Much has been made of the inaccuracy of exit polls and voting projections amidst Trump’s shocking win this week. Michael McQuarrie argues, however, that to truly appreciate why Donald Trump was elected the 45^th President of the United States we must look beyond distortionary exit polling and come to appreciate the thoroughly regional nature of his victory. Only this can explain Trump’s win, which relied on the Rust Belt’s rejection of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton – and their resounding endorsement of Trump’s anti-globalist rhetoric. Read more.

 2) Why California is so expensive: It’s not just the weather, it’s the regulation

The state of California has some of the most expensive housing in the country. In new research, Kristoffer (Kip) Jackson investigates why homes in the Golden State have come to cost so much. He finds that it’s down to how land use is regulated; each new land-use regulation reduces a Californian city’s housing supply by 0.2 percent per year. In addition, regulation has a spillover effect, with neighboring cities increasing their own regulations in response to those of others in order to avoid taking on all of a region’s new development. Read more.

Around eight million Americans live overseas, a population which would be the 13th largest state if taken as a whole. In presidential elections overseas turnout is around 12 percent, less than a quarter of the amount in general elections. Jay Sexton and Patrick Andelic argue that despite this low turnout rate, expatriate voters can and have played a decisive role in past elections, such as 2000s recount in Florida. They write that given low turnout rates, both Democrats Abroad and Republicans Overseas have some way to go to ensure overseas voters can play a full role in US elections. Read more.

There has been little discussion of the impact of Hillary Clinton’s gender on her electoral prospects, but are American men really ready for a female President? Looking at the results of a new experiment, Dan Cassino finds that the threat to male identity embodied by Clinton is costing her as much as 24 points among men, and bringing her down by 8 points overall. Read more.

With the first primaries of the 2016 presidential election cycle looming, many in the Republican Party are becoming increasingly concerned that billionaire Donald Trump will actually be able to gain the party’s nomination, leading the party to an electoral disaster in November. Using a new national survey of American voters, Matthew C. MacWilliams finds that these fears are well-founded. Trump’s strongman rhetoric has activated and energized American authoritarians to his candidacy providing him with a large and loyal base of supporters in the upcoming Republican contests. An inclination towards authoritarianism is a major predictor of people’s likelihood of voting for Donald Trump in a way that it is not for any of the other GOP candidates. Moreover, Trump voters are ready to suspend constitutionally guaranteed rights such as Habeas Corpus, reject the protection of minority rights, and support the abridgment of religious freedom through the closure of mosques across the US. Read more.

 6) How social media is changing the way people commit crimes and police fight them.

Until the early years of the 21st century, crimes tended to be committed away from the eyes of the majority of society, with traditional media broadcasting information about them often on their own terms. Ray Surette writes that the advent of social media in the past decade has led to a new type of ‘performance’ crimes, where people create accounts of their law-breaking through text, images and video, which are then digitally distributed to the public on a large scale. He comments that social media has also opened up new ways of combating crime for the police, who can take advantage of the self-surveillance of those who publicize their crimes on social media. Read more.

7) Religion is in decline in the West, and America is no exception