(Watch our explainer video here.) The main campaign stories in 2020 are the Presidential election and the fight for control of Congress (mostly, the U.S. Senate). But lurking beneath those high-profile questions are state legislative elections, which will set the political playing field, including Congressional districting, for the next 10 years. State legislatures determine policies […]
Entries from July 30th, 2020
New PEC feature: Redistricting Moneyball 2020
July 30th, 2020, 7:31pm by Sam Wang
Tags: 2020 Election · Moneyball · Politics · Redistricting
Moneyball politics: Florida (Part III)
July 27th, 2020, 8:19pm by Zachariah Sippy
On Friday, former Miami Heat superstar LeBron James and his newly formed voting rights organization, More Than A Vote, announced a partnership with the Florida Rights Restoration Commission (FRRC). This $100,000 campaign is part of FRRC’s larger effort to ensure that formerly incarcerated individuals will be able to vote this November. But it’s a drop […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Moneyball · Redistricting · Supreme Court
Representable: Helping Voters Talk To Redistricters
July 22nd, 2020, 11:41am by Sam Wang
Redistricting starts next year, once the (delayed) Census results are finalized. 26 states require that the new districts accurately reflect “communities of interest” – groups of people have similar civic interests. But currently no universal mechanism exists to discern who the communities of interest are, or where they are located. Until now!
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting
Will N.J. legislators leave Latino and Asian growth uncounted until 2023?
July 20th, 2020, 12:07am by Sam Wang
(Maps show percentage-of-total-population increase; click to enlarge) A proposed amendment to the New Jersey constitution, Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 188, is under consideration by the state legislature. At the Princeton Gerrymandering Project we find that its likely effects are opposite to those intended by its supporters. It has the potential to delay representation for Latinos and Asians […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting
U.S. House 2020 – November forecast
July 19th, 2020, 11:34am by Sam Wang
We’ve combined the generic-Congressional ballot with special-election data to generate a November forecast. The black trace shows the day-to-day snapshot using generic-Congressional surveys. Data come from FiveThirtyEight filtered using our own median rule. We generated a prior by using special elections since 2018. We combined the two by assuming (a) random drift from the snapshot, […]
Tags: 2020 Election · House
Will New Jersey Hispanics and Asians have to wait until 2023 for fair representation?
July 9th, 2020, 6:42pm by Sam Wang
Since the 2010 census, Hispanic and Asian populations in New Jersey have increased by 410,000, almost as many people as live in 2 legislative districts (see map at left and our statement). But if Jersey legislators get their way, those communities may have to wait two years until 2023 to see their numbers reflected in […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting
Our Polling Trauma
July 8th, 2020, 1:42pm by Sam Wang
Did the 2016 election make us too gun-shy to trust polls? New in the Columbia Journalism Review, I tell what went wrong, polling successes in 2018 and 2019, and what it all means for 2020. I offer an opinion on how journalists could incorporate data into their coverage of this year’s race. I also point […]
Tags: 2020 Election
College Reopening, Coronavirus, and the Adolescent Brain
July 3rd, 2020, 12:58pm by Sam Wang
Can colleges reopen safely? Should they try? On Politics and Polls (the podcast for the Princeton Policy School, co-hosted by Julian Zelizer and me), I interview Laurence Steinberg, major expert on adolescence. Our conversation is a mash-up of neuroscience, public health, coronavirus, and the adolescent mind. Spoiler: it’s going to be really, really, rilly difficult. […]
