Predicting election results is just as much an art as it a science, writes David Wasserman. He argues that in recent decades, new trends in many of the subjective factors of elections have emerged and forecasters need to take them into account. These include the increased importance of migration patterns, the tendency for voters to vote for the party […]
The 2016 presidential election is well over two years away and there is much we do not know about how the race will unfold. The candidates, economic conditions, and just about everything else are factors that have not yet been determined. Drawing on elections from the past sixty years, James E. Campbell argues that the 2016 race will almost […]
Many media post-mortems of the 2012 presidential race assume that the sluggish economy made Mitt Romney the favorite, but that President Obama prevailed due to a combination of his more likeable personality, a superior ground-game and an effective early advertising blitz, as well as Romney’s campaign mistakes. Implicitly, this narrative suggests that voters are easily swayed by media ads, […]
It is well known that elections are determined by certain fundamental variables: internal factors that reflect voters’ long-term political predispositions and external factors that are unique to each campaign. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien examine how one external factor, the state of the economy, compares to how voters’ internal factors evolve over the final 200 days of presidential […]
The recent surge in public attention to election predictions has generated much discussion about how to improve forecasting model accuracy. Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Mary Stegmaier argue that advances in weather forecasting hold lessons for election forecasting. First, like weather models, election models should be based on sound theory. Second, more intensive data gathering, especially at the state level […]
Over the past four decades, the American electorate has changed dramatically. As a result of these changes, Alan Abramowitz argues that we have entered a new and fundamentally different era of competition in presidential elections. The key features of this new era are a close balance of support between the two major parties, a strongly partisan electorate, and a […]
Competing characterizations of the U.S. economy by President Obama and Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election help illustrate two important elements of election forecasting. First, the change in an economic indicator, relative to its level, better predicts the incumbent party’s share of the two-party vote. Second, presidential candidates make important campaign decisions, like whether to enter the race […]
Over nearly two centuries, American presidential elections have exhibited a distinct cycle. This is not the pattern associated with partisan realignments that may last 30 years or so; it is a shorter cycle that relates to party control of the White House. A cyclical model of presidential elections developed by Helmut Norpoth predicts that in 2016 it will be […]
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Christopher Featherstone reviews Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan by Ashley Jackson 
Dani Slabaugh reviews Social Deviance and Queer Theory by Heather Love
Andrew McCracken reviews How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy by Carl Rhodes
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