Vox - Election polls 2016: trends in presidential, Senate, and House raceshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2016-12-19T10:15:59-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/132664652016-12-19T10:15:59-05:002016-12-19T10:15:59-05:00Why the Electoral College is the absolute worst, explained
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<figcaption>Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty</figcaption>
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<p id="GKmTS1">Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump in last month’s presidential election. But due to the magic of the Electoral College, Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.</p>
<p id="rNYdj8">Yes, the November 8 “presidential election” was in actuality the venerable ritual in which the residents of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and a few other states got the privilege of choosing the president of the United States of America. </p>
<p id="HRCDmh">Or, to be more precise, it was the venerable ritual in which all the states chose their representatives in the <em>E</em><em>lectoral </em><em>C</em><em>ollege</em>. It’s those people who are going to technically pick the president this Monday.</p>
<p id="lja3dJ">It’s a patchwork Frankenstein’s monster of a system, which in the best of times merely ensures millions of Americans’ votes are irrelevant to the outcome because they don’t live in competitive states, and in the worst of times could be vulnerable to a major crisis.</p>
<p id="4lxmmb">Amazingly enough, though, nothing in the Constitution gives American voters the right to choose their president. That power is reserved for those 538 <em>actual people </em>who will meet in their respective states this Monday — the electors. It's up to the states to decide how to appoint them.</p>
<p id="7rvCxa">Despite the oddness and unfairness of this system, its defenders argue that it ordinarily “works” just fine. States award electors based on the outcome of the popular vote in the state. Those electors almost always end up voting the way they’re expected to. And the winner of the national popular vote is usually also the winner in the Electoral College. </p>
<p id="hR9RDs">But “usually” will be cold comfort to Democrats, who have now won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College in two of the past five elections.</p>
<h3 id="37cp4M">1) What is the Electoral College, and how does it work?</h3>
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<cite><a href="http://www.270towin.com/">270towin.com</a></cite>
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<p id="npTdvX">The presidential election is generally portrayed as a battle to win states and their accompanying electoral votes. Hillary Clinton won Vermont, so she got its three electoral votes. Donald Trump won Alaska, so he got its three electoral votes. Whoever gets to 270 or more electoral votes first — a majority of the 538 total — wins the election.</p>
<p id="lYcgg7">So rather simply trying to win the most <em>actual votes</em> in the country, a presidential campaign must try to put together a map of <em>state victories</em> that will amass more than 270 electoral votes. That’s the simplified version.</p>
<p id="KDfa5p">What’s happening under the hood, though, is more complicated. When people go to the polls to vote for a presidential candidate, what they are actually doing is voting for each party’s nominated slate of <em>electors</em> in their respective states (or, in the case of Maine and Nebraska, in congressional districts too). </p>
<p id="CnCw5N">So when Donald Trump won the state of Alaska, the practical effect was that the Republican Party’s <a href="https://www.elections.alaska.gov/ec_eia.php">nominated elector slate there</a> — former Gov. Sean Parnell, Jacqueline Tupou, and Carolyn Leman — officially became Alaska’s three electors. </p>
<p id="i7W79i">This process repeated itself across the country, resulting in the selection of the Electoral College — the 538 electors who will cast their votes for president in their respective states this Monday. (In the modern era, this ceremonial occasion has been a formality that reiterates an outcome known well in advance.)</p>
<h3 id="64TYFh">2) But the outcome of the presidential election is really just settled in a few swing states, right?</h3>
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<cite>Vox</cite>
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<p id="xL15UA">The Democratic and Republican parties have each developed solid bases in a series of states that are all but certain to vote for them in a presidential year. But the Electoral College winner will be determined by those few swing states that are more divided politically and look like they could go either way. This year, only the states in gray above were decided by a margin of less than 9 percentage points, as of Wednesday afternoon.</p>
<p id="Gh6FsE">The swing states’ dominance is a consequence of the fact that almost every state chooses to allot all its electoral votes to whoever comes in first place statewide, regardless of his or her margin of victory. </p>
<p id="ZeVEkt">That is, it doesn’t matter whether Clinton wins New York by a 30 percent margin or a 10 percent margin, since she’ll get the same amount of electoral votes either way. But the difference between winning Florida by 0.1 percent and losing it by 0.1 percent is crucial, since 29 electoral votes could flip.</p>
<p id="EetMTI">Naturally, then, when the general election comes around, candidates ignore every noncompetitive state — meaning the vast majority of the country — and pour their resources into the few that tend to swing back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. That’s the best strategy for reaching that magic number, 270.</p>
<h3 id="1cXGSO">3) That seems unfair.</h3>
<p id="V3BvAK">Well, there’s a lot that’s unfair — or at the very least undemocratic — about the Electoral College.</p>
<p id="fOgb3B">For one, the winner of the nationwide popular vote can lose the presidency. In 2000, Al Gore won half a million more votes than George W. Bush nationwide, but Bush won the presidency after he was declared the winner in Florida by a mere 537 votes. And that wasn’t the first time — electoral college/popular vote splits happened in 1876 and 1888 too, and occurred in 2016 too.</p>
<p id="e4t2Z7">Second, there’s swing state privilege. Millions of votes in safe states end up being “wasted,” at least in terms of the presidential race, because it makes no difference whether Clinton wins California by 4 million votes, 400,000 votes, or 40 votes — in any scenario, she gets its 55 electors. Meanwhile, states like Florida and Ohio get the power to tip the outcome just because they happen to be closely divided politically. </p>
<p id="3eJbFL">Third, a small state bias is also built in, since every state is guaranteed at least three electors (the combination of their representation in the House and Senate). The way this shakes out in the math, the 4 percent of the country’s population in the smallest states end up being allotted 8 percent of Electoral College votes.</p>
<p id="ZNHJzt">And fourth, there’s the possibility for those electors themselves to hijack the outcome. </p>
<h3 id="oVFgT3">4) Wait, the electors can hijack the outcome of the presidential election? What?</h3>
<p id="rdiQyD">For decades, it’s been assumed that the 538 electors will essentially rubber-stamp the outcome in their respective states, and they mostly have. But there’s scarily little <em>assurance</em> that they’ll actually do so. </p>
<p id="E6y35d">According to the <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/the-electoral-college.aspx#nomination">National Conference of State Legislatures</a>, about 30 of the 50 states have passed laws "binding" their electors to vote in accordance with the presidential popular vote in their state. But in most, the penalty for not doing so is only a fine, and it’s unclear whether stiffer penalties would hold up in court — it’s never been tested, and the Constitution does appear to give the electors the right to make the final call. Furthermore, there are still 20 or so states that haven’t even tried to bind their electors.</p>
<p id="KsLpwN">This hasn’t mattered much in the past because, almost always, the parties do a good enough job of vetting their respective electoral slates to ensure that they will indeed loyally back their party’s presidential nominee. </p>
<p id="LHwlkt">But there have been a few rogue, faithless, or just plain incompetent electors over the years — and their votes have all been counted as cast.</p>
<ul>
<li id="qBwMgz">In 1837, rogue electors from Virginia briefly <a href="http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2016/02/the-day-the-senate-picked-a-u-s-vice-president-on-its-own/">blocked the seating</a> of the vice president-elect because they were offended that he had a mixed-race common-law wife. (The Senate overrode them.)</li>
<li id="2M5u7D">A Democratic elector from Tennessee cast his ballot for segregationist third-party candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948, and a Republican elector from North Carolina voted for segregationist third-party candidate George Wallace in 1968.</li>
<li id="1znQ8l">In 2000, an elector from Washington, DC, withheld an electoral vote from Al Gore, because she wanted to protest the fact that DC didn’t have representation in Congress. </li>
<li id="wk7uBg">Perhaps most bizarrely of all, in 2004, an elector from Minnesota who was supposed to vote for John Kerry for president instead voted for <em>John Edwards</em>. (It’s <a href="http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/12/13_ap_electors/">believed that this was an accident</a>, but since the votes were cast anonymously, we don’t really know for sure. Great system!)</li>
<li id="fYLbwJ">And this year, one Democratic elector candidate from Washington state has <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/6/13540504/electors-electoral-college-washington">repeatedly said</a> that he will “absolutely not” cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton if she wins his state. We’ll see whether he follows through.</li>
</ul>
<p id="OJlEWJ">Rogue electors have never been numerous enough to actually affect the outcome of a presidential race. But it really doesn’t look like there’s much stopping them should they choose to do so.</p>
<p id="uOcFcd">Now, some defenders of the system, like Georgetown professor <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-electoral-college-is-anti-democraticand-thats-a-good-thing-2016-09-12">Jason Brennan</a>, take the comforting view that the power of electors to go rogue is a good thing, since they could conceivably save America from a popularly elected majoritarian candidate who could oppress the minority. </p>
