What if Dewey HAD defeated Truman…

This is one of the most iconic photographs in American history. Easy as it is now to mock the editors of the Chicago Tribune for jumping the gun on the 1948 presidential election, they were merely anticipating what Americans thought was going to happen: incumbent Democratic president Harry S Truman (who had become president in … Continue reading What if Dewey HAD defeated Truman… →

Doctor, validate thyself!

I recently wrote about my long-term fascination with American electoral geography, the way voting patterns are distributed across states, Congressional districts, counties and other areal units. Pursuing this interest as an undergraduate political science major, I began to explore state-level presidential voting data. During my junior year, I created a large chart that ranked how … Continue reading Doctor, validate thyself! →

The 2016 U.S. presidential election viewed through one statistic

The 2016 United States (U.S.) presidential election is one of those elections (1948, 1960, 1968 and 2000 also come to mind) people will be re-hashing as long as the U.S. continues to HAVE presidential elections. I have already shared data-driven thoughts on the 2016 U.S. presidential election here, here, here, here, here and here. Grounding … Continue reading The 2016 U.S. presidential election viewed through one statistic →

Where do rank-and-file Democrats (and Independents) stand on issues right now?

In the wake of Democratic underperformance in the 2016 elections (losing the Electoral College, insufficient gains to win back the United States House of Representatives [House] or United States Senate [Senate], net loss of two governorships, hemorrhaging state legislative seats), various “autopsies” were released. Some autopsies reached conclusions that contradicted the finding of other autopsies … Continue reading Where do rank-and-file Democrats (and Independents) stand on issues right now? →

Clinton Derangement, or The Birth of a Notion

During the 2016 campaign, I was struck by two overlapping narratives. One was the intensity of animus toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, particularly among Republicans. This felt to me less like policy disagreement and more like personal vendetta. This animus expressed itself manufactured outrage (and HOURS of Congressional hearings) over the Islamist militant attack … Continue reading Clinton Derangement, or The Birth of a Notion →

Degree or not degree? That is (still) the Democrats question.

Democrat Hillary Clinton, despite winning a 2.1 percentage popular vote margin over Republican Donald Trump, lost the presidency in 2016 because she lost the combined 46 electoral votes (EV) from three states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Clinton lost these states by a combined 77,744 votes, and an average of 0.57 percentage points, based on data … Continue reading Degree or not degree? That is (still) the Democrats question. →

Should Democrats look to the southeast and southwest?

In a previous post, I implied that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 losses in five states won by Barack Obama in 2012--Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa—resulted from white voters without a college degree (14 percentage points less Democratic in 2016 than in 2012) averaging 44.4% of these states’ electorates, while white voters with a college degree … Continue reading Should Democrats look to the southeast and southwest? →

A closer look at Hillary Clinton’s performance in five key states

In a previous post, I proposed a “three-election weighted relative Democratic margin” (3W-RDM) for each state and the District of Columbia (DC). The “RDM” is the arithmetic difference between each state’s voting margin (% Democratic - % Republican[1]) and the national margin in a given presidential election. I calculated every state’s average RDM over successive … Continue reading A closer look at Hillary Clinton’s performance in five key states →

The Democrats’ 2016 “blue wall” thesis

There was a great deal of talk during the 2016 presidential campaign about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s “blue wall” in the Electoral College, with “blue” the color news organizations use to denote states won by Democrats. The basis of this talk was simple. In general, states tend to vote similarly for president over time; the … Continue reading The Democrats’ 2016 “blue wall” thesis →