This site benefits/suffers/both from consisting of posts about a wide range of topics, all linked under the amorphous heading “data-driven storytelling.”
In an attempt to impose some coherent structure, I am organizing related posts both chronologically and thematically.
Given that I have multiple degrees in political science, with an emphasis on American politics, it is not surprising that I have written a few dozen posts in that field…and that is where I begin.
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I started by writing about the 2016 elections, many based on my own state-partisanship metric (which I validate here).
The absurdity of the Democratic “blue wall” in the Electoral College
Hillary Clinton’s performance in five key states (IA, MI, OH, PA, WI)
Why Democrats should look to the south (east and west)
How having (or not) a college degree impacted voting
An alternative argument about gerrymandering
An early foray into what I call “Clinton derangement”
The only statistic from 2016 that really matters
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Here are a few posts about presidential polling (before FiveThirtyEight jumped on the bandwagon)…
Be careful interpreting President Trump’s approval polls
…and the 2017 special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District (GA-6)
Ossoff and the future of the Democratic Party
Using GA-6 polls to discuss statistical significance testing (spoiler: I am not a fan)
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And then I started looking ahead to 2018…first to control of the United States House of Representatives (“House”). Note that posts are often cross-generic…
An alternative argument about gerrymandering
The impact of voting to repeal (and not replace) Obamacare (May 2017)
I debut my simple forecast model (June 2017)
Making more points about polls and probability
A followup March 2018 update (after which I stopped writing about the 2018 House elections)
…then the United States Senate
What it meant that the Senate voted NOT to repeal Obamacare in July 2017
…and, finally, races for governor in 2017 AND 2018.
A tangentially-related post may be found here.
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After Labor Day 2018, I developed models (based on “fundamentals” and polls) to “forecast” the Senate elections…
…and those for governor (the October 23 post addressed both sets of races)
These culminated in…
And my own assessment of how I did (spoiler: not half bad)
Speaking of assessments, I took a long look at my partisan lean measure here.
And I carefully examined some polling aggregation assumptions here.
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Beginning in April 2019, I turned my attention to the 2020 elections.
First came a wicked early look at the relative standings of the dozens of women and men actually or potentially seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination:
Then came a wicked early look at the 2020 presidential election itself.
And, of course, a wicked early look at races for Senate (2020) and governor (2019-20).
With a post-Labor-Day update.
With the first of regular updates to both the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and the 2020 presidential election in May 2019
This post both set up the first Democratic debates and had good news for Democrats looking ahead to 2020.
This post set up the second Democratic debates and drew some conclusions about who “won” and “lost” the first debates.
This post updated the data for August 2019 and drew some conclusions about who “won” and “lost” the second debates.
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Finally, there are other politics posts that defy easy categorization.
I indulged in some speculative alternative history about the presidential elections of 1948 and 2000.
I delineated issue differences between Democrats and Republicans.
I got a bit personal here and here, concluding with the fact that, despite overlapping in the same residential college at Yale for two years, I did NOT know Associate Justice Brett Kavanagh at all.
I argued for the abolition of the Electoral College.
Until next time…
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