Nate Silver's Blog, page 114

Jill Stein: Democratic Spoiler Or Scapegoat?

In this week’s politics chat, we check in on the Democrats’ search for someone to blame 2016 on. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Today, we’re looking for scapegoats. Or, more accurately, we’re talking about the Democrats’ search for a scapegoat to pin Donald Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton on. We’ll talk about some of the scapegoats people have proffered and then about whether this is even a useful thing for Democrats to be doing.

But first up: Did Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee, cost Clinton the election? (Harry, give us the case for “yes” first.)

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): The case, as far as I see it, is twofold: First, the number of votes cast for Stein in the three states that proved to be pivotal (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) exceeded Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton.

Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016.

Stein votes/Trump margin:
MI: 51,463/10,704
PA: 49,678/46,765
WI: 31,006/22,177

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 1, 2016

Second, a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters weren’t big fans of Clinton. So Stein campaigning on the idea that Clinton and Trump were similar made it harder for Clinton to win over those voters — even if Sanders voters didn’t vote for Stein, they may have stayed home out of disgust.

micah: And do we buy that?

harry: Not really.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Having hung out with you people for a year, I know better than to get into numbers depths I can’t fish myself out of. So instead, I’ll ask another question on top of this. Our colleague David Wasserman tweeted out that the Dems can’t blame turnout in Philadelphia for their loss:

PA Dems can't blame Philly turnout for Clinton loss:

2012 votes cast: 690,327
2016 votes cast: 706,562

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 1, 2016

And we’ve got those Stein/Trump margins in keys states being similar. What would all those would-be Democrats be doing, then, if not voting for Stein? Going to Clinton? Writing in their mother-in-laws?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I don’t really buy it. And the rub is Pennsylvania, which was close but not that close. You have to assume that almost all of Stein’s voters would have gone to Clinton. But both pre-election polls and the national exit poll suggests that a lot of them wouldn’t have voted at all, if they’d been forced to pick between the two major candidates. The breakdown might have been something like 35 percent Clinton, 10 percent Trump and 55 percent wouldn’t vote. That doesn’t wind up netting very many votes for HRC.

micah: But what about this idea that Stein helped keep the anti-Clinton flame on the left — first lit by Sanders — burning?

natesilver: Y’know, I covered the campaign. The 2016 campaign was a friend of mine. And Jill Stein was a pretty bleeping minor story in the 2016 campaign.

micah: OK, so let’s go to the OG Stein: Sanders. Can Clinton blame Sanders for her loss?

clare.malone: I think that’s a harder case to make by hard numbers, but ideologically, sure — he played a part in her loss.

natesilver: Don’t compare Sanders to Stein, please. For one thing, he didn’t troll sad Democrats into paying for a recount, and then sorta give up halfway through.

micah: He ran and raised money long past the point where it was clear he would lose. That’s beside the point, though.

clare.malone: He saddled her with establishment baggage, though, in a pretty effective way, right from the start. Talking paid Goldman Sachs speeches and all that. It played into the elitism idea that people developed around her. Too good for normal work email. Too caught up with the sycophants. Do we just ignore that?

natesilver: I think the last couple of months of Sanders’s campaign entrenched the notion that Clinton was corrupt and that the system was rigged. And that played into Trump’s message.

micah: Wouldn’t Clinton have had those problems anyway?

harry: I think there are two different versions of Sanders. There is the primary version of Sanders who barely brought up the emails, but who certainly made the case that Clinton was part of a corrupt system. There is also the general election version of Sanders, who fought like hell to get Clinton elected.

natesilver: The focus on corrupt/rigged may have been harmful. I guess I also think, though, that having an opponent in the primary is pretty darn normal. And Sanders didn’t necessarily go outside the bounds of what a normal opponent would do. He campaigned for a couple of months longer than when he really had a chance, but he also wasn’t the first guy to do that.

harry: Yes, though he was the first to have money to truly compete in a way I don’t think past candidates could. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

natesilver: But nobody has the right to their nomination unopposed. Or more than the right, nobody should have the expectation of winning their nomination without a fight. It should be priced into their chances, including whatever toll it takes on their general election odds.

clare.malone: I mean, it was the perfect storm of Sanders priming certain voters to distrust Clinton in certain ways — the way any primary would go –but then there was Trump there to scoop a certain set of them up into his arms after the primary. While in normal years they might have been met by a Brooks Brothers plutocrat, they saw a guy who looked like he was more a Men’s Wearhouse wearer who happened to have a lot of money. He picked up those disaffected Democrats that President Obama had kept hanging around by force of his charm, apparently. And his change message.

natesilver: My main point: Democrats should blame James Comey and WikiLeaks before Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, because what Comey did was highly abnormal.

clare.malone: Hm.

harry: When the election is so close, you can “blame” a lot of things.

clare.malone: That was the most immediate cause of the loss, but don’t you think a lot of people had been primed for months to leave?

micah: I think that’s true Clare, but I still think you can’t blame Sanders.

natesilver: The case that Comey swung the election outcome is pretty straightforward, and easier to disentangle from everything else than a lot of things. Clinton’s national lead was cut from about 6 percentage points to 3 points after the Comey letter. And while a 6-point lead is relatively safe, a 3-point lead just isn’t, especially given Clinton’s weakness in the Electoral College. Maybe not all of that was Comey, but the timing lines up pretty well and it was probably enough to make a difference given how close the election was. So could a lot of other things, of course.

clare.malone: I mean, not in the Comey sense of blame.

micah: Did Sanders supporters not turn out for Clinton at normal rates?

harry: Before Clinton lost her big lead, Trump was not getting the same percentage of Republicans to vote for him that Clinton was getting Democrats to vote for her. Then in the final few weeks that changed. I don’t think those voters were primed by Stein.

We’ll have to wait for voter files to know who did and didn’t turn out, but we had higher turnout than in 2012. We know that much.

micah: OK, so before we talk about the pro/cons of the search for scapegoats generally, any other prime scapegoat nominees?

Comey seems like the MVP.

clare.malone: For sure

Young people?

natesilver: I’m too exhausted to say the media.

The media.

micah: Voters.

natesilver: Clinton.

Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Snapchat. Ello.

I blame Ello.

clare.malone: Her campaign.

harry: I think at the end of the day you have to realize Clinton lost a race against the least popular nominee since before any of us were born. And if that is the case, then you have to start with Clinton for losing.

natesilver: The Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers.

clare.malone: THE PATRIARCHY.

micah: Here’s my ranking of the causes of Clinton’s Electoral College loss:

More voters chose Trump in the crucial states;Clinton didn’t play defense enough;Comey;The Electoral College;All the other crap.

natesilver: But Micah, that’s stupid. Because No. 1 isn’t a reason. It’s just a tautological statement, like “the Broncos won because they scored more points.” Well, duh.

micah: But that’s my point: Everyone is looking for acute reasons why Clinton lost after the fact, but it was everything. It’s always everything.

clare.malone: This is getting very freshman year philosophy.

harry: Here’s a question: Could Clinton have avoided a loss in the Electoral College through better resource allocation?

micah: I think so.

natesilver: My view is basically this. First, as a starting point, it isn’t surprising that this was a close election. Take the candidates’ names off the ballot, and the “fundamentals” suggested a close race or maybe a slight edge for Trump.

But second, look at the Electoral College. Clinton actually beat the fundamentals by a couple of percentage points in the popular vote, which is what those fundamentals models are designed to predict (some of them that had Trump winning the popular vote by 10 points or whatever were very, very wrong by the way). However, her vote was configured very inefficiently, in so far as maximizing her electoral vote. Is that her campaign’s fault? (And should Trump’s campaign get some credit?). Hard to say.

And third, the polls ebbed and flowed a lot over the course of the campaign. It was a volatile race. A lot of voters were undecided until very late and were affected by news events. And the last news cycle was a really bad one for Clinton.

harry: I still cannot believe she didn’t campaign in Wisconsin.

clare.malone: Yeah. Stuff like that. The imbalance of the vote she got is pretty telling.

natesilver: Well, yeah. Although, keep in mind that Wisconsin and Michigan would not have been enough for Clinton to win. She’d also have needed either Pennsylvania and Florida, and they campaigned in both states extensively.

harry: Sure. Still.

natesilver: Clearly the Democrats have been taking a lot for granted, particularly in terms of the strength of their electoral coalition.

micah: So is it helpful for Democrats to look for a scapegoat? Or, more generously, to spend a lot of time sifting through the causes of Clinton’s loss?

clare.malone: Causes of loss, of course.

Let us state for the record here — history has proved that scapegoating feels good in the short term, but will screw you up in the long term.

natesilver: They have the right to be angry about a few things, like about Comey, but that won’t really help their rebuilding process.

harry: I like scapegoating. I blame all of you for the Bills loss on Sunday.

natesilver: A big question is whether their problems in the Electoral College are permanent or temporary.

micah: I start from the presumption that all political problems are temporary.

harry: The Electoral College was in some ways an unlucky break for Clinton. And as we know from the past, that type of stuff usually ebbs and flows. Of course, it is tradition for tradition to change.

natesilver: There was a big spread — almost 3 percentage points — between the tipping-point state (Pennsylvania) and the national popular vote. If that carries over to 2020, it would lower their odds a lot. But historically, these Electoral College splits don’t carry over much from one election to the next. As we saw between 2012 and 2016.

clare.malone: I mean, now you’ve got this Joe Biden story out there about how he might run in 2020. He’d address one of the obvious problems that the Democrats had — not being able to connect to white blue-collar voters — but he’s also missing another big thing the Democrats have to deal with, which is that they need an outsider perhaps the next time around. Or someone younger, a bit more dynamic.

harry: One thing we should point out is that there’s a lot of energy on the progressive left. There were a lot more Democratic primary voters who identified as “very liberal” in 2016 than in 2008. We also saw more voters identifying as liberal in the general election exit poll than in any election since 1976. Whether it is Stein or Sanders, Democrats will have to deal with their progressive wing in ways they probably haven’t needed to in recent history.

natesilver: “Have to deal with” shows UR BIAS YOU TOOL.

micah: Corporate shill = Harry.

harry: I wish I were a corporate shill. I live in a tiny apartment.

natesilver: But you live in the greatest city in the world, Harry.

clare.malone: Democrats will also have to figure out how to make that progressive message more catholic — it needs to not just appeal to Berkeley types if they want to make it work. It needs to appeal to voters of color (a problem Sanders had at times) as well as white people in blue-collar jobs in, oh, I dunno, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

natesilver: It’s pretty likely that the next nominee comes from the party’s left flank.

clare.malone: The Boston butt of the Democratic Party.

