… But given the collaborative effort and many moving parts of a modern presidential campaign, it can be difficult to isolate the data team’s contribution. One great example, though, is the intricate mathematical models of swing states that [Dan] Wagner and colleagues built that were meant to offer an alternative […] Read more »
The Gamble: High Rollers
“High Rollers” is a free eBook preview chapter from John Sides and Lynn Vavreck’s groundbreaking Fall 2013 book, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Picking up where the third chapter, “All In,” left off, “High Rollers” continues the dramatic story of the 2012 campaign into the […] Read more »
The GOP’s Hispanic problem
… After nearly a year of breathless reports about how Latinos were going to trip over themselves to get to the polls and vote against Mitt Romney’s hard-line immigration stance — remember Time magazine’s Spanish-language cover “Yo Decido”? — the reality is less dramatic. … According to the Census Bureau, the […] Read more »
Four reasons it’s hard to campaign your way to the presidency
The narrative after the 2012 campaign was that President Obama’s victory was due to his superior campaign — better messaging, better technology, better organizing, better everything. But this narrative had a circular logic to it: Obama won because of his superior campaign, and we know that his campaign was superior […] Read more »
Inside The American Crossroads And Koch Post-Mortems
… In the wake of big Democratic victories in 2012, the outside groups that raised and spent so much on Republicans’ behalf have spent a considerable amount of time and effort analyzing their performance. Their goals are two-fold: Improve their strategies and tactics in order to win future races, and convince […] Read more »
How Much Did the 2012 Air War and Ground Game Matter?
In this third and final post in our mini-symposium on campaign effects in the 2012 presidential election, I’ll report on some of what Lynn Vavreck and I have found in our work for The Gamble. Lynn and I were able to do something that, to our knowledge, has not been […] Read more »