Last year’s redraw of the legislative maps left in a fair bit of the partisanship, especially the state House map. Despite Democrats winning 53% of the statewide vote, Republicans retained control. Facing South reports.
Entries from November 22nd, 2020
North Carolina’s legislative gerrymander held in 2020
November 22nd, 2020, 9:33pm by Sam Wang
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting
Georgia: send money and letters – but not postcards
November 21st, 2020, 1:31pm by Sam Wang
From the mailbag: Noted the thread from Lara Putnam about the Georgia runoffs. I think I understand her point that sending 50 or so postcards to random voters in a state with 5 million voters is pointless and serves only to make the postcarder feel useful. That if you want to do something to actually […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Senate
Today at Princeton: Ambassador Samantha Power
November 19th, 2020, 3:49pm by Sam Wang
Today at 5:00pm Eastern, I’ll help host former UN Ambassador Samantha Power. It’s part of the University Public Lecture series. It will be a conversation between Amb. Power and Deb Amos, my colleague in Journalism and NPR News correspondent. This lecture is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.Or you can watch this […]
Tags: Princeton
In the Washington Post
November 12th, 2020, 2:58pm by Sam Wang
In today’s Washington Post, my take on the sources of polling errors in Senate races – and the consequences for resource allocation when we don’t take those errors into account. I have more to say to PEC readers on this, since it was a major feature of what we did. If we knew then what […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Senate
Senate poll error: GOP undecideds came home
November 9th, 2020, 12:14pm by Sam Wang
The polling errors for Senate candidates were quite large this year. In 13 races with final-ish results, the margin of the outcome was a median of 7.9 points more Republican than the last week of polling. That’s an amazingly large difference. In the past, the median error was no more than 3 points or so. […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Senate
North Carolina and Georgia, you’re not done yet!
November 7th, 2020, 10:10am by Sam Wang
The Presidential race is resolved: …however, y’all are not done yet in the South! The importance of the election for redistricting is still unfolding. There’s one more item: the Chief Justice of the North Carolina state Supreme Court. As of today, that race is within a margin of 3,500 votes – 0.06% of the over […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Redistricting · Senate
Presidential Polling Error: slightly smaller than 2016…but in deep Trumpland, larger
November 6th, 2020, 12:17am by Sam Wang
While we wait for the likely conclusion of a Biden win with 306 electoral votes and a 5-6% popular-vote margin… The graph above shows only states which have been called by media organizations, and where the count is >95% complete (results from NYT). For example, California, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania are left out. Things may change. […]
Tags: 2020 Election
Counting, conflict, and consequences
November 4th, 2020, 10:03am by Sam Wang
Based on traffic stats, the great majority of you arrived in the last few days. We’re living out some likely events I suggested in September. First, mail-in votes are different this year. They are taking a while to count in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Second, given the Trump Administration’s attitude to the law, it matters who […]
Tags: 2020 Election · President · Redistricting · Senate
PEC 2020 Liveblog thread #2
November 3rd, 2020, 11:41pm by Sam Wang
New thread. 11:32 pm: Fox has called Arizona for Biden. So far the reported returns, compared with pre-election polls, appear to be 6% toward Trump (Florida), 3.5% toward Trump (North Carolina), and 0% (New Hampshire). Pretty big errors, though not a pattern that tells us about WI/MI/PA. 11:51 pm: It’s like I said back in […]
Tags: 2020 Election
PEC 2020 Liveblog thread #1
November 3rd, 2020, 8:01pm by Sam Wang
Under current conditions, watching partial counts come in is like trying to guess someone’s weight as they put different body parts on the scale – but you are not told which part is being measured. Give it time, everyone. This is not a normal election night. — Sam Wang (@SamWangPhD) November 4, 2020 Live thread […]
Tags: 2020 Election