A positive development for the left in the last few years has been the renewed interest in running for downticket races. From Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to legislative candidates nationwide, such efforts are necessary for building a healthy political party. Last week came a new claim that such efforts are not only directly useful, they can […]
Entries Tagged as '2020 Election'
Were There Really Reverse Coattails?
April 20th, 2021, 12:48am by Sam Wang
Tags: 2020 Election · Moneyball
The Biden Administration’s busy first day
January 20th, 2021, 9:26pm by Sam Wang
Busy day so far: Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. VP Harris swearing in three new Senators. Staying in the World Health Organization. Undoing immigration restrictions and restoring DACA. Firing the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel. Freezing student loan repayments and interest. No more border wall. Revoking a variety of other Trump Administration policies, and… […]
Tags: 2020 Election · President
Building democracy back better
January 20th, 2021, 8:46am by Sam Wang
Today at noon, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be inaugurated as President and Vice-President. In addition to all the new policies and priorities they will implement and develop, it’s a relief. Over the last four years, democracy hit a modern low point. Now we face a long challenge: how to repair our system and […]
Tags: 2020 Election · U.S. Institutions
Is Georgia 2020 the new Virginia 2008?
January 5th, 2021, 2:08pm by Sam Wang
Final results: Warnock (D) and Ossoff (D) win, giving Democrats 50 seats in the Senate and control of the chamber. (NYT) In Georgia, first Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. Now we have two competitive Senate races. Polls show the Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, leading their opponents by a few points. If they […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Senate
North Carolina’s legislative gerrymander held in 2020
November 22nd, 2020, 9:33pm by Sam Wang
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.
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
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