Politics Podcast: Everyone’s Still Mad At Everyone About The Election

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This week, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team talks about the big post-election forum hosted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which brought the top brass from the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigns together, along with the media (including Nate and Harry), for a debriefing. (It’s clear that emotions are still raw and that there are lots of competing theories about what led to Trump’s win.) Plus, FiveThirtyEight economics editor Ben Casselman joins the podcast to discuss Trump’s Cabinet appointments, his deal with Carrier and what those tell us about Trump’s potential economic policies. Finally, the group debates whether they agree with colleague David Wasserman’s description of the role that third parties played in 2016:

Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016.

Stein votes/Trump margin:
MI: 51,463/10,704
PA: 49,678/46,765
WI: 31,006/22,177

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 1, 2016

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

We Updated Our College Football Model, And Now Michigan Looks Slightly Less Screwed

We’ve been getting a lot of angry notes from Michigan fans. And even though I’m from East Lansing, I think they have a point. Sort of.

Here’s the rub: Michigan fans claim their Wolverines have a shot at the college football playoff, even though they rank fifth (the top four teams make the playoff) and have finished their regular season (Wisconsin and Penn State are playing for the Big Ten championship instead).

Even the most rabid Michigan backers don’t expect their team to displace any of the current top four if everyone wins out. Undefeated No. 1 Alabama is one of the strongest college teams in history and will become the SEC Champion if it beats Florida on Saturday. No. 2 Ohio State — which, like Michigan, is idle this weekend — just beat Michigan last Saturday. And No. 3 Clemson and No. 4 Washington are potential one-loss conference champions, while two-loss Michigan is neither of those things.

Alabama would have a decent shot at the playoff even with a loss, but if either Clemson or Washington falls, another slot could open up. Apart from Michigan, the most plausible contenders to fill it are Wisconsin and Penn State — whichever one wins the Big Ten championship — and Colorado, if it beats Washington for the Pac-12 title.

Wisconsin, Penn State and Colorado would each be 11-2 conference champions, as compared to 10-2 non-champion Michigan. The playoff selection committee explicitly accounts for conference championships as part of its selection criteria. So Michigan has a hard argument to make, it would seem.

Except for one thing: Michigan played Wisconsin, Penn State and Colorado. It beat all three of them. And although the committee says it considers conference championships, it also says it takes head-to-head results into account. How would the committee weigh everything? Nobody’s quite sure.

RANKSCHOOLWINSLOSSESPLAYING THIS WEEK1Alabama———2Ohio StateMichigan Wisconsin OklahomaPenn State—3Clemson———4Washington——Colorado5MichiganWisconsin Penn State ColoradoOhio State—6Wisconsin—Ohio State MichiganPenn State7Penn StateOhio StateMichiganWisconsin8Colorado—MichiganWashington9Oklahoma—Ohio StateOklahoma State10Oklahoma State——OklahomaHow the top 10 teams have fared head-to-head

Our college football playoff model, however, had been putting a fairly heavy thumb on the scale against Michigan. That’s because we’d programmed it to account for conference championships, but not for head-to-head results. Why not? There wasn’t any particularly good reason; we’d intended to build in a head-to-head adjustment earlier this fall and then got distracted by that whole presidential election thing. Also, because head-to-head results didn’t happen to matter very much in the first two years of the committee’s rankings — there was no case analogous to the one Michigan faces this year — we didn’t have much data on how much the committee really cares about them.

Still, we think making some effort to account for head-to-head results is better than nothing, even if we’re basically just making an educated guess about the magnitude of the effect. So we’ve built an adjustment into our model. As before, the program runs a series of simulations in which it plays out the remaining games and estimates how the committee will rank the teams. Then there’s a new step: It checks to see if teams that are ranked in close proximity played one another. If in one simulation it initially had Colorado ranked No. 4 and Michigan No. 5, for instance, it might flip them because of the head-to-head result. Or it might not: The magnitude of the head-to-head adjustment is randomized a bit from simulation to simulation but generally set to a fairly conservative value. (We’ll recalibrate everything next year; how the committee untangles Michigan and the other teams will tell us a lot about how much it really cares about head-to-head play.)

As a result of this change, Michigan’s chance of making the playoff increases to 6 percent. That’s still not very good — the model thinks it’s unlikely that the committee will put an idle team into the playoff, especially when it has two losses and didn’t win its conference championship. (The loss to Ohio State is especially complicating, because the committee would have to take two teams from the Big Ten but not the conference champion?) The committee could also evade the head-to-head question by taking two-loss Oklahoma or Oklahoma State, whichever one wins the Big 12 this weekend, instead of a second Big Ten team. But 6 percent is an improvement for Michigan from the 1 percent chance our model gave it before the adjustment.

CHANCE OF MAKING COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFFSCHOOLPREVIOUSLYWITH HEAD-TO-HEAD ADJUSTMENTOhio State92%94%Alabama9292Clemson8081Washington6666Penn State2122Wisconsin3021Colorado1010Michigan16Oklahoma65Oklahoma State12How accounting for head-to-head results changes playoff odds

Apart from Michigan, this change also affects Ohio State’s calculus a bit. Aren’t the Buckeyes shoo-ins? Would the committee really demote a team all the way from No. 2 to No. 5?

Probably not, but consider what happened in 2014. The committee — to our model’s surprise — dropped TCU all the way from No. 3 to No. 6 in its final rankings despite TCU having won. We learned from that experience that the committee isn’t necessarily all that consistent from week to week. So Ohio State, which won’t be the Big Ten champion, might be just a little bit nervous if the committee decides it values conference championships highly.

But it matters which team wins the Big Ten instead of Ohio State. If it’s Wisconsin, the Buckeyes have less to worry about because they beat the Badgers head-to-head. (Wisconsin might make the playoff as a second Big Ten team, but probably not without Ohio State making it as well.) Ohio State lost to Penn State in the regular season, however. So if Penn State wins the Big Ten, it will be able to cite both a head-to-head victory and a conference championship in its case to get in ahead of Ohio State. Our model expects that Ohio State would probably still make it under such circumstances — quite possibly alongside Penn State — but it isn’t quite as safe. (In the new version of our model, Ohio State has a 97 percent chance of making the playoff if Wisconsin wins the Big Ten and a 91 percent chance if Penn State wins instead.)

So almost no matter what happens, we’ll be left with a bit of a mess. One solution? Expand the playoff to six or eight teams, so the close calls stemming from janky conference-championship scenarios are resolved on the field and not in a conference room.

Pollsters Probably Didn’t Talk To Enough White Voters Without College Degrees

Let’s take two fairly obvious data-driven conclusions from the 2016 election and see if there’s any link between them.

The first conclusion: Education was almost everything in explaining the results of the race. Donald Trump substantially improved on Mitt Romney’s performance among voters without college degrees — especially white voters without college degrees. Hillary Clinton somewhat improved on President Obama’s performance with college-educated voters. The link between education levels and the shift in the vote is robust, even when controlling for other factors, such as income levels.

The second conclusion: The polling was bad. Actually, let me amend that: The polling wasn’t that bad. (Reporters and analysts should have been more prepared for the possibility that Trump might win. We’re going to keep being really annoying about this.) With Clinton’s lead in the popular vote still expanding, the national polls are going to wind up having been pretty good (they showed her winning by 3 to 4 percentage points, and she’ll eventually win by about 2 points). The state polls? Not so hot. What matters, though, is not only the magnitude of the error in the state polls but the direction of it. The errors were correlated from state to state, and Clinton underperformed in a trio of states in the Rust Belt — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that were supposed to have been part of her firewall; that underperformance cost her the Electoral College.

So, are these two things connected? Did Trump beat his polls in states with large numbers of white voters without college degrees?

The short answer is “yes.” Below, you’ll find a table that sorts the states by the share of their 2016 electorate that consists of white voters without college degrees, as according to our Swing-O-Matic interactive. The table also lists Trump’s actual margin of victory or defeat as of this writing compared to FiveThirtyEight’s adjusted polling average in each state.