<p id="Rrghsi">But it seems just as likely, if not more likely, that electors could <em>install</em> that candidate with dictatorial tendencies <em>against</em> that popular will. Perhaps some electors are wise sages with better judgment than the American people, but others are likely malign, corrupt, or driven by their own idiosyncratic beliefs. (You’ll notice above that several of those historical rogue electors in history had racist motivations.)</p>
<p id="pLgoKB">In any case, if we had a process in which the electors were notable citizens who were chosen <em>because</em> they’re supposed to exercise good judgment, maybe Brennan’s defense would make sense. But in the system we have today, the electors are chosen to be rubber stamps. As a result, there’s incredibly little attention paid to <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/thepeoplewhopickthepresident/2016">who those electors</a> even are outside internal party machinations in each state. Any defection by an elector would, essentially, be a random act that could that could hold our system hostage.</p>
<h3 id="spTBJJ">5) Why do we use such a bizarre system anyway?</h3>
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<cite>Hulton Archive/Getty</cite>
<figcaption>The Constitutional Convention of 1787.</figcaption>
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<p id="qE61gd">The electoral college is, essentially, a vestigial structure — a leftover from a bygone era in which the founding fathers specifically <em>did not</em> want a nationwide vote of the American people to choose their next president. </p>
<p id="gUeKHt">Instead, the framers gave a small, lucky group of people called the “electors” the power to make that choice. These would be some upstanding citizens chosen by the various states, who would make up their own minds on who should be the president (they’d have to vote on the same day in their respective home states, to make it tougher for them to coordinate with each other).</p>
<p id="B7k2Y6">The Constitution remained silent on just how these elite electors would be chosen, saying only that each state legislature would decide how to appoint them. Initially, some state legislators picked the electors themselves, while other states had some form of statewide vote in which the electors themselves would be candidates.</p>
<p id="otElb4">But over the new nation’s first few decades, two powerful trends in American politics brought attention to the Electoral College system’s shortcomings — the rise of national political parties that would contest presidential elections, and the growing consensus that all white men (not just the elite) should get the right to vote, including for president.</p>
<p id="MlPHSZ">The parties and states responded to these trends by trying to jury-rig the existing system. Political parties began to nominate slates of electors in each state — electors they believed could be counted on to vote for the presidential nominee. Eventually, many states even passed laws <em>requiring</em> electors to vote for their party’s presidential nominee.</p>
<p id="liS5Ya">Meanwhile, by the 1830s, almost every state had changed its laws so that all electors were chosen winner-take-all through a statewide vote, according to <a href="http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Hx/ElectoralCollege.html">Richard Berg-Andersson</a>. The point of all this was to try to make the presidential election function like ordinary statewide elections for governor or senator, at least within each state. </p>
<h3 id="HOtF2u">6) Well, are there arguments <em>for</em> the Electoral College?</h3>
<p id="IxTD8h">It’s tough to argue with a straight face that this bizarre system is <em>inherently</em> better than just a simple vote. After all, why doesn’t any state elect its governor with an “Electoral College” of various counties? Why does pretty much every other country that elects a president use a simple popular vote, or a vote accompanied with a runoff?</p>
<p id="Knm2Tv">Now, you can argue that the Electoral College’s seeming distortions of the popular will aren’t as bad as they seem — for instance, by pointing out that swing states <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/10/12/how_likely_is_an_electoral_votepopular_vote_split_115749.html">tend to swing along with the nation</a> rather than overriding its will, or that the popular vote winner almost always wins. But of course, that’s not guaranteed to always be the case, and the biggest major exception (the 2000 election) was an incredibly consequential one.</p>
<p id="IjfjaW">Others try to fearmonger about the prospect of a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/curtis-gans/national-popular-vote_b_1189390.html">contested nationwide recount</a> — which, sure, would be ugly, but if you’ll recall, the Florida recount was also extremely ugly. And since there are so many more votes cast nationally, it’s much less likely that the national vote would end up a near tie than that a tipping point’s state vote would end up as a near tie.</p>
<p id="zl0ZYJ">Some argue that the Electoral College ensures <a href="http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf">regional balance</a>, since it’s mathematically impossible for a candidate with overwhelming support from just one region to be elected. But realistically, the country is big and broad enough that this couldn’t happen under a popular vote system either — any regional candidate would need to get <em>some</em> support outside his or her region.</p>
<p id="alb0Pk">But when we get down to brass tacks, the most serious objections to reforming the Electoral College come from rural and small-state elites who fear that under a national popular vote system, they’d be ignored and elections would be decided by people who live in cities.</p>
<p id="tUshnk">Gary Gregg of the University of Louisville <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/keep-electoral-college-for-fair-presidential-votes-084651">wrote in 2012</a> that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to “dire consequences.” Specifically, he feared that elections would “strongly tilt” in favor of “candidates who can win huge electoral margins in the country’s major metropolitan areas.” He continued:</p>
<blockquote><p id="oAuqVI">If the United States does away with the Electoral College, future presidential elections will go to candidates and parties willing to cater to urban voters and skew the nation’s policies toward big-city interests. Small-town issues and rural values will no longer be their concern.</p></blockquote>
<p id="4wWCG3">And Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware (three electoral votes), has made a similar case, calling proposals for a national popular vote an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20091001064458/http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110008855">“urban power grab.”</a></p>
<p id="KdfIjr">But a national popular vote system wouldn’t <em>devalue</em> the votes of people who live in rural states and small towns. It would <em>accurately</em> value them by treating them equal to people who live in cities, rather than giving them an extra weighting. Furthermore, small-state interests are built into the Senate’s math (where Delaware absurdly gets as many senators as California), and many House districts are rural. So rural and small-state areas are hardly hurting for national political representation.</p>
<p id="blEDby">Sure, candidates might end up spending less time stumping in the rural areas that currently happen to be lucky enough to fall within the borders of swing states, and more time in urban centers. But is that really a convincing rebuttal to the pretty basic and obvious argument that in the most important electoral choice Americans make, their votes should be treated equally?</p>
<h3 id="CB45UV">7) Is there any hope that the US will ditch the Electoral College someday?</h3>
<p id="ybQDaV">For decades, polls have shown that large majorities of Americans <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/159881/americans-call-term-limits-end-electoral-college.aspx">would prefer</a> a popular vote system instead of the Electoral College. For instance, a 2013 Gallup poll showed 63 percent of adults wanted to do away with it, and a mere 29 percent wanted to keep it. (However, these margins <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/310973-poll-plurality-of-americans-prefer-the-popular-vote">have tightened</a> since the 2016 election.)</p>
<p id="Grja6j">But to ditch the Electoral College entirely, the US would have to pass a constitutional amendment (passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate and approved by 38 states) — or convene a constitutional convention (which has never been done, but would have to be called for by 34 states). Either method is vanishingly unlikely, because each would require many small states to approve a change that would reduce their influence on the presidential outcome.</p>
<p id="RdIRIg">There is one potential workaround, however: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a clever proposal that uses the Constitution’s ambiguity on electors to its own ends.</p>
<p id="YN92tX">A state signing on to the compact agrees that it will pledge all its electors not to its state winner but to the victor in the <em>national </em>popular vote — <em>but only if </em>states controlling 270 or more electoral votes have agreed to do the same. If they do, and everything works as planned, then whoever wins the popular vote will necessarily win the electoral vote too.</p>
<p id="aMA413">It’s a fun proposal that’s already been enacted into law by 10 states (including massive California and New York) and the District of Columbia, which together control 165 electoral votes. But there’s one big obstacle: All of the states that have adopted it are solidly Democratic, with zero being Republican or swing states. </p>
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<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
<figcaption>States that have signed on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. They’re all blue.</figcaption>
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<p id="z2EB7S">So unless a bunch of swing states decide to reduce their own power, or Republican politicians conclude that a system bringing the power of small and rural states in line with that of big urban centers is a good idea, the compact isn’t going to get the support it needs, <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-a-plan-to-circumvent-the-electoral-college-is-probably-doomed/">as Nate Silver has written</a>. (Furthermore, it wouldn’t solve the rogue elector problem.)</p>
<p id="pftlG6">As messed up as the Electoral College is, then, we’re likely stuck with it for some time. Your safe state vote might be wasted, or it might even be subverted by rogue electors.</p>
<p id="aQYZZa">But at least you’ll get to <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">draw fun maps</a>.</p>
