With the retirement announcement of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Ryan Costello, there are now eight open seats currently held by Republicans in districts that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. And there’s a good chance the Democrats will win them all, bringing the party 35% closer to the 23 seats it needs […] Read more »
The need for a sweeping agenda for democratic security
As the Russia investigation continues to accelerate, there is some chance the national policy agenda could experience a seismic shift. Yet there is little evidence our leaders are ready for it. Of course, nobody knows what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation will conclude about possible crimes linked to […] Read more »
America’s Warped Elections
Many Democratic voters and activists are giddy about their party’s chances of retaking the House in 2018. … But a big reality check is in order. Even the strongest blue wave may crash up against a powerful structural force in American politics: extreme gerrymandering. Pending court cases, including one scheduled […] Read more »
How election forecasts confuse Americans — and may lead them not to vote at all
Where were you on the night of Nov. 8, 2016? If you’re like many political junkies, you were watching election night coverage and wondering not whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would win but might Clinton do so well that she’d win in places like Texas and Arizona. When she […] Read more »
What Special Elections Can’t Tell Us About a Democratic Wave
There shouldn’t be much doubt that the Democrats are riding a wave heading into November’s midterm elections. That was clear well before Conor Lamb’s apparent victory in Pennsylvania last week. There have been nearly 100 special elections over the last year, and at this point there’s so much evidence of […] Read more »
Wanna know what happened in 2016? We got a ton of graphs for you.
The paper’s called Voting patterns in 2016: Exploration using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) on pre-election polls, it’s by Rob Trangucci, Imad Ali, Doug Rivers, and myself, and here’s the abstract: CONT. Andrew Gelman (Columbia U.), Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science Read more »