The 2016 election cycle has confounded a good deal of scholarship and punditry so far. But one book that’s coming out smelling like a rose is Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’ new book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. This book’s novel argument is that we’ve […] Read more »
Trump’s Up 3! Clinton’s Up 9! Why you shouldn’t be fooled by polling bounces.
You sort of know there is a convention bounce that you should sort of ignore, but why? What’s actually in a polling bump? … Recent research, however, suggests that swings in the polls can often be attributed not to changes in voter intention but in changing patterns of survey nonresponse: […] Read more »
How Does the Media Choose Which Election Polls to Cover?
This being election season in the United States, we are absolutely inundated with polling data, with everyone from Gallup to Rasmussen to FiveThirtyEight providing daily (or even more frequent) updates on the state of the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump horse race. But not all polls are created equal, it seems: News […] Read more »
Trump, a fallen soldier, and the myth of game-changing moments
In Election 2016, it could be called “the question.” It has been repeated from the moment Donald Trump entered the race, calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. And it has been raised again this weekend, after Mr. Trump criticized the parents of a fallen Muslim-American soldier. Has Trump gone too […] Read more »
Why Voters Don’t Buy It When Economists Say Global Trade Is Good
… Voters clearly aren’t listening to economists. In a recent poll, an overwhelming number of leading economists agreed that Brexit would most likely lower incomes both in Britain and in the rest of the European Union. Similarly, in the United States, most top economists agree that “past major trade deals […] Read more »
And Then There Was Trump
How do you deal with an opponent immune to the truth, whose appeal is atavistic rather than rational? How do you pick off enough of his constituents and prevent him from making inroads into yours? In Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies face a candidate for whom there […] Read more »