scholarly journals The fragile blue wall: analyzing geographies of the 2020 US presidential election

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
John Agnew ◽  
Michael Shin

US presidential elections are peculiar contests based on mediation by an Electoral College in which votes are aggregated on a state-by-state basis. In 2020, as in 2016, the outcome was decided by a set of states where the two candidates were equally competitive: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Two geographical stories tend to dominate accounts of what happened in 2020. The first story is based on red (Republican) versus blue (Democratic) states, and the second story relies upon rural versus urban biases in support for the two parties. After showing how and where Donald Trump outperformed the expectations of pre-election polls, we consider these two geographical stories both generally, and more specifically, in relation to the crucial swing states. Through an examination of the successes of Joe Biden in Arizona and Georgia, two states long thought of as “red”, and the role of the suburbs and local particularities in producing this result, we conclude that the polarization of the United States into two hostile electorates is exaggerated. 

1972 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 493-501
Author(s):  
John J. Sullivan

THE election of a president in the United States has many mathematical aspects. It is certainly appropriate for teachers to exploit student interest in presidential elections to advance the aims of mathematics classes. The electoral college, apportionment of representatives, population data, and many other features of a presidential election can provide interesting and profitable mathematical exercises. Without difficulty one can devise good problems in arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and statistics.


Author(s):  
Corwin Smidt

This article examines the role of Catholics within the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Although Catholics were once a crucial and dependable component of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, their vote in more recent years has been much more splintered. Nevertheless, Catholics have been deemed to be an important “swing vote” in American politics today, as in recent presidential elections they have aligned with the national popular vote. This article therefore focuses on the part that Catholics played within the 2020 presidential election process. It addresses the level of political change and continuity within the ranks of Catholics over the past several elections, how they voted in the Democratic primaries during the initial stages of the 2020 presidential election, their level of support for different candidates over the course of the campaign, how they ultimately came to cast their ballots in the 2020 election, and the extent to which their voting patterns in 2020 differed from that of 2016.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Heather M. Claypool ◽  
Alejandro Trujillo ◽  
Michael J. Bernstein ◽  
Steven Young

Presidential elections in the United States pit two (or more) candidates against each other. Voters elect one and reject the others. This work tested the hypothesis that supporters of a losing presidential candidate may experience that defeat as a personal rejection. Before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, voters reported their current feelings of rejection and social pain, along with potential predictors of these feelings. Relative to Trump supporters, Clinton (losing candidate) supporters reported greater feelings of rejection, lower mood, and reduced fundamental needs post-election, while controlling for pre-election levels of these variables. Moreover, as self–candidate closeness and liberal political orientation increased, so too did feelings of rejection and social pain among Clinton supporters. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding human sensitivity to belonging threats and for the vicarious rejection literature.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

The Keys to the White House are an index-based prediction system that retrospectively account for the popular-vote winners of every US presidential election from 1860 to 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2008. The Keys demonstrate that American presidential elections do not turn on events of the campaign, but rather on the performance of the party controlling the White House. The Keys hold important lessons for politics in the United States and worldwide. A preliminary forecast based on the Keys indicates that President Obama is a likely winner in 2012, but also reveals the specific problems at home at abroad that could thwart his re-election.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clemens Nollenberger ◽  
Gina-Maria Unger

Forecasts of US presidential elections have gained considerable attention in recent years. However, as became evident in 2016 with the victory of Donald Trump, most of them consider presidential elections only at the national level, neglecting that these are ultimately decided by the Electoral College. In order to improve accuracy, we believe that forecasts should instead address outcomes at the state-level to determine the eventual Electoral College winner. We develop a political economy model of the incumbent vote share across states based on different short- and long-term predictors, referring up to the end of the second quarter of election years. Testing it against election outcomes since 1980, our model correctly predicts the eventual election winner in 9 out of 10 cases – including 2016 –, with the 2000 election being the exception. For the 2020 election, it expects Trump to lose the Electoral College, as only 6.2 percent of simulated outcomes cross the required threshold of 270 Electoral Votes, with a mean prediction of 106 Electoral Votes.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

The Keys to the White House are an index-based prediction system that retrospectively account for the popular-vote winners of every US presidential election from 1860 to 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2008. The Keys demonstrate that American presidential elections do not turn on events of the campaign, but rather on the performance of the party controlling the White House. The Keys hold important lessons for politics in the United States and worldwide. A preliminary forecast based on the Keys indicates that President Obama is a likely winner in 2012, but also reveals the specific problems at home at abroad that could thwart his re-election.


