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.
Entries Tagged as '2020 Election'
The Senate polling desert
September 16th, 2020, 8:49am by Sam Wang
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
Florida Moneyball, 11th Circuit edition
September 13th, 2020, 11:07am by Sam Wang
This week the 11th Circuit issued a shocking opinion curtailing voting rights in Florida. Over half of ex-felons in Florida are now excluded from registering to vote, because first they have to pay fines, fees, and restitution – effectively, a tax on voting. In response to this, we suggest that a solution. Our Redistricting Moneyball […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Moneyball · Redistricting
Boosting Princeton turnout: introducing Vote100
September 12th, 2020, 2:14pm by Zachariah Sippy
In 2014, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, only 11% of Princeton Undergraduate students voted. This dismal turnout inspired Princeton’s Vote100 initiative, with a stated goal of encouraging a 100% turnout rate among eligible Princeton students. In 2018, the population of students voting more than quadrupled, to 50%, but it is […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Politics · Princeton
The Authoritarian Checklist, September 2020
September 6th, 2020, 7:24am by Sam Wang
In his public abuse of Laurene Powell Jobs, Donald Trump reminds us again of the PEC Authoritarian Checklist. At this point, the Trump Administration meets all 10 criteria for authoritarianism that I laid out in 2017, before the start of the term. It was a way of laying out possibilities in advance, preventing the concepts […]
Tags: 2020 Election · President · U.S. Institutions
The mailbag
September 5th, 2020, 7:59am by Sam Wang
Some recent correspondence of interest…
Tags: 2020 Election
New PEC feature: 50-State Guide to 2020 Elections
September 1st, 2020, 8:00am by Zachariah Sippy
While the Presidential election is hogging most of the attention, there are literally thousands of other races on the ballot. All 435 US House of Representatives seats, and a large Senate class (35 elections) are up for grabs. These races will have a massive impact on legislation and the composition of federal courts. Our 50-state […]
Tags: 2020 Election · Politics · Redistricting
Even odds?
August 31st, 2020, 11:38am by Sam Wang
Betting markets used to favor Biden over Trump. But in the days after the Democratic and Republican conventions, the markets now report 50-50 odds, a toss-up. Is that a realistic assessment? Based on polling metrics alone, the data so far don’t support this shift. It seems that bettors are factoring in “pre-poll” possibilities such as […]
Tags: 2020 Election · President
