Voter-ID and voter-suppression efforts are in the news. But there is also big positive news under the radar. Ballot initiatives across the nation would register, re-enfranchise, and re-empower millions of voters. Numerically, these effects are 8-10% of voting-age adults – they are far larger than the effects of voter-ID laws. (Unfortunately, they’re in different states.) In […]
Entries from October 31st, 2018
Voter rights expansion is on the ballot next week!
October 31st, 2018, 11:50am by Sam Wang
Tags: 2018 Election · 2020 Election · Redistricting
Early voting data
October 30th, 2018, 10:54pm by Sam Wang
TargetSmart is tabulating early voting on a state-by-state basis. Move your mouse over the little bar graphs to see 2018 vs. 2014 early-voting-to-date. Basically every key state has fairly large surges in early voting. Maybe not surprising since they were usually not key states four years ago. But here is something more interesting: combining 42 […]
Tags: 2018 Election
Redistricting Reform Initiatives For 2018
October 30th, 2018, 12:52am by Sam Wang
Redistricting reform is on the ballot next week! Citizens of Utah, Colorado, Michigan, and Missouri will vote on initiatives that will reform redistricting in their states. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has analyzed all four initiatives. All have a high potential to succeed at making redistricting fairer, and not targeting political parties or minority groups to […]
Tags: 2018 Election · Redistricting
Politics & Polls: Year Of The Woman, 2018 – and North Carolina
October 28th, 2018, 7:30pm by Sam Wang
This Politics & Polls is a pre-midterms double-header, on women and on North Carolina. This year, a record number of women candidates are running for federal office. Where did this come from, and how many of them will win? Julian Zelizer and I drill in with Prof. Danielle Thomsen of U.C. Irvine, who’s visiting Princeton […]
Tags: 2018 Election · House · Senate
Friday Night viewing: Fixing Bugs in Democracy
October 26th, 2018, 8:00pm by Sam Wang
A few weeks ago, I gave a public lecture at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Great audience, great discussion. Learn about partisan gerrymandering and how Open Data can help level the playing field for all citizens!
Tags: Princeton · Redistricting
Optimal 2018 donations in the home stretch: Senate, House, Governor
October 26th, 2018, 11:00am by Sam Wang
Judging from my mail, I think some of you think I am back online making predictions. This is not true! PEC provides aggregation and information to reveal where you can make the most impact. Since almost the start, my reason for operating PEC was to show how such efforts might be optimized. And as I wrote […]
Tags: 2018 Election · governors · House · Redistricting · Senate
Why Your Vote Matters: New Jersey, Ground Zero for swing districts
October 26th, 2018, 7:00am by Sam Wang
There are swing Congressional districts all over the nation. And right here in Princeton, we have an exceptional density of close races. Within 25 miles of Princeton are three Congressional districts in which October poll medians [NJ] [PA] show the two candidates within 1 or 2 percentage points of each other:
Tags: 2018 Election · House
Can Michigan terminate gerrymandering? Analysis of Proposal 2
October 25th, 2018, 9:43am by Sam Wang
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project is hitting the road! This week, members of my team are going to Michigan and California to investigate redistricting reform on the ground. We’re helping students of the Woodrow Wilson School as they evaluate best practices for how to implement an independent commission, which is on the ballot in Michigan. Overall, […]
Tags: 2018 Election · Redistricting
Is the Senate Kavanaugh bounce partially ending?
October 24th, 2018, 3:29pm by Sam Wang
People often ask if polls move opinion. Not that many people pay direct attention to the numbers. However, polls do set the tone for what journalists and pundits write…with some delay. Combined with the time it takes to conduct and release a poll, this means that news articles can be a lagging indicator of the […]
Tags: 2018 Election · Senate
Why Your Vote Matters: Florida
October 24th, 2018, 6:03am by Sam Wang
(Written in collaboration with Owen Engel ’21.) In less than two weeks, Florida voters have a chance to restore the right to vote to over 1.5 million Floridians – more than 1 in 10 of the adult voting population. This is by far the largest voting-rights question in any election in the nation. Amazingly, this […]
Tags: 2018 Election · House · Senate
