June 1: Thank you for your entries. We are evaluating them, and will post the results – as well as an explainer for what we learned – shortly. Today I did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit Politics. In conjunction with the AMA, we have a contest! The deadline is Wednesday, May 31st. I have developed multiple […]
Entries from May 20th, 2017
A Contest: Hack the Gerrymandering Standards!
May 20th, 2017, 5:28pm by Sam Wang
Tags: Redistricting
Politics & Polls: Falling Toward Pavement
May 18th, 2017, 1:31pm by Sam Wang
Washington has been hit with a trifecta of catastrophic events in the past week: Trump fires FBI director Comey for investigating Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, then Trump tells secrets to the Russians in the Oval Office, then it emerges that Comey writes memos about all his conversations, including Trump trying to obstruct the […]
Tags: Politics · President · U.S. Institutions
Gerrymanders, Part 3: Redistricting Nerds, Geographic Compactness Does Not Solve Your Problems
May 14th, 2017, 4:27pm by Sam Wang
For general audiences, I have written quite a bit about gerrymandering in the New York Times (in 2013 and in 2015) and recently, in the Los Angeles Times. In addition, I have drilled into the technical details in the Stanford Law Review and here at the Princeton Election Consortium (part 1 and part 2). Today […]
Tags: Redistricting
Authoritarian Government Watch – Update
May 11th, 2017, 7:53pm by Sam Wang
Trump to NBC: "When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story." — Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) May 11, 2017 On January 28th, I came up with 10 events that, if they happened, would constitute evidence of an authoritarian government. Now […]
Tags: President
What Makes A Presidential Transition Successful?
May 6th, 2017, 8:33am by Sam Wang
On Politics & Polls, Julian and I talk with Chris Lu, director of Barack Obama’s presidential transition team in 2008, and Deputy Secretary of Labor. We talk about both subjects. We got into depth about what makes a transition succeed (Obama) or flounder (Clinton, Trump). Listen to Politics & Polls #42.
Tags: President
How much difference does partisan gerrymandering make? North Carolina and across the decades
May 5th, 2017, 2:58pm by Sam Wang
Today in the Los Angeles Times, Brian Remlinger and I explain partisan gerrymandering, and how many seats it may be worth. Based on our analysis, more seats are affected by partisan gerrymandering now than at any point in the last five cycles of redistricting. In 2017, over 70 seats are made uncompetitive, favoring both parties. […]
Tags: Princeton · Redistricting