<p id="ao4sq7"><em>This article was originally published before the election. Minor updates have been made to reflect that the election has concluded.</em></p>
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<h3 id="xvvoSG">Watch: The bad map we see every election</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/12315574/electoral-college-explained-presidential-elections-2016Andrew Prokop2016-11-09T00:16:20-05:002016-11-09T00:16:20-05:00How exit polls work: when they're released, which states they cover, and what they mean
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<figcaption><a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a></figcaption>
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<p>How to interpret an exit poll.</p> <p id="cDxZg7">The American public will find out whether <a href="http://www.vox.com/hillary-clinton">Hillary Clinton</a> or <a href="http://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> has won the <a href="http://www.vox.com/presidential-election">2016 presidential election</a> long before the last vote is counted. </p>
<p id="W3TBPU">Or rather, we’ll think we know. Because as polls are closing across America, media outlets are releasing exit poll results — predicting who will win a state, and providing more information about who really turned out to vote and why.</p>
<p id="dM47pE">The exit polls will shape the story of the election — they’ll provide the record that people will refer to in the future when they talk about what issues mattered and how our 45th president built a successful coalition. </p>
<p id="Vr5N31">But to understand how accurate the exit polls really are — and whether you should trust their predictions about who’s going to win — you have to understand how the exit polls are conducted, and why. If you’re a critical consumer of exit poll data, you’re less likely to be duped by bad information on election night, and more likely to understand whether the exit polls are really telling the story of the 2016 election.</p>
<h3 id="Jrjprj">How do exit polls work?</h3>
<p id="he9o8X">Every November election, exit polls are conducted by a group of media outlets called the National Election Pool: NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN, and the Associated Press. They hire a pollster to conduct the exit poll, but they're the ones that own the information — and that get to be the first to report the results.</p>
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<cite>Joe Raedle/Getty</cite>
<figcaption>Exit polls can really ruin the mood at an election night party. (This one was in 2008.)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="nUDib1">The actual polling happens in two parts.</p>
<p id="sPEoCg">The most visible part of the poll happens in person on Election Day. An army of thousands of interviewers are sent to hundreds of polling places around the country. Interviewers approach a certain number of voters who are leaving the polling place — the exact fraction surveyed is secret — and ask them to fill out the written exit poll survey. Pollsters estimate they’ll interview about 85,000 people on Election Day.</p>
<p id="Ct0M8d">But part of the exit poll has already happened before Election Day. As early voting has become more popular, it's gotten harder to predict vote totals just by talking to people who vote on Election Day. So for the past several elections, exit pollsters have started calling people and asking if they voted early or absentee — then conducting exit poll interviews by phone. (In 2016, pollsters estimated they’d contact about 16,000 voters this way.)</p>
<h3 id="SaSXFE">What can you learn from exit polls?</h3>
<p id="Jdm7um">The primary purpose of the exit poll is to allow TV networks and the AP to project who's won races as soon after the polls close as possible. </p>
<p id="PH6nsA">That means that in 2016, only 28 states are going to have state exit poll results published. That includes obvious presidential battlegrounds (Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin), states with key Senate races (Indiana, Missouri), and states that are just really big (New York, California).</p>
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<p id="wEuazl">If a state is clearly a safe state for either Democrats or Republicans — Massachusetts or Tennessee, for example — exit pollsters still send people to do interviews there, for the purpose of the national poll. But they don’t collect enough interviews to publish reliable poll results.</p>
<p id="wzNhrP">The exit poll pool cut back its efforts since 2012, when 31 states were surveyed in depth. That could lead to some surprises. Alaska, for example, isn’t being surveyed this year but has been surprisingly tight in presidential polling. But it’s hard to imagine either Hillary Clinton or <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/6/13533624/donald-trump-270-electoral-votes-presidential-election">Donald Trump paving a path to 270 electoral votes</a> without the exit poll identifying the winner.</p>
<p id="A62ZEu">But the exit poll isn’t just about whom people voted for — that’s why there are interviewers even in safe states. Voters are asked to provide basic demographic information like gender, age, and ethnicity. Furthermore, they're asked some questions about their personal viewpoints and behaviors — like their religion and churchgoing habits — and questions about major issues facing the country.</p>
<p id="qXMkE7">That means the exit poll data is actually more detailed, in some ways, than the official US Census vote tallies that come out several weeks after the election. It can offer the first hints — and often the most important ones — to what voters thought this election was about. That's very important to pundits as they try to interpret what it means.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Candy Crowley debate" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/92xYy1wVVth-9ljywcyYemy6DGk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2425028/154244368.0.jpg">
<cite>John Moore/Getty</cite>
<figcaption>CNN’s Candy Crowley is one of the people who’ll have to do some high-speed interpretation of exit poll results.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="s0LxmN">In 2004, for example, post-election chatter focused on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/04/politics/campaign/04poll.html?_r=0"><strong>"values voters."</strong></a> Voters who attended religious services regularly had overwhelmingly voted for George W. Bush. That narrative came out of the exit poll data.</p>
<p id="ToMhIw">Of course, what voters say is important to them is partly what campaigns have told voters is important — there's political science research <a href="https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1217332406&disposition=inline"><strong>suggesting</strong></a> that when a campaign hammers particular issues, those are the issues that the candidate's supporters say are most important to them. But the exit poll is still the best opportunity the national media has, in some ways, to figure out who voted, why, and how.</p>
<h3 id="RIWkBR">This is the 21st century. Why aren’t we seeing exit poll results in real time?</h3>
<p id="s1sh9u">The media outlets running the exit poll want to be able to describe<em> </em>who's voting, and whom they're voting for, to the public as early as possible. But they don't want to have any influence on who ends up voting — they don't want anyone deciding not to vote because they've already seen what the exit polls say and they don't think their vote will matter. (There's some evidence that this happened <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEgQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.time.com%2Ftime%2Fpolitics%2Farticle%2F0%2C8599%2C1856081%2C00.html&ei=D-xYVN_xF8yGigL694GgAQ&usg=AFQjCNFdKjE4buVWW2bAjvun7dlCdlpj4A&sig2=Cl_YgkaL22rZ9pkg9L9saQ&bvm=bv.78677474,d.cGE"><strong>back in 1980</strong></a>,<strong> </strong>when some outlets projected that Ronald Reagan would win the presidential election before polls closed on the West Coast.)</p>
<p id="dbezQk">In some countries, like the United Kingdom, it's actually illegal for any media outlet to report exit poll results before the polls close. In the US, it's not illegal, but there's a binding agreement among the media outlets that run the exit poll that none of them are allowed to leak any results before the polls have closed. </p>
<p id="RAogdg">Sometimes, networks slip up. In 2014, for example, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/4/7157939/2014-midterm-elections-exit-polls-fox-news">Fox News showed early exit poll results</a> in New Hampshire before polls had closed there in a tight Senate race. The network argued that it hadn’t broken the exit poll rules because it technically didn’t show how many respondents <em>had voted</em> for Jeanne Shaheen or Scott Brown — it showed how many people said they <em>would </em>vote for each candidate if the race came down to a runoff. (Other outlets disagreed, but Fox wasn’t kicked out of the consortium that uses the exit poll.)</p>
<p id="fUpLLO">In 2016, some media outlets are trying to find their way around that agreement: Slate, for example, is using its own election data tool to <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/follow_slate_and_votecastr_for_real_time_election_day_turnout_tracking.html">share turnout projections in real time</a>. But it’s not using the official exit poll results.</p>
<h3 id="bV9Vkv">So when do exit poll results come out?</h3>
<p id="dIWH74">Reporters are allowed to see some of the exit poll results as they're being compiled throughout the day, but they're under super-strict security — we're talking no-phones-allowed-in-the-room-where-the-results-are-kept levels of security. And there's a strictly regimented schedule for when exit poll results can get released.</p>
<p id="F1w4Gk">Around 5 pm ET, media outlets are allowed to start reporting what the exit poll says about <em>who </em>turned out to vote — the racial, age, or party breakdown of voters. But these are preliminary results, and they're going to be skewed toward people who voted early in the day. So groups who tend to vote later in the day — like young voters — might be underrepresented in the stats that first get announced.</p>
<p id="hXQyLk"><a href="http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/4/7152639/poll-closing-times-voting-ends/in/6914992"><strong>As soon as polls close in a particular state</strong></a>, media outlets are allowed to project who's going to win elections there, based on the exit poll results. In deep blue or deep red states, where the outcome of the election isn't really in doubt, media outlets don't waste any time projecting winners. So the minute 7 pm hits on the East Coast, for example, you can expect to see CNN and the AP make a bunch of projections at once. In states with closer races, media outlets will often wait to get the final exit poll results (including people who voted right before the polls closed), or wait to see how actual vote tallies stack up when precincts start reporting official vote totals.</p>