TRUMP MARGIN OF VICTORYSTATEWHITE NON-COLLEGE SHAREADJ. POLLING AVERAGEACTUALACTUAL VS. POLLSWest Virginia65.7%+27.9+42.2+14.3Kentucky62.2+18.4+29.8+11.4Iowa62.0+3.4+9.4+6.0Maine61.6-6.9-2.7+4.2Idaho60.4+19.7+31.8+12.1North Dakota59.6+24.7+35.7+11.0Wisconsin57.2-5.4+0.7+6.1Montana56.7+16.4+20.5+4.1New Hampshire56.5-3.5-0.4+3.1Wyoming55.0+36.3+46.3+10.0Vermont54.6-27.4-26.4+1.0Indiana54.6+11.7+18.9+7.2South Dakota54.6+15.9+29.8+13.9Arkansas54.3+21.2+26.9+5.7Nebraska53.9+18.0+25.6+7.6Minnesota53.7-5.9-1.5+4.4Ohio53.3+2.0+8.0+6.0Missouri53.2+10.4+19.0+8.6Oregon53.1-8.8-11.1-2.3Michigan52.5-4.0+0.2+4.2Pennsylvania49.8-3.7+1.1+4.8Utah49.4+9.9+18.1+8.2Oklahoma49.3+26.1+36.4+10.3Rhode Island49.2-13.1-15.5-2.4Kansas48.2+11.9+21.0+9.1Tennessee47.9+11.7+26.2+14.5Washington47.2-13.2-16.2-3.0Alabama46.0+23.5+27.7+4.2Delaware44.5-12.0-11.4+0.6Nevada41.9-0.7-2.4-1.7Colorado41.6-3.8-4.9-1.1Arizona41.6+2.4+3.5+1.1Alaska40.6+7.2+14.8+7.6North Carolina40.4-0.7+3.7+4.4Louisiana40.2+16.5+19.6+3.1Florida40.1-0.6+1.2+1.8Massachusetts40.0-23.8-27.3-3.5Mississippi38.8+14.0+18.1+4.1South Carolina38.8+7.1+14.3+7.2Illinois38.0-13.5-17.1-3.6Connecticut37.8-12.3-13.6-1.3Virginia36.7-5.4-5.3+0.1Georgia34.2+4.0+5.2+1.2New Jersey32.9-11.2-14.1-2.9Texas31.4+8.5+9.1+0.6New York29.8-18.7-21.2-2.5Maryland29.2-26.3-26.6-0.3New Mexico27.5-5.3-8.2-2.9California26.4-23.0-30.0-7.0Hawaii15.2-20.8-32.2-11.4D.C.2.2-69.3-86.8-17.5Trump beat the polls in states with more white voters without college degrees

Adjusted polling average is from the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast as of Nov. 8, 2016. Actual results are accurate as of Nov. 30.

Sources: David Wasserman, U.S. Census Bureau

In the 10 states with the largest share of white voters without college degrees, Trump beat his polling average by an average of 8 percentage points — a major polling miss. But in the 10 states with the lowest share of white voters without college degrees, Clinton beat her polls by an average of 3 points (or 4 points if you count the District of Columbia as a state). Overall, the correlation between the share of white non-college voters in a state and the amount by which Trump overperformed (or underperformed) his polls is quite high.

But there are a few complications. For one thing, most of the states with large numbers of white voters without college degrees were pretty red to begin with. So it could just be that Trump outperformed his polls in red states, regardless of voters’ education levels. Or it could be that Trump beat his polls in states with lots of white voters, whether or not they had college degrees. So we should check for those possibilities. And, finally, it may be that the high correlation is driven by outlier-y states such as West Virginia and Hawaii, which didn’t get polled very much. Does the conclusion hold among well-polled states?

There’s still a pretty strong relationship between education levels and polling errors, even if you account for all of these factors. Gory details ahead: I ran a regression that accounted for Romney’s margin against Obama in 2012 (as a measure of each state’s overall redness or blueness) and for the share of white voters with college degrees in addition to the share of white voters without college degrees. And I weighted the regression by FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate polling weight in each state, so that Ohio and Florida (for example) are much more influential than West Virginia or Hawaii. The share of non-college white voters was still a highly statistically significant predictor of the polling error, although Romney’s performance in 2012 was too. (Trump beat his polls more in red states, as I mentioned earlier.) The share of white voters with college degrees in a state didn’t matter much one way or the other, however. (See this footnote for the regression output.)

So it looks to me as though the polls may not have reached enough non-college voters. It’s a bit less clear whether this is a longstanding problem or something particular to the 2016 campaign. As Nate Cohn has found at The Upshot, the exit polls almost certainly have too many college-educated voters in their samples, which is why I haven’t cited exit polling data here. Pew Research reported in 2015 that less-well-educated voters are less likely to respond to pre-election surveys, although a pollster I spoke with earlier this week told me that he’d also seen the opposite problem.

This is not the only potential type of non-response bias; white voters are also more likely to respond to telephone surveys than black or Hispanic ones, older people are more likely to do so than younger ones, and women are more likely to do so than men. But most pollsters apply demographic weighting by race, age and gender to try to compensate for this problem. It’s less common (although by no means unheard of) to weight by education, however. As education levels increasingly cleave voters from one another, more pollsters may need to consider weighting their samples accordingly.

What Do Trump’s Cabinet Picks Say About His Presidency?

In this week’s politics chat, we talk about what we know about the incoming Trump administration. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome, all! We’re now officially three weeks past Election Day, and Donald Trump’s administration is starting to take shape (including a couple of Cabinet appointments

natesilver: OK, let’s play a game then. What are the chances that Trump finishes his four-year term? According to some betting markets I’ve seen, they’re only about 60 percent.

micah: I think talking about the removal of Trump is waaay premature. That’s not the same thing as saying we should pretend everything is normal. Instead, I think focusing on his appointments and the huge effect they could have without Trump going anywhere seems way more productive.

I guess my point is that right now the most important question isn’t whether Trump will finish his term. It’s who he’s putting in charge of these agencies and what they believe/want to do.

harry: I’d argue Trump’s selections are important for the immediate term because of what Trump believes and for the longer term given a higher than normal chance of something going crazy.

clare.malone: There’s always that sort of out-of-the-hat number of what an administration accomplishes in its first 100 days. Could be interesting to see where things stand as far as 1) Trump’s use of the executive office and its particular powers and 2) his relationships with the congressional leadership. Then I think we can try to make more educated guesses as to the way things unfold.

But to return to Nate’s betting markets point … Micah just said this out loud in the room we’re all sitting in — if he gets bored with the job, i.e., he “Palins it,” he can just delegate more and more authority.

micah: OK, so let’s approach things this way: Have Trump’s appointments so far jibed with his campaign promises?

Let’s go one by one on the main ones: Sessions for attorney general — yes, right?

clare.malone: Yes. Immigration hardliner, as previously stated. Had to come through on that one.

harry: Sessions most certainly jibes.

micah: Price for Health and Human Services.

clare.malone: Also jibes. Price actually has a replace plan for the “repeal and replace” line about Obamacare.

harry: It jibes, but I wonder if some of the people who voted for Trump understand what it would mean for them to replace Obamacare. Side note: Whether you like Price or not, he is a serious selection. In that sense, Trump found someone who isn’t just a talker.

micah: Let’s combine the national security picks. Pompeo as CIA director and Flynn as national security adviser.

harry: That’s like combining “Rookie of the Year” and “Schindler’s List.” Yes, they both came out in 1993, but they are very different.

micah: But didn’t Trump campaign, somewhat, on pulling back internationally?

harry: Sorta. He also said he’d “bomb the shit out of” the Islamic State.

natesilver: I’d note that Flynn and Bannon don’t require Senate confirmation. So that’s another dimension to think about. Maybe Trump plays it pretty safe/establishment with those picks that require Senate confirmation — Haley, Pompeo, DeVos, etc. — and then picks various oddballs for the unconfirmed but nevertheless important positions.

harry: Yeah, he picks loyalists for the “Kitchen Cabinet” positions.

clare.malone: Just to loop back to Pompeo — he was a conservative voice on the Benghazi committee and is opposed to the Iran deal. So he’s certainly a “stance” appointment, right? Benghazi was a huge campaign issue, something that Trump’s base really responded to.

micah: And Trump hit the Iran deal repeatedly.

OK, let’s move away from staffing now and talk about the other main defining feature of this transition period: Trump’s Twitter feed. He’s been all over the place, criticizing the cast of “Hamilton,” lying about massive vote fraud, etc. This morning, he uncorked this beauty seemingly out of nowhere:

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

clare.malone: Yeah, do they take away his Twitter?

natesilver: :bird:

clare.malone: Or do they try to accommodate him? Obama was accommodated on the BlackBerry front, though this seems VERY DIFFERENT.

harry: I still cannot believe he’s tweeting.

natesilver: I guess the broader question is whether there will be an … ahem … pivot toward Trump behaving more presidentially once he’s in office. My default answer is probably not.

micah: FiveThirtyEight has a no pivot talk policy.

harry: People said he’d be more presidential after he started winning states. People said he’d be more presidential once he started the general election campaign. People said he’d be more presidential once he won the presidency. Maybe we should stop predicting he’ll become more presidential.

clare.malone: What’s the Maya Angelou line? When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

natesilver: In most ways, Trump is a very WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) guy. Which — by the way — is why I’m not a fan of the “Trump’s tweets are just a distraction from Story X” take.

micah: But the attention paid to Trump’s tweeting does seem like one of the most prominent features of the period since the election. These will be a permanent feature of the political world while Trump’s in office.

clare.malone: Yeah, you and I disagree on that, Nate. I think some of the tweets are stories, but very many of them are not.

micah: Let’s take his tweet today on flag-burning as a case study.

clare.malone: Complete T-bone steak thrown to get the internet base all riled up.

micah: On this one, I’m with Clare that it’s a distraction.

natesilver: OK. What’s the big story that tweet is supposed to be distracting us from?

micah: Everything else. (And btw, intent here is beside the point.)

clare.malone: Every business conflict of interest story, every lawsuit settlement. Every non-protocol-following phone call taken with a world leader.

micah: What do congressional Republicans think of Bannon or Flynn or Sessions?

natesilver: Those aren’t big stories, at this point. They’re mishmashes of small stories, which collectively become important. In the same way that Trump’s various erosions of democratic norms — including on Twitter — collectively become important.

clare.malone: Yeah, but, Nate, why would we just hip hop around to notions about free speech that have already been settled instead of writing about actually important things that are still to be resolved with the incoming president? They’re not small stories so much as newly forming beats.

natesilver: I think potential erosions to the First Amendment are a lot more important than Trump’s business conflicts.

clare.malone: I think they are equally important and both pose unanswered questions as to their effect on the office of the presidency and the way our democracy functions.

