more »
The presidential election: Illness as indicator
… The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington has compiled county-level data on life expectancy and the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, heavy drinking and regular physical activity (or lack thereof). Together, these variables explain 43% of Mr Trump’s gains over Mr Romney, just edging out […] Read more »
The End of Identity Liberalism
… A convenient liberal interpretation of the recent presidential election would have it that Mr. Trump won in large part because he managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage — the “whitelash” thesis. This is convenient because it sanctions a conviction of moral superiority and allows liberals to ignore […] Read more »
The county-by-county data on Trump voters shows why he won
In trying to explain Donald Trump’s stunning victory last week, observers have offered numerous explanations. … One way of testing various explanations against one another is to examine county-level vote returns, where contextual information — education levels, racial composition and so forth — can help sort out statistically which factors […] Read more »
Why I Had to Eat a Bug on CNN
LAST weekend I ate a cricket on national television. Based on my statistical analysis of presidential polls, I made a bet that if Donald J. Trump won more than 240 Electoral College votes, I would chow down. Like millions of voters in both parties, I was surprised by the outcome. […] Read more »
Secular voters didn’t turn out for Clinton the way white evangelicals did for Trump
One question in the tumultuous 2016 presidential campaign was whether white evangelicals would “come home” to the GOP and vote for Donald Trump, given his history of divorce, crude language and lack of familiarity with the Bible. We now know from exit polls that they did — in droves. … […] Read more »