<h3 id="No1DGE">Don't exit poll results ever get leaked?</h3>
<p id="yCNGnz">There has never been an actual leaked exit poll in the US. But there have been plenty of hoaxes.</p>
<p id="Xfi820">If you see anyone on Facebook sharing "LEAKED EXIT POLL RESULTS" while the polls are still open, be very, very skeptical. </p>
<p id="JY7Wfp">This will be a little tricky in 2016, because Slate’s <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/follow_slate_and_votecastr_for_real_time_election_day_turnout_tracking.html">real-time Votecastr project</a> might confuse people into thinking that exit poll results are being leaked or released throughout the day. As long as you understand what those results really are — estimates of who will win based on turnout projections — you’ll be fine, but don’t mistake them for “leaked” exit poll results.</p>
<p id="bkb6i0">And definitely don't decide not to vote just because you saw something in a leaked exit poll.</p>
<h3 id="h8VRMh">Are exit polls always right?</h3>
<p id="AyA7AT">No. In fact, there are some particular challenges that exit polls have faced for the past several elections that they still haven't found a way to work out:</p>
<p id="CtrwTQ"><strong>Early voters. </strong>The phone poll for early voters is a relatively new addition to the exit poll— and it’s still a relatively minor one, compared with in-person polling. Early voting itself, meanwhile, has gotten very popular very quickly. In key states like Nevada and Florida, it’s estimated that fewer people will show up to vote on Election Day than showed up during early voting. </p>
<p id="nGCbkm">The exit poll understands the huge role early voters will play — pollsters estimated to Pew that 35 to 40 percent of all voting will happen early this year — but it’s not clear that their polling can accurately capture who those people are. It runs into the problems any phone poll has — namely, that it's difficult to poll people who only have mobile phones. And because this year saw such a huge surge in early voting, it’s hard to use past years to predict how representative a sample is. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Wendy Davis, after voting early on October 20, 2014." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yEzLd7sKDJZQJLLc6OUNlVvtJh4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2377730/457549036.0.jpg">
<figcaption>No exit pollster here!</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="qy8keA">It’s unlikely that any state is going to get called the wrong way because the exit polls didn’t include enough early voters there. Networks are aware of the early voting data, and if, say, the exit polls suggest Donald Trump will eke out a narrow victory in Nevada, networks will probably wait until some of the votes are counted to see whether Trump was really able to surmount Hillary Clinton’s early voting lead there. But the demographic and other data the exit poll provides might be skewed in favor of people who voted in person — who might not be the voters who decided this election.</p>
<p id="9GUoJK"><strong>Small groups. </strong>Like any poll, the smaller a sample size is, the less likely it is to be representative. So the exit poll is pretty reliable when it comes to large demographics (men, women, Democrats, Republicans) but less reliable when it gets to small demographics (young voters, Jewish voters).</p>
<p id="H1bsBT"><strong>Voters of color. </strong>In addition to the general problems with smaller voting demographics, <a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2010/11/04/how-the-national-exit-poll-badly-missed-the-latino-vote-in-2010/"><strong>analysts believe</strong></a> the exit poll has a tendency to oversample a particular kind of voter of color — the kind who lives in majority-white areas.</p>
<p id="nGFbGJ">Here's the logic. Even though the public doesn't know exactly how the exit poll chooses where to go, it's possible to make some educated guesses. The exit poll is trying to predict the margin of victory for one candidate over another across the state. So when it decides which polling places to put interviewers outside of, it's reasonable to assume that it's choosing lots of swing precincts — precincts that are harder to predict and likely to affect the outcome. Those are going to be largely white precincts.</p>
<p id="Hh1zUU">Alternatively, says Matt Barreto of Latino Decisions, exit pollsters might choose a precinct as a benchmark based on the last cycle. For example, if a precinct voted for the Democratic senator 70 percent to 30 percent in 2008, the pollster might choose to put an exit poll interviewer at that precinct to see if the Democrat is getting less than 70 percent of the vote this time around. But pollsters are not necessarily paying attention to the racial makeup of those precincts.</p>
<p id="egLiVF">Here's why this is a problem: The voters of color pollsters run into in majority-white precincts might not be representative of the voters of color across the state. In particular, according to <a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2010/11/04/how-the-national-exit-poll-badly-missed-the-latino-vote-in-2010/"><strong>Latino Decisions</strong></a>, voters of color living among whites are "more assimilated, better educated, higher income, and more conservative than other minority voters."</p>
<p id="f5mX5Z">Check out the difference in the percentage of nonwhite voters who had a college degree in 2010, according to the US Census versus the exit poll:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Education level nonwhite voters exit polls" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9x6MohG23Q1AuuTSi_smIO1EDB4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2424660/Screen_Shot_2014-11-03_at_4.32.31_PM.0.png">
<cite>Latino Decisions</cite>
</figure>
<p id="Vac4dd">And the problem is even worse for Latino voters, because exit polls are almost never offered in Spanish — even though more than a quarter of Latino voters prefer Spanish to English. So the exit polls oversample English-speaking Latinos.</p>
<p id="emZh3x">All these issues together mean that the exit polls sometimes think Latino voters are much more favorable to Republicans than they actually are. In 2010, for example, Harry Reid won reelection to the Senate by turning out Latinos to vote against his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, who was running as a hardcore immigration hawk. But according to the exit polls, <a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2010/11/04/how-the-national-exit-poll-badly-missed-the-latino-vote-in-2010/">30 percent of Nevada Latinos voted for Angle</a> — many more than voted for John McCain for president in 2008. (When the official vote tallies came out, it became clear that more than<a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/2010/11/15/proving-the-exit-polls-wrong-harry-reid-did-win-over-90-of-the-latino-vote/"><strong> 90 percent of Latinos had voted for Reid</strong></a>.)</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="sad Sharron Angle supporters" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GnlxWypJlK_t3iNKqNVv5Na2IZU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2424984/106463629.0.jpg">
<figcaption>It turns out their candidate didn’t get 30 percent of the Latino vote after all...</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="aZObbG">So are exit polls usually biased toward Republicans?</h3>
<p id="zOqCqI">Nope! As a matter of fact, even with the issues listed above, exit polls have historically been biased toward Democrats more often than they've been biased toward Republicans.</p>
<p id="Tda1QJ">In 2004, for example, the exit polls <a href="http://www.latinodecisions.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/2004_evaluation.pdf"><strong>overestimated John Kerry's share of the vote</strong></a> (by "more than one standard error") in 26 states; it overestimated George W. Bush's share in only four states. The reason for the error? Bush voters were more likely than Kerry voters to refuse to answer a pollster's questions after they left the voting booth.</p>
<h3 id="vUsJpI">Are the exit polls going to accurately predict the 2016 election?</h3>
<p id="okGoAl">Traditionally, the exit polls don’t get the outcome wrong that often. The errors in exit polls aren't enough to get the outcome of the race wrong — they just might misstate how much the victor won by, or who supported him/her the most.</p>
<p id="sw9zCO">Admittedly, this is not a typical election, and it’s possible the electorate won’t be typical either. The data from early voting suggests that pollsters might have underestimated the Latino vote and (perhaps) misjudged how many of them would vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s the sort of error the exit polls would also be liable to make. On the other side, Republican champions of Donald Trump suggest he’ll be able to turn out unexpected numbers of white voters without college degrees — who are liable to live in deep red areas where the exit pollsters won’t be either.</p>
<p id="Ps2SKG">But these are reasons to be cautious of the demographics that the exit polls present in their detailed data. Exit polls aren’t the only reason a state gets called. By the time exit polls can be released, networks have a day’s worth of information about how an election has gone in a particular state — and if they think that information shows the exit poll might be wrong, they’ll wait to call the state for Trump or Clinton.</p>
<p id="leokTC">If the polls close on Election Day and CNN immediately projects that your preferred presidential candidate will lose your state, don't hold your breath for an eventual victory. But if the exit polls project your candidate will win and he or she ends up losing, it’s the fault of the exit poll, not proof of a rigged election.</p>
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<h3 id="SL71lz">What to watch for in the early states</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/8/13563308/exit-polls-2016-time-election-resultsDara Lind2016-11-08T23:43:38-05:002016-11-08T23:43:38-05:00How Hillary Clinton could win 270 electoral votes
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jm7ur8Gmed2X5MUKEqw_TxAkys8=/0x0:4950x3713/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51710681/GettyImages_506782162.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="mrUfbc"><a href="http://www.vox.com/hillary-clinton">Hillary Clinton</a> is the favorite to win Tuesday’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/presidential-election">presidential election</a>. But the race has tightened of late in both national and swing state polls, and there’s been increasing chatter suggesting that Clinton’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13502350/hillary-clinton-polls-firewall">“firewall”</a> protecting an<a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/12315574/electoral-college-explained-presidential-elections-2016"> Electoral College</a> majority could be in danger.</p>