We didn’t codify a lot of things surrounding the presidency — they’ve relied on people acting “responsibly,” and I think there is some worry that the shifting norms could become more than shifting, but unmoored from the intent of the founders and our constitution.

natesilver: I’m more concerned about things that appear on this list, which are signs that Trump could become an authoritarian leader. The first one is: “systematic efforts to intimidate the media.”

harry: You mean like his tweet about CNN’s Jeff Zeleny?

clare.malone: But we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The media is right to be their own guardian when it comes to free speech rights, but I’m frankly just as worried about the ability of foreign governments to co-opt the power of the American presidency in ways that haven’t been available before.

micah: Here’s the central problem, IMO: What a president says is typically allotted a ton of news value, by default, and rightly so. But it has been assigned news value because it traditionally has had a very high signal-to-noise ratio. Presidential remarks are normally so considered, vetted, poll-tested, etc. They usually are a somewhat reliable guide to the policies a president will pursue, how they’ll pursue them, etc. But Trump isn’t like that. He throws a ton of stuff out there, on Twitter and off. The signal-to-noise ratio in Trump’s public statements is uncommonly low. So I do think this is a new problem for the media to some extent.

Does Trump really support anti-flag burning legislation? Will he spend political capital on it? If Obama sent out that tweet, I think we could safely say “yes.” With Trump, I’m not sure.

harry: Presidents can support a lot of policies that they don’t spend capital on.

micah: Does he even support it? Look back through his Twitter feed — it’s littered with positions he reportedly no longer holds.

That’s my main point: If you want to know what Trump is going to do, is his Twitter feed really that helpful?

harry: It’s that tired old line about taking Trump seriously but not literally …

natesilver: I just don’t want to be the frog in boiling water if and when he actually starts shredding the Constitution.

clare.malone: Yes, that is fair.

micah: We gotta wrap up. Closing thoughts?

harry: My main thought: There’s nothing that Trump has done so far that has made me doubt my assessment before his election of what type of president he would be.

micah: Yeah, I think that’s right.

natesilver: Journalists ought to shed their presumption that everything will turn out fine in the end. We’re in substantially uncharted territory with Trump.

micah: That’s a good, happy note to end on.

Politics Podcast: Recount, Really?

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The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses the merits of Jill Stein’s push for ballot recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They also debate how journalists should cover President-elect Donald Trump’s tweets after his false claim on twitter that millions of votes were cast illegally.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with occasional special episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Trump Won In A Landslide.

Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway — perhaps seeking to push back on the increasing attention to Hillary Clinton’s widening lead in the national popular vote — has been touting her boss’s margin of victory in the Electoral College. With Trump officially declared the winner in Michigan on Monday, he’s got 306 electoral votes — 56.9 percent of the available total of 538 and nothing to sneeze at. That’s more than George W. Bush got in either of his Electoral College victories, making it the highest total for a Republican since 1988.

306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic. https://t.co/ObYZDo8cBq

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 28, 2016

But in a historical context, Trump’s Electoral College performance is decidedly below-average. So it’s a bit Orwellian to call it a “landslide” or a “blowout.” There have been 54 presidential elections since the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804. (Before that, presidential electors cast two votes each, making it hard to compare them to present-day elections.) Of those 54 cases, Trump’s share of the electoral vote — assuming there are no faithless electors or results overturned by recounts — ranks 44th:

ELECTORAL VOTESRANKELECTIONWINNERTOTALWINNERWINNER’S SHARE11820James Monroe23223199.621936Franklin D. Roosevelt53152398.531984Ronald Reagan53852597.641972Richard Nixon53852096.751804Thomas Jefferson17616292.061864Abraham Lincoln23321291.071980Ronald Reagan53848990.981964Lyndon B. Johnson53848690.391932Franklin D. Roosevelt53147288.9101956Dwight D. Eisenhower53145786.1111852Franklin Pierce29625485.8121940Franklin D. Roosevelt53144984.6131816James Monroe21718384.3141928Herbert Hoover53144483.6151952Dwight D. Eisenhower53144283.2161912Woodrow Wilson53143581.9171944Franklin D. Roosevelt53143281.4181872Ulysses S. Grant35228681.3191840William Henry Harrison29423479.6201988George H. W. Bush53842679.2211832Andrew Jackson28621976.6221920Warren G. Harding53140476.1231868Ulysses S. Grant29421472.8241924Calvin Coolidge53138271.9251904Theodore Roosevelt47633670.6261996Bill Clinton53837970.4271808James Madison17512269.7281992Bill Clinton53837068.8291828Andrew Jackson26117868.2302008Barack Obama53836567.8311908William Howard Taft48332166.5321900William McKinley44729265.3331892Grover Cleveland44427762.4341844James K. Polk27517061.8352012Barack Obama53833261.7361896William McKinley44727160.6371860Abraham Lincoln30318059.4381812James Madison21712859.0391856James Buchanan29617458.8401888Benjamin Harrison40123358.1411880James A. Garfield36921458.0421836Martin Van Buren29417057.8431948Harry S. Truman53130357.1442016Donald Trump53830656.9451960John F. Kennedy53730356.4461848Zachary Taylor29016356.2471968Richard Nixon53830155.9481976Jimmy Carter53829755.2491884Grover Cleveland40121954.6502004George W. Bush53828653.2511916Woodrow Wilson53127752.2522000George W. Bush53827150.4531876Rutherford B. Hayes36918550.1541824John Quincy Adams2618432.2Trump’s share of the Electoral College is below average

Sources: Wikipedia, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

By comparison, the average Electoral College winner claimed 70.9 percent of the available electoral votes, which would equate to 381 electoral votes given today’s total of 538 electors. For my money, it’s a bit much to call something a “landslide” when it can’t top that threshold. It’s not clear to me that President Obama’s win in 2008 should be thought of as a landslide, for instance. And Trump’s win surely doesn’t qualify. But cheer up, Trump fans: Your guy was elected president of the United States.

Why I Support An Election Audit, Even Though It’s Unlikely To Change The Outcome

Here at FiveThirtyEight, we’ve been skeptical of claims of irregularities in the presidential election. As we pointed out last week, there are no obvious statistical anomalies in the results in swing states based on the type of voting technology that each county employed. Instead, demographic differences, particularly the education levels of voters, explain the shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016 fairly well.

But that doesn’t mean I take some sort of philosophical stance against a recount or an audit of elections returns, or that other people at FiveThirtyEight do. Such efforts might make sense, with a couple of provisos.

The first proviso: Let’s not call it a “recount,” because that’s not really what it is. It’s not as though merely counting the ballots a second or third time is likely to change the results enough to overturn the outcome in three states. An apparent win by a few dozen or a few hundred votes might be reversed by an ordinary recount. But Donald Trump’s margins, as of this writing, are roughly 11,000 votes in Michigan, 23,000 votes in Wisconsin and 68,000 votes in Pennsylvania. There’s no precedent for a recount overturning margins like those or anything close to them. Instead, the question is whether there was a massive, systematic effort to manipulate the results of the election.

So what we’re talking about is more like an audit or an investigation. An investigation that would look for signs of deliberate and widespread fraud, such as voting machines’ having been hacked, whole batches of ballots’ intentionally having been disregarded, illegal coordination between elections officials and the campaigns, and so on. Such findings would probably depend on physical evidence as much or more than they do statistical evidence. In that sense, there’s no particular reason to confine the investigation to Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, the states that Hillary Clinton lost (somewhat) narrowly. If the idea is to identify some sort of smoking gun indicating massive fraud perpetrated by the Trump campaign — or by the Clinton campaign, or by the Russian government — it might be in a state Clinton won, such as New Hampshire or Minnesota. Or for that matter, it might be in a state Trump won fairly easily, like Ohio or Iowa.

A second “condition” is that the burden of proof for claims of a fixed election ought to be high. That’s because there’s enough evidence for there to be a clear presumption against theories of massive vote-rigging:

Many individuals and organizations have already checked for signs of irregularities. The journalists at ProPublica, for example, had more than 1,100 people monitoring the vote on Election Day and found no major irregularities. The campaigns also employ their own election monitors, lawyers and statisticians. The Clinton campaign, in particular, “had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology,” according to their general counsel, Marc Elias, although they’ll participate in “recount” efforts brought about by the Green Party’s Jill Stein.It’s awfully hard to rig an election because of the degree of coordination required across dozens of localities in dozens of states. The decentralized nature of U.S. presidential elections — whatever other problems it might cause — is thus a partial check against widespread election hacking.Whether or not the election outcome should have been foreseeable — and we’re of the view that people ignored clear signs of trouble for Clinton in the polls — the results make a lot of sense after the fact based on demographic trends. Specifically, the polls underestimated Trump’s support among white voters without college degrees, but were fairly accurate otherwise. Importantly, Trump’s overperformance occurred not only in swing states but also in states that he won easily, such as North Dakota. And he significantly improved on Mitt Romney’s performance in regions of states that otherwise weren’t competitive, such as upstate New York. If someone hacked the election, they did a clever job of covering their tracks by producing consistent-seeming demographic swings across a number of competitive and noncompetitive states.

On the flip side, when you’re examining results in thousands of precincts, it’s easy to detect results that look like funny business even when they have a perfectly innocent explanation. If hundreds of researchers are performing hundreds of statistical tests on hundreds of results, there are going to be a lot of false positives, including some that researchers claim have an extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance. (See also: our reporting on “p-hacking” and the scourge of false positives in the scientific community.) It’s also easy to uncover actual but isolated irregularities, such as malfunctioning voting machines, which nonetheless aren’t part of a broader conspiracy to rig the results.

It’s easy for smart people to be deceived by these claims, especially if they’re motivated to see a particular result. And it’s easy for journalists to spread misinformation by highlighting the claims, without providing sufficient scrutiny of them. In 2004, left-leaning sites made a cottage industry of claims that George W. Bush had stolen the election from John Kerry in Ohio, despite a lack of evidence and a wider margin (more than 100,000 votes) than the ones that separate Clinton and Trump in Wisconsin and other states now.

