Towards Principled Unskewing: Viewing 2020 Election Polls Through a Corrective Lens from 2016

We apply the concept of the data defect index to study the potential impact of systematic errors on the 2020 pre-election polls in 12 presidential battleground states. We investigate the impact under the hypothetical scenarios that (1) the magnitude of the underlying nonresponse bias correlated with supporting Donald Trump is similar to that of the 2016 polls, (2) the pollsters’ ability to correct systematic errors via weighting has not improved significantly, and (3) turnout levels remain similar to 2016. Because survey weights are crucial for our investigations but are often not released, we adopt two approximate methods under different modeling assumptions. Under these scenarios, which may be far from reality, our models shift Trump’s estimated two-party voteshare by a percentage point in his favor in the median battleground state, and increases twofold the uncertainty around the voteshare estimate.

Where to Look for Change?

Once an overlooked theme in legal scholarship, the legal treatment of migrant domestic workers has recently seen a significant growth of scholarly interest. In European legal scholarship, much of the focus has been on severe forms of exploitation such as slavery, forced labour and trafficking. While extreme abuses of migrant domestic workers certainly do take place in Europe, they are only part of the story. This article critiques the turn to modern slavery and trafficking as the dominant frame for analysing migrant domestic workers’ vulnerability in Europe and proposes a corrective lens. I argue that it is instead more useful, and potentially more deeply transformative, to comparatively examine the role of national labour and migration law regimes in the regulation of migrant domestic workers, as well as, the role of eu law in constructing and challenging these regimes.

“A Little Willingness to See”: Sacramental Vision in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Gilead

The “sacramental imagination” is closely associated with writers from the Roman Catholic tradition. However, Marilynne Robinson, drawing on the creational and sacramental theology of John Calvin, has successfully developed a distinctly American Protestant sacramental vision in and through her novels Housekeeping and Gilead. In this article, I examine Robinson’s appropriation of Calvin to show how he has shaped her sacramental view of the world. I then look at the two novels in succession to show how this vision manifests itself in her fiction. Robinson sees creation itself as bearing a sacramental character that is particularly evident in the elements of water, bread, and wine. When these elements are concentrated in sacramental actions and viewed through the corrective lens of Scripture, they reveal this intention with an even greater clarity. Through her depictions of the sacred nature of ordinary people and places, Robinson articulates a vision that invites the reader to see the divine in the common.