<p id="zAboY0">The big picture, though, is that Clinton has two broad paths toward reaching 270 electoral votes:</p>
<p id="l1Erc6"><strong>1)</strong> Holding her six “firewall” states: Virginia, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. Those states, combined with the solidly Democratic states, would give her the presidency.</p>
<p id="R2owLB"><strong>2)</strong> If she loses one or more firewall states, she’d likely have to make up for those losses with similarly sized wins in one or more of the following: Nevada, North Carolina, and Florida — the diverse toss-up state trio.</p>
<p id="41IYFG">Let’s walk through the math. Clinton starts off with 200 or so likely electoral votes, from the blue states, below:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9Z8EWpzhWDuu09MP4tvBrzPVh8E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7415739/Screen_Shot_2016_11_05_at_9.02.53_PM.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="C1Dde2">Now, this list of solid Clinton states does include New Mexico, Minnesota, and the statewide Maine contest (its congressional districts award electoral votes separately). The Trump campaign has argued that all of them are competitive, but political observers have greeted those claims with intense skepticism. And in any case, if Clinton is losing those states she probably has much bigger problems elsewhere.</p>
<p id="rdEK66">If Clinton does win this batch of blue states, though, she’d need to put together a combination of 70 or more electoral votes in the remaining contests to get to 270. Here’s how she could do it. (And <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/6/13533624/donald-trump-270-electoral-votes-presidential-election">check out Trump’s path to victory here</a>.)</p>
<h3 id="npXrYd">Clinton’s first shot at winning is through protecting her firewall</h3>
<p id="MhT0xP">Back around August, polls started to indicate that Clinton’s easiest path to 270 electoral votes could be through winning six states in particular where she’s led the vast majority of polls this year: <strong>Virginia</strong>, <strong>Colorado</strong>, <strong>Michigan</strong>, <strong>Wisconsin</strong>, <strong>Pennsylvania</strong>, and <strong>New Hampshire</strong>. </p>
<p id="Zu80dx">These states have often been referred to as the “firewall” protecting Clinton’s Electoral College majority. If she won them while holding on to the solid blue states, she’d win 272 electoral votes, and therefore the presidency, without even needing to win other swing states like Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pdMobjw4FnuUKUnlqpgfpBT-Qvg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7415757/EC_firewall.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="Y5o5E8">As Election Day approaches, though, the strength of Clinton’s firewall is coming into question.</p>
<p id="oiDKQ3">Analysts generally think that Clinton is still in good shape in <strong>Colorado</strong> (nine electoral votes) and <strong>Virginia</strong> (13 electoral votes), two states with sizable nonwhite populations and growing numbers of educated white voters. And <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/poll/">high-quality polling</a> in <strong>Wisconsin</strong> (10 electoral votes) suggests she’s still ahead there too.</p>
<p id="qQSu9o">Yet she’s gotten more mixed news in the three other firewall states.</p>
<p id="hzjT9M">In <strong>Pennsylvania</strong> (20 electoral votes), the biggest and most important firewall state, no recent poll has shown Trump ahead. But Clinton’s lead <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/pa/pennsylvania_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5964.html">appears to have shrunk</a> to just a couple of points, on average.</p>
<p id="yUUWDT">In <strong>Michigan</strong> (16 electoral votes), the second-biggest firewall state, Clinton’s team has long thought the race wasn’t seriously competitive and didn’t bother to run ads there until recently. But the newest polls have <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/mi/michigan_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-6008.html">shown her lead shrinking</a> to the low single digits all of a sudden, and the Clinton campaign is scheduling several last-minute campaign events there to shore up her support.</p>
<p id="uSw3ie">And in <strong>New Hampshire</strong> (four electoral votes), Clinton <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-6022.html">had led every poll since July</a> — until last week, when five new polls all either showed a tie race or Trump taking the lead. Now, another poll just released shows her <a href="http://www.wmur.com/article/new-unh-poll-democrats-clinton-hassan-van-ostern-lead-republican-foes/8252941">up 11</a>, but still, it’s not entirely clear whether the Granite State is really still part of the firewall.</p>
<p id="0KxvcP">Overall, if Clinton holds the firewall, she wins. But if one or more firewall states do end up falling, she’ll have to make up for those losses elsewhere.</p>
<h3 id="NkRIQd">Clinton could compensate for some firewall losses by winning more diverse toss-up states</h3>
<p id="3LgmGz">Outside of the firewall are three states that appear from polls to be pure toss-ups — Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada.</p>
<p id="phciPB">This trio of states has tended, over the course of the campaign, to be tighter in the polls than the firewall states. In normal circumstances, that would suggest that they are inherently less pro-Clinton — and so, if the firewall states moved out of her reach, they would move similarly away from her.</p>
<p id="T22QVu">Perhaps that would happen. But the demographic aspects of Trump and Clinton’s respective support bases suggest it’s not guaranteed. Trump’s support is heavily concentrated among non-college-educated white voters — who are actually a pretty big share of the electorate in several firewall states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Hampshire. So Democrats have increasingly gotten nervous that those non-college whites could turn out heavily in those states, particularly after reports of lower black voter turnout so far than in 2012.</p>
<p id="oEfwyi">Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina, on the other hand, all have populations that are a third or more nonwhite. In the former two, those nonwhite voters are mostly Hispanic, and Hispanic voters appear to have been galvanized in opposition to Trump. North Carolina has a much smaller Hispanic population, but it has a reasonably high number of college-educated white voters, many of whom have also tended to oppose Trump.</p>
<p id="Gqg6B7">Furthermore, early voting has proceeded apace in this trio of swing states for weeks — and many observers believe the Clinton campaign is better at turning out early voters than the Trump campaign. Indeed, in all three, votes equivalent to more than 60 percent of total 2012 votes have already been cast. So the Clinton campaign’s ground game had much more time to turn out voters compared to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Hampshire, where there is no in-person early voting.</p>
<h3 id="xJjJPv">The toss-up states Clinton would need to plug up various firewall losses</h3>
<p id="OBXdW6">The firewall states in which Clinton’s prospects appear to be diciest right now are, again, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. So if she lost one or more of them, she’d probably have to make up for it by winning some combination of the toss-up states (Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina) that’s at least roughly equivalent in electoral votes. </p>
<p id="t9Z9nV">Here are the possible ways that could play out:</p>
<p id="pq9q8f"><strong>1)</strong> If Clinton wins only <strong>Nevada</strong> and its six electoral votes, while losing North Carolina and Florida, she’d only be able to cancel out a loss of New Hampshire’s four electoral votes, so she’d need the whole rest of the firewall to hold strong. (Many observers now expect Clinton to win Nevada despite the tight polls, since early voting <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/5/13533864/nevada-trump-clinton-early-voting-polls">seems to have gone well</a> for Democrats there.)</p>
<p id="WUUk9x"><strong>2) </strong>If Clinton wins only <strong>North Carolina </strong>(where 15 electoral votes are at stake), that would probably be a good enough substitute for the loss of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes to give her the presidency. It could also, of course, make up for a New Hampshire loss. But it wouldn’t be sufficient to make up for a loss of both Michigan and New Hampshire, or for the loss of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p id="WosJGl"><strong>3)</strong> Now, if Clinton wins <strong>both North Carolina and Nevada</strong>, that would give her 21 electoral votes, which would be enough to cancel out the loss of either Pennsylvania, Michigan, or New Hampshire alone, or the loss of Michigan and New Hampshire combined.</p>
<p id="mWEJC8"><strong>4) </strong>The easiest way Clinton could help herself is by winning <strong>Florida</strong> and its yuge haul of 29 electoral votes. That would cancel out the loss of any one firewall state, the loss of New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, or the loss of New Hampshire and Michigan.</p>
<p id="Njpw57"><strong>5)</strong> If Clinton wins <strong>Florida and Nevada</strong> (35 electoral votes), she’d also be able to cancel out the loss of Michigan and Pennsylvania together, so long as she held on to New Hampshire.</p>
<p id="eysAkh"><strong>6)</strong> Then if Clinton wins both <strong>Florida and North Carolina</strong> (a hefty 44 electoral votes), she could survive the loss of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire together (whether or not she won Nevada).</p>
<p id="EqSkwB"><strong>7) </strong>Finally, if Clinton won <strong>Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada</strong> together (50 electoral votes), she could survive some pretty massive losses of firewall states. </p>
<p id="qjbWtG">This last scenario is what we might call the “full Brownstein”— referring to Atlantic journalist Ron Brownstein, who has long argued that Democratic support is being concentrated among a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-clinton-conundrum/431949/">“coalition of the ascendant”</a> (nonwhites, young voters, and socially liberal college-educated whites), while the party is losing whites without a college education.</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" align="center">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Not predicting but if HRC loses OH/IA & even NH/MI yet wins with CO/VA/NV/Fl/NC we will have fast forwarded US politics 10 years in 1 cycle</p>— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/RonBrownstein/status/794720773109751808">November 5, 2016</a>