In many ways, undertaking an audit of the election results is tantamount to performing a test for a rare but potentially fatal disease. You want to weigh the probability of successfully detecting an anomaly against the invasiveness of the procedure and the chance of a false positive result. Oftentimes, the risk outweighs the reward. For instance, many experts warn against mammograms for women in their 40s because the underlying risk of breast cancer is low for women of that age and the rate of false positive tests is high, causing undue stress for the patients and subjecting them to further tests and operations that might be harmful.

What are the costs of an election audit? Running them will cost several million dollars, but that’s fairly trivial in an era of billion-dollar campaigns. Instead, since these audits aren’t routine — although maybe they should be — the cost is mostly that they could undermine the perceived legitimacy of the election and the longstanding norm toward uncontentious transitions of power from one president toward the next. Which might be more persuasive … if Trump hadn’t spent the weekend peddling a conspiracy about how he thought the results were rigged in Clinton’s favor because millions of people had voted illegally.

So, case closed, right? Trump, Stein, Clinton-backing Democrats — everyone’s talking about irregularities. So let’s get on with the recount … er, the audit? Actually, I think people still ought to be careful what they wish for. Remember, we’ll be in a signal-poor environment. The audit will kick up a lot of dust, but it’s unlikely that there will be anything there, and even harder to prove anything. Trump is a masterful troll, and trolls — and aspiring authoritarians — can thrive in environments where there’s a lot of confusing information. It’s also worth noting that Stein’s motivations for financing the recounts are ambiguous and she might be prone toward making sensational claims. People’s BS detectors ought to be set to extra high, even as compared to their already-high 2016 levels. (If audits were automatic — a small share of ballots are checked after every election — they might work to build confidence in our elections rather than potentially undermining it.)

Ultimately, though, I’m in the information business. An audit very probably won’t detect a conspiracy, but it will reveal information about our voting systems. FiveThirtyEight and most other American news organizations are founded on the premise that more information is better, even if it risks being misinterpreted. I’ve never questioned that premise more than I have over the course of this election. But over the next four years, we’re all going to have to get used to an environment in which nuggets of insight come buried in mounds of misinformation. An audit is as good a place as any to start.

VIDEO: Nate Silver discusses the method to our forecast

We Debate Five Claims About The Trump Era

In this week’s politics chat, we consider five claims about the 2016 election and the state of politics generally as the Trump era begins. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome, everyone! Today we’re bringing back a game we haven’t played in awhile — buy/sell/hold — but with a simplifying twist. We’re playing agree/disagree. I’ll put forward five propositions, and you’ll take a stand! I’ll say at the beginning: We’ll be talking about some big topics that deserve 200+ chats rather than one-fifth of a chat, but obviously these are subjects we’ll be covering extensively going forward. So let’s pretend we’re sitting around the Thanksgiving table and get started.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Oh god. The last time we did anything like this, I think I still thought Marco Rubio would win the Republican nomination.

micah: Proposition No. 1. Agree/disagree: Democrats have a MAJOR problem in the Midwest because white voters there are moving away from the party.

farai (Farai Chideya, senior writer): Agree.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Agree.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): What’s the Midwest?

micah: Harry.

harry: I’m serious.

micah:

Mostly I mean Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and maybe Pennsylvania.

harry: I think the problem in Iowa is very real. I wrote about it in 2014.

natesilver: I can’t believe that you hadn’t been to Chicago before this year, Harry. Pathetic.

harry: But I think there is not that much proof that Michigan or Wisconsin is gone for the Democrats. Trump’s wins in those states could just be a one-off.

farai: Here’s what I know. After visiting Ohio to report on Trump voters, who were extremely organized and enthusiastic, I got some reports from Democratic organizers in the region. The messaging for Hillary Clinton fell extremely flat in part because of the real and perceived impact of free trade on the region. There were many other factors at play, but that is one with real regional impact.

clare.malone: I think portions of the traditional Democratic electorate out there have been saying since President Obama’s first term that there needed to be a more concrete jobs program/message — they wanted that in lieu of health-care reform. Of course, a lot of them still voted for him the second time around, but I think this Clinton loss is the chickens coming home to roost, post-2008 crash.

farai: But not just Democrats — establishment Republicans have the same problem. They just got eliminated in the primaries.

harry: Democrats have a problem until a Democrat with a pulse wins the Michigan governor’s race in two years.

One election doesn’t make a trend — let’s see Republicans do well in these states in another contest.

clare.malone: I’ll quote here from the Mahoning County, Ohio, Democratic Party chairman who wrote a stern memo to the Clinton team a while back: “Look, I’m as progressive as anybody, okay? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job.”

natesilver: I agree, and furthermore, I think there was a certain sort of media bias involved in dismissing Clinton’s problems in the Midwest.

harry: What bias is that?

natesilver: People not looking carefully at the data which suggested that white voters without college degrees were overrepresented in the swing states. And the related assumption that Clinton’s more diverse coalition made it impossible for Trump to win the Electoral College.

micah: But why do we think this is a Democratic problem and not just a Clinton problem?

natesilver: Well, she’s a “generic Democrat” in a lot of ways. And also, Democratic Senate candidates, like Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, didn’t do so hot in the Midwest either.

clare.malone: The wing of the Democratic Party that’s had control of the party is bad on this front — the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing was good on it.

farai: Clinton is not a generic Democrat. She’s a woman. Joe Biden may have won some of these states. Don’t forget that.

clare.malone: I don’t think it’s just that she’s a woman. I think she was seen as a super elite, someone who’d operated out of the realm of “normal” for decades.

natesilver: I dunno, Feingold is pretty Warren/Sanders-y, and he lost too. And he’s a dude.

farai: I agree, Clare.

Nate, I’m open to other interpretations, but until we have data that disaggregates gender from some of these other factors, we won’t know. How can we get that kind of data moving forward? This is a huge issue across many categories of inquiry.

harry: Feingold also lost by more in Wisconsin than Clinton did. Here’s the thing as I see it: There were clearly some big trouble signs for Democrats in Iowa in 2014. And things got worse for Democrats in the Midwest in 2016. Iowa wasn’t even close. And are we truly to believe that Wisconsin is that much different than Iowa?

natesilver: I’m skeptical that gender explains all that much about regional voting patterns, because the gender ratio doesn’t vary all that much from county to county and state to state. It’s certainly possible that people in some places have a bigger problem with a woman becoming president than in others, though.

harry: I would point out that Wisconsin elected a lesbian to be a U.S. senator in 2012.

farai: There’s evidence from the Western Political Science Association that Trump voters are anti-feminist.

micah: Speaking of!

Proposition No. 2. Agree/disagree: The 2016 election was bad for feminism.

clare.malone: Agree, but not strongly.

farai: Disagree. The election highlighted an anti-feminist agenda but will provoke a counter-response.

micah: So, Farai, the election was bad for women and good for feminism?

farai: If you asked whether the election showed anti-feminist sentiment, yes; if it was “bad for feminism,” I take the long view that this will be a seminal moment for millennials, in particular, to understand that gender wars are not by any means over. It will likely change the long-term political landscape and re-politicize centrist women if Trump’s administration attacks abortion rights, in particular.

natesilver: I agree with Farai that in the long run this will re-energize the left, and particularly young people on the left. Also, it’s easier to be united in opposition than when you’re in power.

harry: The first major-party female presidential nominee lost. The man who beat her consistently demeaned women. I don’t see how this was good for feminism, at least in the short term.

clare.malone: I think it was bad for feminism in the sense that Trump spread far and wide pretty retrograde ideas about women and those ideas were not rebutted forcefully at all by a lot of regular voters and political leaders alike (a whole lot of Republican officials quietly walked back their un-endorsements of Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out). That’s the kind of thing that seeps into the heads of young girls and boys and continues a poisonous cycle of gender roles. So, on aggregate, not great for feminism. But I will agree that it does something to galvanize people who are already feminists to fight harder. I’ll also say that the women of Fox News coming out strongly against sexual harassment in the workplace will likely prove to do a lot of good work for spreading the gospel of gender equality in a lot of corners of America.

micah: Didn’t the campaign show that there’s a pretty strong anti-feminist strain in America?

natesilver: A pretty big theme of 2016 is that America is even more racist/sexist than we white guys thought!

farai: Absolutely. And that women are a key part of the anti-feminist coalition.

Some women.

natesilver: But was it that way all along, or did Trump make it so?

clare.malone: I think it showed the continued divisiveness of that label — feminism just means belief that women are equal to men, but a lot of people imbue it with meaning that goes beyond that.

farai: Clare, I think feminism is by its nature disruptive of the social order. Equality itself is disruptive of the social order, which is why American government needed amendments to the Constitution to enfranchise women and blacks.

natesilver: I agree with Farai in terms of thinking of feminism as a political movement. I think 2016 can simultaneously be bad for people on the left and good for left-wing political movements.

clare.malone: My point is that a lot of women who are Trump voters would agree with the Megyn Kelly argument of non-“feminist” feminism, which is to say, empowerment for women while eschewing what they see as a liberal-owned movement.

farai: Clare, totally agree with the Megyn Kelly example. Even women who voted for Trump may organize against the GOP if women’s health care is threatened. In the 2018 midterms and in 2020.

micah: OK, Proposition No. 3. Agree/disagree: The election of Trump was good for the Republican Party.

farai: Disagree.

harry: I’m going to agree.

natesilver: Disagree. Holding the Senate was good for them, though.

clare.malone: Disagree.

micah: OK, Harry defend your outlier POV.

harry: Perhaps I’m being naive. I don’t know what the future will bring, but how can winning a presidential election be bad for your party? You control the entirety of the federal government for at least two — and probably four — years. Yes, there may be an anti-Trump backlash, but the GOP still has power now. You might argue that Trump is bad for the Republican Party’s future because the country is becoming more and more diverse. But a diversifying country is no guarantee of a winning Democratic coalition.

clare.malone: My “disagree” takes into account the long-term view of the Republican Party. You might be right about the short term, Harry.

natesilver: My view is that Trump’s win was somewhat fluke-ish, taking advantage of a big Electoral College-popular vote split and an opponent who was really disliked and had some bad news hit at the wrong time.

