Special Election Recap: Alabama Shakes (Up the Senate)

Here are a few things we learned from the dramatic victory of Doug Jones over Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate special election last night: 1. Special election results are often over-interpreted as political harbingers, and this particular election would no doubt have turned out much differently if Republicans hadn’t […] Read more »

What Roy Moore tells us about the Republican Party

… For many years, most political scientists followed the lead of the eminent V.O. Key Jr. in conceptualizing each U.S. party as a three-legged stool composed of voters, politicians (and other government officials), and officers of the national, state and local party committees. More recently, however, many scholars have come […] Read more »

Is this the beginning of the end of the exit poll?

After another perceived, high-profile miss in last year’s presidential election, the Election Day exit poll is on life support. The Associated Press confirmed Friday it has joined Fox News in abandoning the so-called National Election Pool — the election surveying instrument that the news media, campaign operatives and political junkies […] Read more »

Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media.

SINCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, an increasingly familiar narrative has emerged concerning the unexpected victory of Donald Trump. Fake news, much of it produced by Russian sources, was amplified on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, generating millions of views among a segment of the electorate eager to hear […] Read more »