September 29: Modified to take into account change in Florida ratings. If you’ve been giving to races we’ve identified as high voter power, you may have noticed that once in a while, we make small changes. The reason is that our best estimate of return on investment responds to events or additional analysis. We will […]
Entries from September 28th, 2020
An “effective altruism” approach to the election
September 28th, 2020, 3:21am by Sam Wang
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting · Senate
Constitutional rot: like an eclipse, or a mistuned clockwork?
September 25th, 2020, 5:28pm by Sam Wang
In my second contribution second contribution to the Symposium over at Balkinization, I lay out a theory for reform. Any government is composed of pre-existing and artificial features, working together to make a complex system. Within that system are positive and negative feedbacks that can make the government more responsive or less responsive to its […]
Tags: Politics · U.S. Institutions
The New Gilded Age, By The Numbers
September 24th, 2020, 1:26pm by Sam Wang
We’re in an exceptionally difficult time in our nation’s political history. A combination of economic stagnation, partisan polarizations, and demographic change has brought us to the point of losing our national consensus on what it means to have a United States. Is there any hope? Professor Jack Balkin says yes. In his new book, The […]
Tags: 2016 Election · 2020 Election · Politics · President · Redistricting
Electoral innovation at Princeton
September 21st, 2020, 10:22pm by Sam Wang
Many of you are making use of the donation links in the right sidebar. In addition, I call your attention to our own work. We are working in multiple areas: optimizing voter effectiveness in elections, fair districting, and voting reform. This year, we are bringing together all these projects under one umbrella, the Electoral Innovation […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Princeton · Redistricting
Florida voter-registration update
September 21st, 2020, 1:52pm by Sam Wang
In Florida the voter registration deadline is two weeks away, on October 5. Florida is a critical state for both the presidency and state legislative control over redistricting. My team at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project has determined that Florida is one of a handful of states where elections (as opposed to reform) are the main […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Moneyball · Redistricting
Two Days With R.B.G.
September 18th, 2020, 10:36pm by Sam Wang
In 2008 I spent two days hosting Ruth Bader Ginsburg here on campus. The experience was unforgettable. She was kind to all comers, she took questions seriously, even from some neuroscience professor, and she acted like a friend.
Tags: Princeton · Supreme Court
The Senate polling desert
September 16th, 2020, 8:49am by Sam Wang
Plenty of polls for the Presidency – but there’s a polling desert in all-important Senate races. How does this affect your activism? There are two places where you can hedge your efforts, either by preventing gerrymandering for a decade or by influencing the Presidential race.
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting · Senate
On Korean radio, TBS eFM
September 15th, 2020, 7:36pm by Sam Wang
I was just interviewed on morning news radio in Korea, 101.3 FM. We talked about whether to trust opinion polls, how long the count may take on Election Night, and hallmarks of authoritarianism in the current Administration. A lot for a short interview. Listen on iTunes or their podcast platform!
Tags: 2020 Election · President
The cognitive science of getting out the vote
September 15th, 2020, 10:00am by Sam Wang
There’s been a fair bit of research on how to optimize appeals to get people to go vote. But what about optimizing the effort of the people who do the volunteer work of turning them out? I received the following mail: I’m finding that there are so many campaigns to help that I feel as […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Uncategorized
Mailing it in?
September 14th, 2020, 1:32pm by Sam Wang
This year, how long might we have to wait to find out the results to the Presidential election? The National Conference of State Legislatures has compiled laws and policies for 2020 for processing and counting absentee and mail-in ballots. By combining them with current polls, we can get an idea of what we will know […]
Tags: 2020 Election · President