farai: Harry, my argument is that the establishment GOP never got a fix on how to treat Trump as a candidate, and it sure doesn’t seem to know how to deal with him as a party figurehead. It is nominally united behind him, which displeases a majority of voters, who voted against him despite the Electoral College win. And many of the Trump voters I spoke with voted to defeat Clinton, rather than to endorse Trump. I interviewed Sue DeMarco, for example, a 66-year-old Republican from the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She wasn’t on board with a GOP in Trump’s image. Voters like her may not be satisfied with the long-term direction of the party.

micah: Here’s a long-term “Trump is good for the GOP” argument: There was a fundamental disconnect between the policy that Republican elected officials were pushing and what their voters wanted. Trump’s more populist positions have helped close that gap.

natesilver: It’s a pretty big risk to a party to have a guy who will start out with only a 40 percent or 45 percent job approval rating and a cloud of scandals swirling around him already.

clare.malone: Republicans continue to face a difficult premise for long-term success (i.e., just turning out all the white people) in a country that’s getting more and more diverse. There are some promises that Trump made during the campaign that I’m not so sure he can deliver on, especially if we end up in another cyclical recession. A lot of people were banking on him for radical change when it comes to their pocketbook, and I wonder if the radical proposition that he ran on doesn’t have a slimmer chance for success. There’s also the idea that he’s not going to deliver on a lot of the more popular-with-his-base inflammatory propositions — turns out he’s not actually going to “lock her up.” And let’s see what happens with that wall.

harry: Does anyone think it’s bad news? Or are you unconvinced that it’s good news?

Also of note: Trump did better with black and probably Latino voters than Mitt Romney did.

farai: Micah, this again brings up the key point of disaggregating Trump voters’ motivations, a problem current data elucidates only partly. Who voted for Trump as a populist? As a white nationalist explicitly or, more commonly, as someone championing white interests over other interests? As a Christian- or social-conservative? This a coalition whose center may not hold.

natesilver: And a lot of Trump voters were really just not-Clinton voters

micah: Aren’t we overcomplicating this, though? If the goal of a party is to enact an agenda, having Trump in the White House is manifestly good for the GOP.

harry: I hear a lot of people explaining why Trump was a fluke, but not why he isn’t good. He won. Republicans control the federal government.

farai: For example: If Steve Bannon (who’s been named Trump’s chief strategist) and his allies surface an explicit white nationalist agenda, those black and Latino and Asian voters who helped push Trump to victory may never be seen again by a similar candidate. And if not Trump, does the party go back to a free-trade agenda, pissing off populists? And/or does it keep a socially conservative agenda? What out of this grab bag stays and what goes?

clare.malone: We’re long-terming it vs. short-terming it.

natesilver: Right — how much of Paul Ryan’s agenda is going to get passed?

micah: Yeah, I guess Farai and Nate’s question is central.

clare.malone: Yeah, Congress could well remain a shitshow, and without an opposing administration to blame, that could be “bad news bears” for the GOP.

natesilver: One thing we learned this year is that there isn’t that much of a market for Paul Ryan’s agenda.

harry: Let’s see where we are in two months.

micah: Proposition No. 4. Agree/disagree: Trump’s election is bad for President Obama’s legacy.

farai: Disagree.

natesilver: For Obama’s historical reputation or for his policy legacy?

I say, good for his reputation, bad for his agenda.

farai: Good point. Agree with Nate.

clare.malone: Agree.

harry: Agree with Nathaniel Read Silver.

clare.malone: I think history will ultimately be kind to him, but there’s no way around this not being a blow. The man himself said so during his vociferous campaigning.

natesilver: There’s going to be a lot of “holy shit, how did Obama hold the country together for eight years when there was all this stuff lurking just underneath the surface.”

clare.malone: Yeah, Nate. That.

micah: But if many of his policy achievements are undone, doesn’t that hurt his reputation as far as history is concerned? I.e., “Americans rejected the Obama agenda.”

clare.malone: It’s the whole “a few steps forward, one step back” thing.

harry: I don’t know if they can undo as much as forestall. I mean the Trans-Pacific Partnership is gone. But can Obamacare really be changed that much?

clare.malone: There are some civil rights achievements in his legacy. I don’t think all of Obamacare will be dismantled — there are things that will survive.

farai: Again, I think disaggregating actions from intent is part of the picture. A lot of people in the GOP claimed to oppose Obama on principle. But one has to ask how much his race — and the drumbeat of birtherism, including from Trump — affected governance. That line of inquiry will be key to understanding his legacy.

The use of executive orders in Obama’s terms will stand as a cautionary tale to future presidents if they are dismantled.

micah: Totally agree. I get why he did it with a dysfunctional Congress, but this shows why that’s a bad way to govern.

harry: It turns out that passing laws helps.

micah: Proposition No. 5. Agree/disagree: The 2016 election demonstrated that white nationalism has become a strong force in the U.S.

farai: Agree.

clare.malone: Agree.

natesilver: Agree.

farai: I wrote a long personal essay on this here.

clare.malone: White nationalism has been mainstreamed this election — it looks “different” than we thought it looked a year ago, and that in and of itself proves that it has demonstrated great power in this election cycle.

farai: I’ve been covering white nationalists and white supremacists for a quarter of a century. They were always real but rarely as powerful as they are today. They are not that hard to talk to. We as journalists need to understand where truly fringe racial behavior morphs into digital harassment tactics by the alt-right morphs into Bannon’s world which now morphs into governance. It’s a chain of influence that is a threat to contemporary democracy, and they are unapologetic.

micah: Bannon working in the White House seems like prima facie evidence that the election shows the power of white nationalism.

clare.malone: Right.

farai: Alt-right.

micah: Farai wins the chat.

clare.malone: He wears barn jackets, not a hood — he’s the mainstreaming of white nationalism personified.

natesilver: I suppose I’m thinking more in terms of Trump’s racially coded appeals more generally, and less about Bannon specifically.

micah: But I wouldn’t separate them. Trump ran, in part, on a white nationalist platform and put a white nationalist in his government. It’s worth remembering: Contrary to popular belief, politicians keep most of their promises.

farai: This essay by a novelist on how Trump voters endorsed racism with their vote is also important.

natesilver: I don’t know, though. There’s sort of a freak-show aspect to Bannon, etc., that bothers me a bit in terms of how they’re being covered.

farai: Yes, Nate, that should bother us. They are not freaks; they are political warriors. Putting them in the category of freaks far understates their focus.

clare.malone: The fact that Bannon has reportedly said he wants the U.S. government to collapse should be taken as a fairly serious statement now that he’s going to work in the West Wing. (Bannon’s quote is claimed to be, “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”)

farai: Grover Norquist couldn’t drown the government in a bathtub, but Bannon may be able to submerge it to his own agenda.

natesilver: This is hard to articulate, but I guess I’m saying that it’s easier for a mainstream media outlet to point to Bannon, etc., and say “here are a few people that are a LOT racist” as opposed to saying “a LOT of us are a little bit racist.”

farai: Nate, I’d love to see social scientists, pollsters and data journalists have a confab on how to disaggregate voting behavior in 2020. This underscores the importance of that to me.

Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump

Sometimes statistical analysis is tricky, and sometimes a finding just jumps off the page. Here’s one example of the latter.

I took a list of all 981 U.S. counties with 50,000 or more people and sorted it by the share of the population that had completed at least a four-year college degree. Hillary Clinton improved on President Obama’s 2012 performance in 48 of the country’s 50 most-well-educated counties. And on average, she improved on Obama’s margin of victory in these countries by almost 9 percentage points, even though Obama had done pretty well in them to begin with.

COUNTYCOLLEGE DEGREEMEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOMEOBAMA 2012CLINTON 2016SHIFTAverage51.4%$77,768k+17.3+25.9+8.5Arlington, VA72.0105,120+39.8+60.1+20.3Alexandria, VA61.587,319+43.5+59.0+15.5Howard, MD60.4110,133+22.0+33.5+11.5New York, NY59.371,656+68.8+77.2+8.4Fairfax, VA59.2112,102+20.5+36.2+15.7Boulder, CO58.269,407+41.8+48.7+6.9Loudoun, VA58.0123,966+4.5+16.8+12.3Montgomery, MD57.498,704+43.9+55.6+11.7Orange, NC56.257,261+42.2+51.0+8.8Douglas, CO55.9102,626-25.8-18.1+7.7Hamilton, IN55.684,635-34.3-19.6+14.7Marin, CA54.891,529+51.3+62.8+11.5Williamson, TN54.191,743-46.5-35.5+11.0District of Columbia53.469,235+83.6+88.7+5.1San Francisco, CA52.978,378+70.5+75.7+5.2Johnson, KS52.175,017-17.4-2.7+14.7Albemarle, VA52.167,958+12.0+25.0+13.0Somerset, NJ52.0100,903+5.6+12.5+6.9Washtenaw, MI51.860,805+35.9+41.5+5.6Johnson, IA51.754,985+35.5+38.2+2.7Benton, OR51.449,338+28.5+33.8+5.3Middlesex, MA51.383,488+27.1+38.9+11.8Delaware, OH51.191,936-23.2-16.1+7.1Morris, NJ50.699,142-10.8-4.4+6.4Tompkins, NY50.352,836+40.6+42.1+1.5Norfolk, MA49.986,469+15.2+31.6+16.4Broomfield, CO49.580,430+6.0+14.1+8.1Douglas, KS49.450,732+24.6+32.7+8.1Collin, TX49.484,233-31.5-17.0+14.5Chester, PA48.886,093-0.2+9.3+9.5Fulton, GA48.656,642+29.8+42.1+12.3Story, IA48.551,270+13.8+12.2-1.6Hunterdon, NJ48.3106,519-17.8-13.8+4.0Wake, NC48.366,579+11.4+20.5+9.1Chittenden, VT48.064,243+41.6+47.4+5.8Boone, MO47.749,059+3.1+5.9+2.8Dane, WI47.662,303+43.5+48.0+4.5Santa Clara, CA47.393,854+42.9+52.3+9.4Eagle, CO47.373,774+14.9+19.9+5.0King, WA47.173,035+40.6+50.5+9.9DuPage, IL46.779,016+1.1+14.1+13.0Gallatin, MT46.754,298-5.0+1.0+6.0Ozaukee, WI46.475,643-30.3-19.3+11.0Hennepin, MN46.465,033+27.0+35.3+8.3Madison, MS46.363,156-15.7-16.0-0.3Montgomery, PA46.279,926+14.3+21.1+6.8James City, VA46.176,705-12.0-5.1+6.9Bergen, NJ46.183,686+11.3+12.0+0.7Westchester, NY46.083,422+25.1+32.8+7.7Durham, NC45.652,038+52.8+60.4+7.6Clinton’s margin surged in the 50 most-educated counties

