Now that we have official election results from nearly every state, we wanted to offer some closing thoughts on election 2012. … Our nation now takes two months to vote, and two months to count the votes. This is unacceptable. It is unwise for balloting to start so many weeks […] Read more »
How to siphon votes away from blue states
In most states, presidential elections are fairly simple. Whichever candidate garners the most votes wins all of that state’s electoral votes. There are two tiny exceptions (Maine and Nebraska), but that’s typically how it works. President Obama won a majority of votes in Pennsylvania, so he got all 20 of […] Read more »
More Close Elections, Fewer Close States
After an era of presidential elections often defined by landslide results, the nation over the last dozen years has entered a period of close contests for the White House. The 2012 voting is the third in the last four to be decided in the popular vote by a margin of […] Read more »
Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge
CIRCLE has formed a distinguished, nonpartisan, scholarly commission that will investigate rigorous data on young Americans’ civic knowledge and voting and then issue recommendations for how to improve both. The commission has been formed in response to controversies about recent voting laws (for instance, the new state photo ID laws) […] Read more »
For Latino Groups, Grass-Roots Efforts Paid Off in Higher Number of Voters
On Election Day, President Obama got 71 percent of the Latino vote nationally because, in the end, Latinos preferred his message over Mitt Romney’s. But how Latinos got that message — the relentless call to register, to vote, to participate — was as important as the message itself: Hispanic television […] Read more »
The 2012 Election Was Good for Political Science
In late September, I was involved in an email exchange in which a historian stated that “Someone should do a piece cataloging down all the poli sci consensi being undone this season.” Now I can write with some confidence that the findings of the political science canon were largely confirmed […] Read more »