The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-650
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Carson ◽  
Spencer Hardin ◽  
Aaron A. Hitefield

Abstract The 2020 elections brought to an end one of the most divisive and historic campaigns in the modern era. Former Vice President Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States with the largest number of votes ever cast in a presidential election, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump in the process. The record turnout was especially remarkable in light of the ongoing pandemic surrounding COVID-19 and the roughly 236,000 Americans who had died of the virus prior to the election. This article examines the electoral context of the 2020 elections focusing on elections in both the House and Senate. More specifically, this article examines the candidates, electoral conditions, trends, and outcomes in the primaries as well as the general election. In doing so, we provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the climate and outcome of the 2020 congressional elections. Finally, the article closes with a discussion of the broader implications of the election outcomes on both the incoming 117th Congress as well as the upcoming 2022 midterm election.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Barrett-Fox

Religious right leaders and voters in the United States supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election for the same reason that all blocs vote as they do: They believed that the candidate offered them the best opportunity to protect and extend their power and create their preferred government. The puzzle of their support, then, is less why they chose Trump and more how they navigated the process of inserting Trump into their story of themselves as a “moral” majority. This self-understanding promotes and exploits feelings of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate to encourage political action. Because Trump’s speeches affirm these feelings, religious right voters were open to writing a plot twist in their story, casting Trump as a King Cyrus figure, as their champion if not a coreligionist. This article analyzes appeals to and expressions of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate from more than 60 sermons, speeches, and books by religious right authors, Donald Trump, and Trump surrogates. Using open coding, it identifies themes in how these emotions are recognized, affirmed, and invoked by speakers, focusing on Trump’s Cyrus effect.


Author(s):  
N. Gegelashvili ◽  
◽  
I. Modnikova ◽  

The article analyzes the US policy towards Ukraine dating back from the time before the reunification of Crimea with Russia and up to Donald Trump coming to power. The spectrum of Washington’s interests towards this country being of particular strategic interest to the United States are disclosed. It should be noted that since the disintegration of the Soviet Union Washington’s interest in this country on the whole has not been very much different from its stand on all post-Soviet states whose significance was defined by the U,S depending on their location on the world map as well as on the value of their natural resources. However, after the reunification of Crimea with Russia Washington’s stand on this country underwent significant changes, causing a radical transformation of the U,S attitude in their Ukrainian policy. During the presidency of Barack Obama the American policy towards Ukraine was carried out rather sluggishly being basically declarative in its nature. When President D. Trump took his office Washington’s policy towards Ukraine became increasingly more offensive and was characterized by a rather proactive stance not only because Ukraine became the principal arena of confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation, but also because it became a part of the US domestic political context. Therefore, an outcome of the “battle” for Ukraine is currently very important for the United States in order to prove to the world its role of the main helmsman in the context of a diminishing US capability of maintaining their global superiority.


2021 ◽  
Vol VI (III) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Muhammad Nadeem Mirza ◽  
Lubna Abid Ali ◽  
Irfan Hasnain Qaisrani

This study intends to explore the rise of Donald Trump to the White House. Why was Donald Trump considered a populist leader, and how did his populist rhetoric and actions impact the contours of American domestic and foreign policies? The study adopted qualitative exploratory and explanatory research techniques. Specific methods utilised to conduct the study remained political personality profiling. It finds that the populist leaders construct the binaries in the society by dividing the nation into two groups: �us� the people, against �them� the corrupt elite or other groups presented as a threat to the lives and livelihood of the nation. Though populism as a unique brand of politics remained active through most of the US history, yet these were only two occasions that populists were successful in winning the American presidential elections � Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Donald Trump in 2016. Structural and historical reasons became the biggest cause behind the election of Donald Trump, who successfully brought a revolution in American domestic and foreign policies. And if structural issues in the United States are not addressed, there is a clear chance that Trump � who is not withering away � will come back to contest and challenge any competitors in the 2024 presidential elections.


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