Sources: American Community Survey, U.S. Election Atlas, ABC News

Although they all have highly educated populations, these counties are otherwise reasonably diverse. The list includes major cities, like San Francisco, and counties that host college towns, like Washtenaw, Michigan, where the University of Michigan is located. It also includes some upper-middle-class, professional counties such as Johnson County, Kansas, which is in the western suburbs of Kansas City. It includes counties in states where Clinton did poorly: She improved over Obama in Delaware County, Ohio, for example — a traditionally Republican stronghold outside Columbus — despite her numbers crashing in Ohio overall. It includes extremely white counties like Chittenden County, Vermont (90 percent non-Hispanic white), and more diverse ones like Fulton County, Georgia, where African-Americans form the plurality of the population. If a county had high education levels, Clinton was almost certain to improve there regardless of the area’s other characteristics.

Now here’s the opposite list: The 50 counties (minimum population of 50,000) where the smallest share of the population has bachelor’s degrees:

COUNTYCOLLEGE DEGREEMEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOMEOBAMA 2012CLINTON 2016SHIFTAverage13.3%$41,108-19.3-30.5-11.3Liberty, TX8.847,722-53.3-58.0-4.7Starr, TX9.625,906+73.3+60.1-13.2Acadia, LA9.937,684-49.8-56.7-6.9Apache, AZ10.132,396+34.3+36.9+2.6Duplin, NC10.434,787-11.6-19.2-7.6Walker, AL10.736,712-52.8-67.5-14.7Edgecombe, NC10.733,892+36.2+32.2-4.0St. Mary, LA11.141,956-18.8-27.6-8.8DeKalb, AL11.337,977-54.7-69.4-14.7Anderson, TX11.342,511-52.1-58.1-6.0McKinley, NM11.429,812+46.9+39.5-7.4Henry, VA11.534,344-14.7-29.2-14.5Putnam, FL11.632,714-24.5-36.6-12.2Darke, OH11.643,323-44.4-61.2-16.8Halifax, NC11.932,834+32.3+26.9-5.4Laurel, KY11.935,746-63.6-69.1-5.5Sampson, NC12.135,731-10.9-16.7-5.8Maverick, TX12.132,536+58.1+55.8-2.3Mohave, AZ12.238,456-42.1-51.5-9.4Blount, AL12.344,409-73.9-81.4-7.5Robeson, NC12.430,581+17.4-4.8-22.2Kings, CA12.547,341-14.9-17.4-2.5Talladega, AL12.535,896-16.0-25.5-9.5Pike, KY12.532,571-50.5-62.7-12.2Marion, OH12.542,904-6.4-34.4-28.0Lea, NM12.655,248-49.8-48.3+1.5Columbus, NC12.734,597-7.8-22.1-14.3Terrebonne, LA12.949,932-41.2-48.4-7.2Wilkes, NC12.932,157-42.4-55.2-12.8Jackson, AL12.936,874-41.8-62.5-20.7Le Flore, OK12.935,970-41.1-58.7-17.6Merced, CA13.043,066+8.7+7.9-0.8Hawkins, TN13.037,432-46.9-63.4-16.5Vermilion, LA13.047,344-52.8-59.6-6.8St. Landry, LA13.133,928-4.3-11.9-7.6Rockingham, NC13.138,946-21.1-30.0-8.9Huron, OH13.149,315-8.3-36.4-28.1Clearfield, PA13.241,510-28.9-49.5-20.6Tulare, CA13.342,863-15.0-16.2-1.2Rusk, TX13.346,924-51.1-56.6-5.5Ashtabula, OH13.440,304+12.8-19.0-31.8Imperial, CA13.441,772+32.0+41.8+9.7Bullitt, KY13.456,199-35.7-49.8-14.1Caldwell, NC13.434,853-35.5-50.6-15.1Montcalm, MI13.440,739-8.6-34.0-25.4Madera, CA13.545,490-17.1-17.3-0.2Dickson, TN13.545,056-28.4-45.7-17.3Tuscola, MI13.544,017-10.8-38.0-27.2Pearl River, MS13.540,997-59.3-66.7-7.4Columbiana, OH13.643,707-11.8-41.6-29.8Clinton collapsed in the 50 least-educated counties

Sources: American Community Survey, U.S. Election Atlas, ABC News, Alaska Division of Elections

These results are every bit as striking: Clinton lost ground relative to Obama in 47 of the 50 counties — she did an average of 11 percentage points worse, in fact. These are really the places that won Donald Trump the presidency, especially given that a fair number of them are in swing states such as Ohio and North Carolina. He improved on Mitt Romney’s margin by more than 30 points (!) in Ashtabula County, Ohio, for example, an industrial county along Lake Erie that hadn’t voted Republican since 1984.

And this is also a reasonably diverse list of counties. While some of them are poor, a few others — such as Bullitt County, Kentucky, and Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana — have average incomes. There’s also some racial diversity on the list: Starr County, Texas, is 96 percent Hispanic, for example, and Clinton underperformed Obama there (although she still won it by a large margin). Edgecombe County, North Carolina, is 57 percent black and saw a shift toward Trump.

How do we know that education levels drove changes in support — as opposed to income levels, for example? It’s tricky because there’s a fairly strong correlation between income and education. Nonetheless, with the whole country to pick from, we can find some places where education levels are high but incomes are average or below average. If education is the key driver of changes in the electorate, we’d expect Clinton to hold steady or gain in these counties. If income matters more, we might see her numbers decline.

As it happens, I grew up in one of these places: Ingham County, Michigan, which is home to Michigan State University and the state capital of Lansing, along with a lot of auto manufacturing jobs (though fewer than there used to be). The university and government jobs attract an educated workforce, but there aren’t a lot of rich people in Ingham County. How did Clinton do there? Just fine. She won it by 28 percentage points, the same as Obama did four years ago, despite her overall decline in Michigan.

And in most places that fit this description, Clinton improved on Obama’s performance. I identified 22 counties where at least 35 percent of the population has bachelor’s degrees but the median household income is less than $50,000 and at least 50 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white (we’ll look at what happened with majority-minority counties in a moment, so hang tight). Clinton improved on Obama’s performance in 18 of the 22 counties, by an average of about 4 percentage points:

COUNTYCOLLEGE DEGREEMEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOMEOBAMA 2012CLINTON 2016SHIFTAverage40.2%$43,862+4.8+8.8+4.0Brazos, TX38.339,060-35.3-23.6+11.7Champaign, IL42.546,680+7.0+18.4+11.4Clarke, GA39.333,430+28.8+38.0+9.2Harrisonburg, VA35.638,807+13.4+21.9+8.5Fayette, KY40.248,667+1.0+9.4+8.4Riley, KS45.544,522-12.0-4.5+7.5Davidson, TN36.547,434+18.6+26.0+7.4Benton, OR51.449,338+28.5+33.8+5.3Alachua, FL40.842,045+17.4+22.6+5.2Watauga, NC38.035,491-3.1+1.5+4.6Monroe, IN44.241,857+19.1+23.7+4.6Boone, MO47.749,059+3.1+5.9+2.8Buncombe, NC35.145,642+12.5+14.6+2.1Montgomery, VA44.344,810-0.3+1.3+1.6Leon, FL44.346,620+23.6+25.1+1.5Lafayette, MS36.941,343-15.3-14.8+0.5New Hanover, NC37.249,582-4.6-4.1+0.5Payne, OK36.437,637-28.4-28.3+0.1Ingham, MI36.545,278+27.8+27.7-0.1Monongalia, WV38.846,166-9.5-10.4-0.9Tippecanoe, IN35.244,474-3.6-5.7-2.1Missoula, MT40.247,029+17.8+15.7-2.1High-education, medium-income white counties shifted to Clinton

Counties shown have a population of at least 50,000. At least 50 percent of residents are non-Hispanic whites, at least 35 percent of the age-25-and-older population has a bachelor’s degree or higher, and the median household income is below $50,000.

Sources: American Community Survey, U.S. Election Atlas, ABC News

Are these so-called “white working-class” counties? You could argue for it: They’re mostly white, and they have average or below-average incomes. But, of course, “class” is a slippery term, and definitions vary. It is worth noting that many of the counties on the list are home to major colleges or universities, although there are some exceptions. Clinton made substantial gains in Nashville, Tennessee (Davidson County), and modest gains in Asheville, North Carolina (Buncombe County), for instance, and both places have reputations as intellectual and cultural havens but aren’t really college towns.

There are also some counties where incomes are high but residents aren’t particularly well-educated. Take Suffolk County, New York, for instance, which comprises the eastern three-quarters of Long Island. The median household income there is around $88,000, but only about a third of the population has college degrees (as compared to a national average of around 30 percent). Suffolk County turned into Trump Territory, voting for him by 8 percentage points after Obama had won it by 4 points in 2012. Trump made even larger gains in Staten Island, New York (Richmond County), winning it by 17 points after Obama won it by 3 points in 2012.

