“End-point bias” is a well-known psychological tendency to interpret a recent short-term fluctuation as a reversal of a long-term trend. When scientists reported a significant increase in the extent of Arctic sea ice in 2013, a FoxNews.com story evoked end-point bias by contrasting the historically low previous year with the […] Read more »
Nearly One in Five Female Clinton Voters Say Husband or Partner Didn’t Vote
A survey released today casts new light on the challenges Hillary Clinton faced in motivating her supporters in the final weeks of the election. While roughly two-thirds (66 percent) of women who voted for Clinton report their husband or partner also voted for Clinton, nearly one in five (19 percent) […] Read more »
In 2016’s Game of Musical Chairs, the Music Stopped at the Wrong Time for Clinton
… A tight election outcome might be said to have “100 fathers,” all of which may or may not have been decisive. … After the election, there have been several explanations offered for Trump’s surprising victory. These include Trump’s digital campaign efforts, the Clinton campaign’s neglect of the Rust Belt […] 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 »
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 »
Polls may be making voters worse at predicting elections
Blaming the polls for getting the 2016 election so wrong is understandable, but there was arguably a bigger problem: the false confidence that the polls inspired. Indeed, the flood of polls may be having a perverse consequence: making voters worse at predicting the election, not better. And the media landscape […] Read more »