scholarly journals Inversions in US Presidential Elections: 1836–2016

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 327-357
Author(s):  
Michael Geruso ◽  
Dean Spears ◽  
Ishaana Talesara

Inversions—in which the popular vote winner loses the election— have occurred in four US presidential races. We show that rather than being statistical flukes, inversions have been ex ante likely since the early 1800s. In elections yielding a popular vote margin within 1 point (one-eighth of presidential elections), about 40 percent will be inversions in expectation. We show this conditional probability is remarkably stable across historical periods—despite differences in which groups voted, which states existed, and which parties participated. Our findings imply that the United States has experienced so few inversions merely because there have been so few elections (and fewer close elections). (JEL D72, N41, N42)

Author(s):  
Corwin Smidt

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


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

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


Author(s):  
John M. Carey ◽  
Gretchen Helmke ◽  
Brendan Nyhan ◽  
Mitchell Sanders ◽  
Susan C. Stokes ◽  
...  

Abstract When a party or candidate loses the popular vote but still wins the election, do voters view the winner as legitimate? This scenario, known as an electoral inversion, describes the winners of two of the last six presidential elections in the United States. We report results from two experiments testing the effect of inversions on democratic legitimacy in the US context. Our results indicate that inversions significantly decrease the perceived legitimacy of winning candidates. Strikingly, this effect does not vary with the margin by which the winner loses the popular vote, nor by whether the candidate benefiting from the inversion is a co-partisan. The effect is driven by Democrats, who punish inversions regardless of candidate partisanship; few effects are observed among Republicans. These results suggest that the experience of inversions increases sensitivity to such outcomes among supporters of the losing party.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

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


Futures ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 102607
Author(s):  
Pedro Ivo Garcia-Nunes ◽  
Pedro Artico Rodrigues ◽  
Kaulitz Guimarães Oliveira ◽  
Ana Estela Antunes da Silva

2021 ◽  
Vol 704 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Maria Raczyńska

The article describes and explains a prior centric Bayesian forecasting model for the 2020 US elections.The model is based on the The Economist forecasting project, but strongly differs from it. From the technical point of view, it uses R and Stan programming and Stan software. The article’s focus is on theoretical decisions made in the process of constructing the model and outcomes. It describes why Bayesian models are used and how they are used to predict US presidential elections.


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

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


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-59
Author(s):  
Jacques Lemmink

Abstract ‘Proved effective on trial, we can speak of an achieved ideal’ Abraham Kuyper and the mechanical voting machine, c. 1895-1905 During the latest presidential elections in the United States, unfounded conspiracy theories sprung up concerning alleged ballot box fraud by compromised voting machines. Although different voting machines had been used in the Netherlands since 1966, concerns over their reliability ended this in 2007. This article investigates the forgotten but ultimately failed attempt to introduce mechanical voting machines a century earlier. It focuses on the role played by prominent politician Abraham Kuyper, who personally visited the Standard Voting Machine Company in Rochester in 1898. The article illustrates how Kuyper’s transatlantic political and religious networks facilitated the voting machine’s transfer, rather than scientific connections. Paradoxically, the introduction of proportional representation in 1917 marked the end of tentative attempts to develop a Dutch version of the American mechanical voting machine. The implementation in the voting process turned out be too expensive, too early, and too complicated for the Dutch electoral system at the dawn of the twentieth century.


Author(s):  
Dennis W. Johnson

Compared to other democracies, the United States has a mediocre record of voter participation. Our interest usually peaks during presidential elections, but even then we rarely find 65 percent of eligible voters showing up at the polls. For local elections and ballot measures, voter participation...


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