Long Island and Staten Island might be peculiar cases because voters there may have a cultural affinity with Trump, who grew up in Queens. Even so, they reveal something about how cultural and educational fault lines can mean more than economic circumstances. Clinton improved over Obama’s performance in suburban Westchester County, New York, for instance, which has broadly similar income levels to Long Island and Staten Island but higher education levels and a different mix of occupations. (Staten Island is famous for its large population of police and firefighters, but you’ll meet a lot more journalists who have homes in Westchester.)

Trump improved on Romney’s performance in 23 of 30 counties where median incomes are $70,000 or higher but less than 35 percent of the population have college degrees and the majority of the population is white. For example, Trump won by a much larger margin than Romney in Calvert County, Maryland, which has some commonalities with Long Island. And he substantially improved on Romney’s performance in Chisago County, Sherburne County and Wright County in the Minneapolis exurbs, even though Clinton made major gains in Minneapolis’ Hennepin County. There’s probably some degree of cultural self-sorting at play here. These communities have plenty of nice homes and good schools — they’re not cheap to live in — but they have fewer cultural amenities or pretensions (think big-box retail as opposed to boutiques) than you usually find in nearer-in suburbs and small towns such as those in Westchester County.

COUNTYCOLLEGE DEGREEMEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOMEOBAMA 2012CLINTON 2016SHIFTAverage30.4%$76,701-11.0-15.8-4.8Richmond, NY30.674,043+2.6-16.8-19.4Chisago, MN21.570,223-12.6-30.6-18.0Sherburne, MN26.273,621-22.0-37.1-15.1Litchfield, CT33.772,068-3.6-16.0-12.3Orange, NY28.670,794+5.7-6.4-12.1Suffolk, NY33.588,323+3.7-8.2-11.9Wright, MN27.473,085-21.7-33.2-11.5Gloucester, NJ28.776,213+10.8-0.5-11.3Calvert, MD29.395,425-7.5-18.4-10.9Warren, NJ29.570,934-15.5-25.6-10.1St. Mary’s, MD29.888,190-14.8-24.6-9.8Sussex, NJ33.187,397-21.4-30.2-8.8Dutchess, NY33.472,471+7.5-1.1-8.6Anoka, MN27.370,464-2.6-9.7-7.1Livingston, MI33.073,694-23.3-29.6-6.3St. Croix, WI32.470,313-12.1-18.4-6.3Harford, MD33.481,016-18.4-24.5-6.1Spotsylvania, VA28.378,505-11.5-16.8-5.3Fauquier, VA34.392,078-19.9-24.7-4.8Carroll, MD32.785,532-32.9-36.9-4.0Chesapeake, VA29.470,176+1.0-1.3-2.3Ascension, LA25.870,207-34.3-36.0-1.7Elko, NV17.572,280-53.2-54.7-1.5Will, IL32.676,142+5.5+5.6+0.1McHenry, IL32.276,345-8.8-8.0+0.8Kendall, IL34.383,844-3.3-1.5+1.8Plymouth, MA34.075,816+4.2+10.1+5.9Napa, CA31.970,925+28.7+35.3+6.6Kane, IL31.870,514+1.1+9.0+7.9Davis, UT34.670,388-61.9-22.9+39.0High-income, medium-education white counties shifted to Trump

Counties shown have a population of at least 50,000. At least 50 percent of residents are non-Hispanic whites, less than 35 percent of the age-25-and-older population has a bachelor’s degree or higher, and the median household income is above $70,000.

Sources: American Community Survey, U.S. Election Atlas, ABC News

Education levels are also increasingly dividing majority-minority communities from one another. For example, let’s look at a set of counties that were a sweet spot for the Obama coalition — those that are both diverse and highly educated. In particular, there are 24 counties (minimum population 50,000) in the U.S. where at least 35 percent of the population has college degrees and less than half the population is non-Hispanic white. Obama did really well in these counties in 2012, winning them by an average of 41 percentage points. But Clinton did even better, winning them by 47 points, on average. The only two such counties that Obama had lost, Clinton won: Fort Bend County, Texas, in suburban Houston, which voted for a Democrat for the first time since 1964, and Orange County, California, which hadn’t voted Democratic since 1936.

COUNTYCOLLEGE DEGREENON-HISPANIC WHITEOBAMA 2012CLINTON 2016SHIFTAverage42.9%41.9%+41.2+47.5+6.3Fort Bend, TX42.335.5-6.8+6.6+13.4Fulton, GA48.640.6+29.8+42.1+12.3Montgomery, MD57.447.4+43.9+55.6+11.7Orange, CA37.342.9-6.2+5.2+11.4San Mateo, CA45.041.2+46.7+57.2+10.5San Diego, CA35.147.5+7.6+17.1+9.5Santa Clara, CA47.334.1+42.9+52.3+9.4New York, NY59.347.4+68.8+77.2+8.4Yolo, CA38.348.8+34.0+42.1+8.1DeKalb, GA40.329.7+56.8+64.7+7.9Suffolk, MA41.047.1+56.7+64.6+7.9Contra Costa, CA39.446.6+35.2+42.9+7.7Durham, NC45.642.1+52.8+60.4+7.6Mecklenburg, NC41.549.6+22.4+29.9+7.5Richmond, VA35.439.7+57.3+63.8+6.5San Francisco, CA52.941.4+70.5+75.7+5.2District of Columbia53.435.4+83.6+88.7+5.1Prince William, VA38.147.0+16.0+20.1+4.1Alameda, CA42.133.3+60.7+64.4+3.7Cook, IL35.343.4+49.4+53.0+3.6Richland, SC36.244.6+32.0+32.9+0.9Santa Fe, NM39.943.4+51.1+50.8-0.3Hudson, NJ36.829.6+56.1+51.9-4.2Middlesex, NJ40.747.0+27.6+19.7-7.9Highly educated majority-minority counties shifted toward Clinton

Counties on this list have a population of at least 50,000. Less than 50 percent of residents are non-Hispanic whites and at least 35 percent of the age-25-and-older population has a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Sources: American Community Survey, U.S. Election Atlas, ABC News

By contrast, Clinton struggled (relatively speaking) in majority-minority communities with lower education levels. Among the 19 majority-minority countries where 15 percent or less of the population has a bachelor’s degree, she won by an average of only 7 percentage points, less than Obama’s 10-point average margin of victory in 2012. We need to be slightly careful here because of the potential ecological fallacy — it’s not clear if minority voters shifted away from Clinton in these counties or if the white voters who live there did. Still, Trump probably gained overall among Latino and black voters compared to Romney, and it’s worth investigating divisions within those communities instead of treating their votes as monolithic.

COUNTYCOLLEGE DEGREENON-HISPANIC WHITEOBAMA 2012CLINTON 2016SHIFTAverage12.8%30.3%+10.1+7.0-3.1Robeson, NC12.426.7+17.4-4.8-22.2Cumberland, NJ13.849.0+24.2+5.3-18.9Starr, TX9.63.4+73.3+60.1-13.2McKinley, NM11.410.1+46.9+39.5-7.4Crittenden, AR14.644.7+14.9+8.9-6.0Halifax, NC11.939.332.326.9-5.4Edgecombe, NC10.737.2+36.2+32.2-4.0San Patricio, TX14.841.0-20.7-24.0-3.3Kings, CA12.534.5-14.9-17.4-2.5Maverick, TX12.13.1+58.1+55.8-2.3Tulare, CA13.331.3-15.0-16.2-1.2Merced, CA13.030.5+8.7+7.9-0.8Madera, CA13.536.8-17.1-17.3-0.2Navajo, AZ14.543.0-7.8-7.9-0.1Lea County, NM12.640.6-49.8-48.3+1.5Apache, AZ10.119.6+34.3+36.9+2.6Yuma, AZ14.034.0-12.6-5.57.1Ector, TX14.338.3-48.9-40.6+8.3Imperial, CA13.413.0+32.0+41.8+9.7Low-education majority-minority counties shifted toward Trump

Counties shown have a population of at least 50,000. Less than 50 percent of residents are non-Hispanic whites and less than 15 percent of the age-25-and-older population has a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Sources: American Community Survey, U.S. Election Atlas, ABC News

In short, it appears as though educational levels are the critical factor in predicting shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016. You can come to that conclusion with a relatively simple analysis, like the one I’ve conducted above, or by using fancier methods. In a regression analysis at the county level, for instance, lower-income counties were no more likely to shift to Trump once you control for education levels. And although there’s more work to be done, these conclusions also appear to hold if you examine the data at a more granular level, like by precinct or among individual voters in panel surveys.

But although this finding is clear in a statistical sense, that doesn’t mean the interpretation of it is straightforward. It seems to me that there a number of competing hypotheses that are compatible with this evidence, some of which will be favored by conservatives and some by liberals:

Education levels may be a proxy for cultural hegemony. Academia, the news media and the arts and entertainment sectors are increasingly dominated by people with a liberal, multicultural worldview, and jobs in these sectors also almost always require college degrees. Trump’s campaign may have represented a backlash against these cultural elites.Educational attainment may be a better indicator of long-term economic well-being than household incomes. Unionized jobs in the auto industry often pay reasonably well even if they don’t require college degrees, for instance, but they’re also potentially at risk of being shipped overseas or automated.Education levels probably have some relationship with racial resentment, although the causality isn’t clear. The act of having attended college itself may be important, insofar as colleges and universities are often more diverse places than students’ hometowns. There’s more research to be done on how exposure to racial minorities affected white voters. For instance, did white voters who live in counties with large Hispanic populations shift toward Clinton or toward Trump?Education levels have strong relationships with media-consumption habits, which may have been instrumental in deciding people’s votes, especially given the overall decline in trust in the news media.Trump’s approach to the campaign — relying on emotional appeals while glossing over policy details — may have resonated more among people with lower education levels as compared with Clinton’s wonkier and more cerebral approach.

So data like this is really just a starting point for further research into the campaign. Nonetheless, the education gap is carving up the American electorate and toppling political coalitions that had been in place for many years.