On November 15, we released an article that highlighted the Democratic Party’s failure in last week’s election to gain traction in rural and small-town America. The effect of which stymied the party’s prospects in the House of Representatives and continued a trend that deserves more attention going forward. However, as […] Read more »
Behind Trump’s win in rural white America: Women joined men in backing him
In rural parts of America, it wasn’t just white men who flocked to the polls on Election Day to vote for Donald Trump. Rural white women were right there in the voting lines with them. The NBC News national exit poll documented how Trump and his populist message disproportionately appealed […] Read more »
How the Election Revealed the Divide Between City and Country
The earthquake that elected Donald Trump has left the United States approaching 2020 with a political landscape reminiscent of 1920. Not since then has the cultural chasm between urban and non-urban America shaped the struggle over the country’s direction as much as today. Of all the overlapping generational, racial, and […] Read more »
How Accurate Were the Political Science Forecasts of the 2016 Presidential Election?
With the dust settling from one of the most brutal and nasty presidential campaigns in modern American history and with the late vote returns creeping up to a final count, it is time to take stock of the presidential election forecasts offered initially to readers of the Crystal Ball website […] Read more »
16 For ’16: Bite-sized observations on a wild election
Now that we’ve had a week to digest the results of the 2016 election, here are some observations about what happened and what the results might tell us about the future: 1. Electoral map tilts to the GOP In close elections, the Electoral College will probably continue to tilt to […] Read more »
The forecasts were wrong. Trump won. What happened?
… Trump’s Election Day victory, with 306 electoral votes, took us by surprise. My forecast was wrong. It’s time to understand why. The forecast was based on a statistical model that analyzed nearly 1,400 state-level pre-election public opinion polls, in combination with a set of political and economic “fundamentals” that […] Read more »