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<p id="GhSuAd">Indeed, here’s what one version of the “full Brownstein” scenario might look like — in which Clinton loses the firewall states of New Hampshire, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (along with <a href="http://www.vox.com/presidential-election/2016/11/8/13502954/ohio-election-results-trump-wins">Ohio</a> and Iowa) while making up for it with North Carolina, Florida, and Nevada. It’s certainly not the most likely map based on current polling (which, again, shows Clinton still ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania), but it would be a tremendously significant map for the future of the Democratic coalition.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6vMWMI2SQAfRLNuj_W2NsGAShPA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7416219/Brownstein_EC_2.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
<figcaption>The full Brownstein.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="4fxiNj">Of course, there are many plausible scenarios where Clinton wins bigger, too. She could hold the firewall <em>and</em> win all three diverse toss-up states. She could also still have a shot at Arizona and Ohio, both of which she continues to contest even though polls indicate they’re leaning toward Trump.</p>
<p id="XAl4f1">But as far as how Hillary Clinton can get more than 270 votes in the first place, the answer seems clear — either she holds her firewall states or she makes up for firewall state losses with wins among the three diverse swing states.</p>
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<h3 id="kp6Uw8">Watch: Why red means Republican and blue means Democrat</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/13533618/hillary-clinton-270-electoral-votes-presidential-electionAndrew Prokop2016-11-08T23:42:00-05:002016-11-08T23:42:00-05:00How Donald Trump could win 270 electoral votes
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EsF1XuAGBSWHsc55JTyXLPYJc5U=/0x0:3537x2653/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51698453/GettyImages_494045244.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Johnny Louis/FilmMagic/Getty</figcaption>
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<p id="YeF1TR"><a href="http://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> is the underdog in Tuesday’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/presidential-election">presidential election</a>. But he still has a shot of winning, at least <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/3/13147678/nate-silver-fivethirtyeight-trump-forecast">if you believe the FiveThirtyEight forecast</a>. So what would his path to Electoral College victory look like?</p>
<p id="zAboY0">Essentially, the likeliest way Trump can top 270 electoral votes appears to be by:</p>
<p id="l1Erc6"><strong>1)</strong> Holding the lean Trump swing states of Iowa, Ohio, and Arizona</p>
<p id="R2owLB"><strong>2)</strong> Winning the toss-up states of Florida and North Carolina</p>
<p id="Xx8nOJ"><strong>3)</strong> Winning either one more big state like Pennsylvania or Michigan or multiple smaller remaining contests.</p>
<p id="Dg2WjR">Let’s walk through it. Trump starts off with 180 or so likely electoral votes, from the following (red) states:</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/arE2nCy4aH2oI3R0owdrBqXrq9A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7414519/Screen_Shot_2016_11_05_at_5.15.28_PM.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
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<p id="j6dPrS">His shakiest states here appear to be Georgia, where <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/ga/georgia_trump_vs_clinton-5741.html">polls have been a bit close</a>, and Utah, where independent candidate <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/8/12/12425122/donald-trump-utah-polls">Evan McMullin</a> could conceivably scramble things. But he’s still considered a solid favorite in both.</p>
<p id="rdEK66">So in the remaining contests, Trump needs put together a combination of 90 or more electoral votes to get to 270. Here’s how he could do it.</p>
<h3 id="HUPE5Z">How Trump could get very close to a victory</h3>
<p id="s9LTF5">First, Trump almost surely has to win <strong>Iowa</strong> (six electoral votes) and <strong>Ohio</strong> (18 electoral votes), the two swing states where polls have shown him strongest. He’d also probably have to hold on to <strong>Arizona</strong> (11 electoral votes), a traditionally red state that the Clinton campaign is hoping high Hispanic turnout can swing into their column. Those states would put him up to 215 electoral votes.</p>
<p id="0x3eku">Second, Trump also almost surely has to win the toss-up state of <strong>Florida</strong> (29 electoral votes). The state is so big that should Trump fail to win it, he’d basically have to run the table in the remaining toss-up states <em>and</em> win several sizable states in Clinton’s "firewall." A victory in Florida wouldn’t be enough for Trump to win, though — he’d be up to 244 electoral votes at this point.</p>
<p id="zQqIMi">He’d <em>probably</em> also have to win another pure toss-up state, <strong>North Carolina</strong> (15 electoral votes). Doing so would get him up at 259 electoral votes — oh-so-close to victory, but not quite at that magic number of 270.</p>
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<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
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<p id="97nx3T">To get himself over the finish line, then, Trump would have to find 11 more Electoral College votes somewhere — and he’d have to do it by breaking into Hillary Clinton’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/4/13502350/hillary-clinton-polls-firewall">"firewall"</a> (the six-state combination of Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Colorado).</p>
<h3 id="JQIP0p">Trump has a few options for his final 11 electoral votes — but none of them would be easy</h3>
<p id="0iz6c9">From here, Trump seems to have three broad options for getting to 270. He can do it either by winning one big state or by winning a combination of smaller remaining contests.</p>
<p id="7rtsTd">Just winning <strong>Pennsylvania</strong> (20 electoral votes) would be enough to get Trump over the top.<strong> </strong>Alternatively, Trump could top 270 by winning <strong>Michigan</strong> (16 electoral votes), a state where the polls have dramatically tightened of late, where the Clinton campaign hasn’t been running ads until recently, and where Clinton herself is traveling twice on the campaign’s final weekend amid fears of lower-than-expected black voter turnout. Winning <strong>Virginia</strong> (13 electoral votes), too, would be sufficient, though most observers believe that’s less plausible due to demographics (the state’s white population is smaller and contains more college graduates).</p>
<p id="MKEwpk">It should be noted, however, that Trump has trailed the vast majority of polls in all three of these states for months. So if he fails to win any of them, he’d have to put together some other combination of unexpected victories to get him over the top.</p>
<ul>
<li id="VaEohK">Trump does seem to have surged in <strong>New Hampshire</strong> lately, but only four electoral votes are at stake there, so if he wins it he’d still need to find seven more. </li>
<li id="YJmwLn">So then he’d have to win either <strong>Nevada</strong> (where polls look tight but early voting <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/5/13533864/nevada-trump-clinton-early-voting-polls">looks ominous for Trump</a>), <strong>Colorado</strong> (a state Democrats seem to think they have in the bag), or <strong>Wisconsin</strong> (where recent polling suggests Clinton’s lead <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/2/13499942/hillary-clinton-poll-wisconsin-winning">remains intact</a>).</li>
<li id="9VDMUe">And if he’s one electoral vote short, <strong>Maine’s Second Congressional District </strong>could conceivably get him over the top. (Maine is one of only two states in the country that awards electoral votes to its district winners, and Trump has polled well in the Second District.)</li>
</ul>
<p id="GB1SFy">These aren’t the only possible paths to victory for Trump. One at least conceivable alternative, for instance, is that he could lose North Carolina but make up for it by winning two big Rust Belt states (some combination of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). And the Trump campaign has claimed that they could pull off surprise wins in <a href="https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/794911290284195840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Minnesota</a> and <a href="http://nmpolitics.net/index/2016/11/new-poll-finds-clinton-leading-trump-by-3-points-in-new-mexico/">New Mexico</a>, though these claims have been met with intense skepticism.</p>
<p id="6S2p7b">Overall, though, Trump’s best path to 270 seems to be to hold Iowa, Ohio, and Arizona, win the toss-ups of Florida and North Carolina, and then win either Pennsylvania or Michigan. So though he’s definitely still the underdog, if he <em>does</em> win on Tuesday, I’d expect the map to look something like this:</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UOKS60t_tQVZxVlGgtxr4HGn9HI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7416267/Trump_270.png">
<cite><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016">Vox</a></cite>
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<p id="2OtPQ2"><em>Want to make your own electoral map? You can </em><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/4/13448928/interactive-presidential-electoral-college-map-2016"><em>use Vox’s interactive tool</em></a><em> to map out the electoral vote and share your predictions.</em></p>
<hr id="pJBCUR" class="p-entry-hr">
<h3 id="BSnKYM">Watch: Why red means Republican and blue means Democrat</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/6/13533624/donald-trump-270-electoral-votes-presidential-electionAndrew Prokop2016-11-08T20:10:03-05:002016-11-08T20:10:03-05:00Ghazala Khan’s Election Day tribute to America is an inspiring contrast to Trump’s Islamophobia
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<p>She focuses on how everyday people have treated her.</p> <p id="ONZ1D3">Ghazala Khan, the mother of Gold Star Army Capt. Humayun Khan, became the center of a national controversy in July when Donald Trump suggested that, because she was Muslim, she wasn’t allowed to speak alongside her husband at the Democratic National Convention. (Which,<strong> </strong>as Ezra Klein wrote at the time, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/30/12332922/donald-trump-khan-muslim">was “bullshit.”</a>)</p>
