Donald Trump won the presidential election despite polls that indicated Hillary Clinton was favored. One popular explanation for this is that some people were afraid to admit to pollsters that they supported Trump — what’s being called the “shy Trump” phenomenon. … It will probably be weeks or months before […] Read more »
The education gap among whites this year wasn’t about education. It was about race.
Election swings are usually pretty uniform. States tend to shift together from one presidential election year to the next. Most demographic groups do as well. But there was one glaring exception this year: College-educated voters became a lot more Democratic and non-college educated voters became a lot more Republican. … […] Read more »
Trade Secrets From the Predictors Who Called a Trump Victory
Now that the initial dust has settled from the historically surprising 2016 election, we all have one question: What went wrong with the polls and predictions? They showed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, sometimes handily. Just about everyone blew the call. Well, not everyone: There were some people who got […] Read more »
Did Moderates Help Elect Trump?
During elections, most public opinion surveys try to identify likely voters and use them to predict the winner. Working with our students at Cornell University, we took a different approach by focusing on respondents who said they did not intend to vote for Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump. In our […] Read more »
Poll finds tempered optimism after Trump victory, but doubts about mandate
Americans emerged from President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise victory in last week’s election with passionate and polarized reactions, overall expressing tempered optimism about his presidency but unconvinced that he has a mandate to enact a sweeping new policy agenda, according to a Washington Post-Schar School national poll. CONT. Scott Clement & […] Read more »
The Obama Coalition Falls Apart
Political coalitions are tricky things to manage in the United States. Ours is a country of more than 320 million people but only two major political parties—so each side’s voting bloc tends to be unstable at the margins, where national elections are actually won and lost. It is hard to […] Read more »