[ Posted Thursday, August 18th, 2016 – 17:22 UTC ]
It is time to consider the future of the Big Blue Wall. The Big Blue Wall, for those who haven't heard the term before, is the list of states that have voted consistently Democratic in the past six elections. They voted for Bill Clinton twice, against George W. Bush twice, and then were part of Barack Obama's winning coalition twice as well. I've written about the Big Blue Wall previously in more detail, I should mention, for anyone interested.
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[ Posted Tuesday, August 16th, 2016 – 17:13 UTC ]
Back in May, I wrote an article that laid out five optimistic paths to victory for Hillary Clinton. Two of these paths were quite close, one was the equivalent of Barack Obama's 2008 win, and two were wildly optimistic (at least, at the time and given the available polling data). The last two projected Clinton winning with either 401 or 471 electoral votes.
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[ Posted Monday, August 8th, 2016 – 17:47 UTC ]
Welcome to the kickoff of my quadrennial "Electoral Math" column series. I've been writing these since 2008, because I've always been astonished that no other statistics guru out there seems to present the presidential race in the way that makes the most sense -- by Electoral College vote, charted over time.
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[ Posted Monday, May 9th, 2016 – 17:21 UTC ]
Last week, the Washington Post ran an article titled "Five Not-Totally-Crazy Electoral Maps That Show Donald Trump Winning." The article was a cautionary note to Democrats who are blithely assuming Hillary Clinton will easily beat Donald Trump this November. In it, the authors provide five maps that show Trump beating Clinton, by winning anywhere from 270 Electoral College votes (the minimum necessary to win) up to 283 Electoral College votes. I'd like to answer them back with five maps of my own, which show scenarios that are a lot more likely to become reality. I do understand why the Post authors wrote their article -- Democrats getting complacent about their chances of victory is indeed a danger this election cycle, and who knows how many crossover votes are going to happen (in either direction)? But at the same time, it is easy to see the monstrous advantage any Democratic candidate for president now enjoys, and it's a lot easier to see a very wide and gentle path to victory for Hillary Clinton.
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