<p id="L9to4x">Khan and her husband Khizr have endured <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/08/sean-hannity-hosts-anti-muslim-extremist-question-khizr-khans-patriotism/212256">intense stereotyping and animosity</a> as the result of their place in the spotlight during a contentious campaign — not to mention Trump insisting that their son, who died in Iraq in 2004, would still be alive today if Trump were president at the time.</p>
<p id="srvQQS">But Khan, speaking on MSNBC tonight, still found it within herself to deliver a moving message about why she loves America, highlighting the love and respect she was given without any concern for where she came from or what she believed. </p>
<p id="IhVZRE">“I love to be in America,” she said, “because when I came here for the first time, I had such nice neighbors, such nice people. They greeted me with respect. They didn’t ask me who I am, if I’m Muslim or any other religion. They didn’t ask me from where I came. They just saw me as I am.”</p>
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<p id="0dAIC6">Her comments are a poignant reminder that today’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9822452/muslim-islamophobia-trump">widespread Islamophobia and xenophobia</a> are the products of recent, post-9/11 political tactics, rather than reflecting the true instincts of most Americans. And they stand in stark contrast to the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and many of his supporters during this election season. </p>
<p id="j2SRD8">Khan’s use of her platform to remind us of our best selves, in the face of so much ugliness, is particularly inspiring — and an example that many others with power to shape the conversation about Muslims in America could stand to follow. </p>
https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/8/13569850/ghazala-khan-islamophobia-msbc-election-2016-trumpJenée Desmond-Harris2016-11-08T18:50:03-05:002016-11-08T18:50:03-05:00#MyMuslimVote lets Muslims speak for themselves — finally
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<figcaption>A Muslim-American woman attends a voter registration workshop during the 53rd annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America on September 3, 2016 in Rosemont, Illinois. | Derek Henkle/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Their lives are bigger than the Islamophobia that plagued the campaign season.</p> <p id="QveRJS">On Election Day, Muslim Americans used social media to paint a picture of their values and priorities that provided a much-needed contrast to the oversimplified and often bigoted narratives that dominated the campaign cycle. </p>
<p id="JeC96Y">Under the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=%23MyMuslimVote&src=typd">#MyMuslimVote</a>, they shared polling place selfies and images of “I Voted” stickers, accompanied with statements of hopes for what their votes would accomplish. </p>
<p id="dSr25X">It was started by MyMuslimVote, a campaign focused on uplifting the voices of Muslim voters in the 2016 election cycle. </p>
<p id="8zeOKD">Its <a href="https://act.mpowerchange.org/signup/2016-vote-pledge/">website urges voters</a> to seize the attention placed on the experiences and views of Muslims after Donald Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” and his <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/30/12332922/donald-trump-khan-muslim">Islamophobic criticisms of Army Capt. Humayun Khan’s</a> family. “There's never been an election cycle that's been more focused on Muslims, Islam, and Muslim communities,” the website says. “But our own voices have been left out of the conversation — until now. “</p>
<p id="58yvdR">The result: a barrage of tweets yearning for a country free of bias, hate, and discrimination against Muslims. But also a realistic depiction of a much broader and more diverse set of priorities: affordable college, civil rights for all oppressed communities, jobs, and a peaceful foreign policy. </p>
<p id="aQ9TTh">As one user put it, “#Islamophobia is a real concern, but #MyMuslimVote is about more: education, the environment, jobs, Black Lives Matter are all my issues.” </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> is a celebration of the fundamental American values of diversity and inclusion.</p>— Ellison for Congress (@EllisonCampaign) <a href="https://twitter.com/EllisonCampaign/status/794366367399116800">November 4, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> is a future of peace, tolerance, economic prosperity and justice.</p>— Saad Ahmad (@SaadYo) <a href="https://twitter.com/SaadYo/status/794325620234866689">November 3, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> is for black and brown individuals to be able to walk down the streets without fear of discrimination, hatred or being killed.</p>— Maheen (@maheenahmed_) <a href="https://twitter.com/maheenahmed_/status/794335800775192577">November 4, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I voted for civility. I voted against hate. I voted against turning the clocks back more than an hour. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> I voted for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyAmerica?src=hash">#MyAmerica</a> <a href="https://t.co/wHZGERfmKV">pic.twitter.com/wHZGERfmKV</a></p>— Eman Hassaballa Aly (@EmanHAly) <a href="https://twitter.com/EmanHAly/status/795999523776692224">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">We voted because we love this country and want to see it continue to progress, not turn back! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> <a href="https://t.co/EvVjvbWFBc">pic.twitter.com/EvVjvbWFBc</a></p>— Asma Rehman (@asmarehman97) <a href="https://twitter.com/asmarehman97/status/796050950427447296">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mymuslimvote?src=hash">#mymuslimvote</a> is for empowerment and taking a united stand with fellow communities of color to say we matter and we will effect change</p>— Assia Boundaoui (@assuss) <a href="https://twitter.com/assuss/status/796086781783474176">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I am Muslim. I am American. I voted because this land was made for you and me. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> <a href="https://t.co/4VExfNXmHF">pic.twitter.com/4VExfNXmHF</a></p>— Tarek El-Messidi (@Elmessidi) <a href="https://twitter.com/Elmessidi/status/796081841027608576">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> is to live in a society where I am not defined by terrorist crimes and national security threats</p>— Sean Mohammad khan (@smklive1) <a href="https://twitter.com/smklive1/status/794328431886356481">November 4, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Islamophobia?src=hash">#Islamophobia</a> is a real concern, but <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> is about more: education, the environment, jobs, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/blacklivesmatter?src=hash">#blacklivesmatter</a> are all my issues.</p>— Donna Auston (@TinyMuslimah) <a href="https://twitter.com/TinyMuslimah/status/796035776828100609">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I cast <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> for the <a href="https://twitter.com/GreenPartyUS">@GreenPartyUS</a>, the only party that speaks for working people, peaceful foreign policy, and the environment.</p>— free xmascadia (@freecascadia) <a href="https://twitter.com/freecascadia/status/796057818738487296">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MyMuslimVote?src=hash">#MyMuslimVote</a> is for the next POTUS to make college affordable, tuition free, and debt free!</p>— Dalias Ilyas (@hopeful_passion) <a href="https://twitter.com/hopeful_passion/status/794333992950661120">November 4, 2016</a>
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<p id="iP9pRa">There shouldn’t be a need for a reminder that Muslims have lives outside of being partners in preventing terrorism and have hopes for the country beyond curbing Islamophobia. Unfortunately, after a campaign season full of public debates that tended to flatten Muslims into potential threats on one hand, or victims of discrimination the other, there is.</p>
https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/8/13567758/election-voting-my-muslim-vote-campaign-islamophobiaJenée Desmond-Harris2016-11-08T17:00:04-05:002016-11-08T17:00:04-05:00Exit poll of early voters shows Clinton's huge ground game advantage over Trump
<figure>
<img alt="Hillary Clinton Staff Members And Volunteers Work In Their Vegas Campaign Office" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1slYDKrwtnaWI3vFunUVA7R8eAQ=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51741227/510889666.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Hillary Clinton staff members and volunteers work in their Vegas campaign office | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p id="pqhqoI">Hillary Clinton’s campaign contacted twice as many American voters as Donald Trump’s campaign this election cycle, according to new <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2016/11/08/clinton-bests-trump-ground-game-per-exit-poll-data/">exit polling from Morning Consult</a> — a symptom of the Trump campaign’s dismal attempt to salvage a lagging Republican ground game operation.</p>
<p id="JR8znG">According to a survey of nearly 10,000 voters from October 18 through Election Day, 29 percent of Democrats said they were contacted by Clinton’s campaign, while only 16 percent of Republicans said they were contacted by the Trump campaign. Independents also heard from Clinton’s campaign twice as much as Trump’s campaign — 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Twelve percent heard from both sides of the aisle.</p>
<p id="zl8jL5">Back in September, when the presidential race looked suddenly closer, Trump’s then-newly appointed campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, expressed her commitment to revamping the Republican nominee’s get-out-the-vote operation.</p>
<p id="x4pEdR">"We've got to invest in the fundamentals. ... Do I wish these things had been done before? Sure. But we're trying to accelerate it, and not abandon it," she said, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/trump-ground-game/"><strong>according to CNN</strong></a>.</p>
<p id="kNbuWF">The Morning Consult survey reveals that Trump’s campaign wasn’t able to catch up. </p>
<p id="hMyscz">The new numbers show Clinton had a substantial advantage in contacting young voters — contacting 28 percent — and nonwhite voters, reaching out to 37 percent of black voters and 31 percent of Latino voters. Comparatively, Trump only reached out to 3 percent of black voters and 9 percent of Latino voters. </p>
<p id="7502nJ">“The only age group Trump’s campaign made contact with as much as Clinton’s were voters aged 65 or older,” the poll said. Even among white voters, Clinton’s campaign edged out Trump’s by 3 points, contacting 11 percent of the base.</p>
<p id="5jV1wU">It’s clear that even if the Trump campaign built up its operation since September, irrefutably Clinton’s campaign invested more resources and for much longer — which could make a difference in a tight race.</p>
<h3 id="pUlE2N">Republicans are behind in ground game, and Trump didn’t help the situation</h3>
<p id="zshzlV">It’s important to note that Trump himself was not singlehandedly the downfall of the Republican Party’s ground game operation.</p>
<p id="HCHoaR">As my colleague <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/1/12987600/turnout-get-out-the-vote-ground-game">Dara Lind reported</a>, compared with President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and John McCain didn’t fare too well in ground game either:</p>
<blockquote><p id="11Ehjv">Clinton may have a 2.1-to-1 field office advantage over Trump, but Obama had a 2.8-to-1 field office advantage over Romney. According to NBC News, the 6-to-1 advantage in paid campaign staff Clinton held over Trump as of the end of August was “not dissimilar” to the gap between Obama and Romney in 2012.</p></blockquote>
<p id="4nhVi9">But according to Morning Consult’s report, the gap widened even further this year.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Exit Poll: Clinton Bests Trump With Ground Game <a href="https://t.co/mbw9EltRbV">https://t.co/mbw9EltRbV</a> <a href="https://t.co/nb96t8YypP">pic.twitter.com/nb96t8YypP</a></p>— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) <a href="https://twitter.com/thegarance/status/796083556632039425">November 8, 2016</a>
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<h3 id="CCHYtq">Ground game takes a lot of time and resources — you can’t just put it together at the last minute</h3>
<p id="ovokFG">This is not too surprising. “One thing that is a little bit overlooked is the extent to which building a good ground game relies on years of investment, in staff but also in technology: building voter databases and interfaces, and making them useful in the field,” Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the author of <em>Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns</em>, a study of the resurgence of ground game in American politics, <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/12/13228828/donald-trump-ground-game-expert-damage">told me in September</a>.</p>
<p id="VhyPx3">Of course, it helped Clinton’s campaign that she was the incumbent party’s nominee and one the Democratic Party could prepare for. George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 2004 had well-run ground game partly because the party knew who the candidate was going to be and could fundraise accordingly. Trump, on the other hand, was a surprise pick — and not wholeheartedly welcomed by the GOP. But according to Nielsen, that only strengthens the case that Trump should have been prioritizing ground game, instead of relying on the Republican Party.</p>
<p id="oxnciw">“It’s just clear not only that the Democratic Party was ahead of the Republican Party in 2012 but also that the ability of the Republican Party to narrow that gap or to overcome that gap has been significantly undermined by the fact that the party nominee has not prioritized investing and catching up here,” Nielsen said. “There is an important question of whether the Republican Party is falling even further behind in having an effective infrastructure for an effective ground game and a competitive ground game.”</p>
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<h3 id="q2J1he">Watch: The bad map we see every election</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/8/13566874/poll-early-voters-clinton-ground-game-advantageTara Golshan2016-11-08T16:10:02-05:002016-11-08T16:10:02-05:00A Nevada judge gave the Trump campaign’s voter fraud paranoia the smackdown it deserved
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<figcaption>Judge Gloria Sturman.</figcaption>
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<p>No, helping people vote is not a suspicious activity.</p> <p id="9cT6lg">One of the unlikeliest heroes in the 2016 presidential election is a county judge in Nevada.</p>
<p id="F1auVo">Judge Gloria J. Sturman of Clark County heard a last-minute lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign Tuesday against the county’s elections office, alleging that Clark County officials had illegally allowed polls to stay open on the last day of early voting in a mostly Latino neighborhood.</p>
<p id="9wOiHZ">The lawsuit is the latest evolution in the Trump campaign’s ongoing claim that the election is somehow being rigged against Donald Trump, and its continued scrutiny of nonwhite voters in the name of fraud. But on Tuesday, the campaign’s claims came up against reality — and Judge Sturman. </p>
<p id="zMV7Ls">And she wasn’t shy about telling them, directly, that what they wanted to do flew in the face of civic values: allowing people to vote, preserving the secret ballot, and encouraging people to participate in democracy. “I am not going to expose people doing their civic duty,” she said, “to help their fellow citizens vote.”</p>
<h3 id="n8IGtl">“Do you <em>watch</em> Twitter?”</h3>
<p id="QWen5V">The Trump campaign tried to get Sturman to order the county registrar to keep records of who, exactly, had been working the polls at a Mexican supermarket on the last night of early voting and decided to keep the polls open until 10 to accommodate a two-hour-long line of likely voters. </p>
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<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/11/6/13542560/latinos-trump-nevada-certain-group" target="_blank">Donald Trump tried to sue a Nevada county that kept polls open so people could vote</a>
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<p id="71I4Cd">It’s not even clear that anyone in Clark County broke the law at all by keeping the polls open — in fact, the lawyer for the registrar’s office explained patiently that during early voting, unlike Election Day, the county has always allowed people to get in line and vote as long as a line exists (even if the official poll closing time has already passed). </p>
<p id="1fOdFB">But the Trump campaign jumped right to the conclusion that there was deliberate coordination between Clark County poll workers and “Democratic operatives” to keep voting open illegally, and it asked Sturman to help it figure out who those poll workers were.</p>
<p id="63q4eL">In the midst of a presidential campaign that’s been marked by online harassment — particularly by Trump supporters — making that information public had huge downsides. And Sturman understood exactly what that would entail.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Trump campaign wants to make names of Nevada poll workers public. Judge's response: <a href="https://t.co/tes99IMbbH">pic.twitter.com/tes99IMbbH</a></p>— Deadspin (@Deadspin) <a href="https://twitter.com/Deadspin/status/796076676480434176">November 8, 2016</a>
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<p id="dwgBEu">LAWYER: There will be no harassment—</p>
<p id="wZOZOn">JUDGE STURMAN: How can you tell me that? Do you <em>watch</em> Twitter? Have you watched any cable news show? There are internet — you know, the vernacular, trolls — who get this information and harass people who just want to help their fellow citizens vote. Why would I order them to make available to you information about people who work at polls when it’s not already a public requirement to do so, so that those people can be harassed for doing their civic duty?</p>
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<p id="B3hVpB">The rest of the campaign’s requests didn’t fare any better. At one point, the campaign attempted to ask Clark County to <em>separate out </em>votes cast in any given race by people who voted at the Mexican supermarket where polls had been kept open — so that they would be discardable if the voting was found to be illegal. </p>
<p id="NHl2g7">Sturman pointed out that this would require figuring out whom individuals had voted for — which happens to violate the principle of the secret ballot. It would be impossible, because the voting system is <em>designed </em>to make it impossible, to figure out whom someone voted for and then throw out that person’s vote.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Clark Co says it's impossible to "segregate" votes just from Cardenas - all early vote records were combined to protect secret ballot <a href="https://twitter.com/KTNV">@KTNV</a></p>— Tom George (@TheTomGeorge) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheTomGeorge/status/796080952946540544">November 8, 2016</a>
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<h3 id="jJprdK">Sturman reminded the Trump campaign that the right to vote is serious business</h3>
<p id="yHybXj">The hearing itself was fairly technical. But what made it remarkable was that Judge Sturman understood the subtext — and made it as clear as she could that she found it distasteful.</p>
<p id="d4UfTy">The Trump campaign’s lawsuit against Clark County comes after months of claims that Democrats would try to rig the election in “certain areas” — specifically “inner cities.” On Saturday, the Nevada GOP chair accused Clark County of keeping the polls open at the Cardenas supermarket specifically so that “a certain group” could vote — and then Trump himself accused Democrats of busing in extra voters to the Cardenas location after closing.</p>
<p id="42gXEh">The Trump campaign, to its questionable credit, didn’t make those claims in its lawsuit. But it’s hard not to see the lawsuit as the culmination of several months of growing concern that Democrats were going to rig the election by bringing nonwhite voters to the polls.</p>
<p id="8Q4cSu">Sturman didn’t explicitly call out the Trump campaign for suppressing voters. But she made it clear at every turn that she felt citizens had the right to vote, and that it was a good thing the county government allowed them to do so — and that trying to keep citizens from voting was wrong. </p>
<p id="NVIwrY">“I am not going to expose people doing their civic duty to help their fellow citizens vote — <em>the right of a citizen in this country,</em>” she emphasized.</p>
<p id="BxzQdM">After several weeks of concern about voter intimidation and suppression — and after months and months of a presidential campaign that has often been about whether some Americans should come under more scrutiny — it was refreshing to hear someone in power defend civic engagement on its own terms. </p>
<p id="V64FXh">Sturman made it clear to Trump’s team that if they wanted to cast aspersions on people for voting, or helping others vote, they’d better make a good argument for why. And they didn’t.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/8/13566544/judge-gloria-sturman-trump-lawsuit-voter-fraudDara Lind