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presidential elections



  • The Political Scientist Who Warned Us About Polls

    by David Greenberg

    Political scientist Lindsay Rogers had been warning about the inadequacies of polling for years before the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" prediction. It appears the news media has failed to learn from his advice. 



  • Why Swing States Are a Thing

    by Olivia B. Waxman

    Historians and election scholars explain the changes in the political media and the ideological composition of the parties that have made a small number of states politically decisive in presidential elections. 



  • The Electoral College Will Destroy America

    by Jesse Wegman

    The real problem with the Electoral College isn't that it inflates the power of small states. It erases the votes of tens of millions through state winner-take-all election rules. 



  • Shirley Chisholm Blazed the Way for Kamala Harris to be Biden’s VP Pick

    “I am not the candidate for Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and I’m equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests.”

  • Why (and How) FDR Ran for His Third Term

    by Richard Moe

    Credit: Flickr.Throughout American history presidents have brought very different decision-making styles to the White House. George W. Bush once said he was not a “textbook player” when it came to decisions but rather a “gut player,” while Barack Obama has said he makes decisions “based on information and not emotion.” One observer has described our current president’s style as “defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured.” But Franklin D. Roosevelt was in another class altogether when it came to decision-making, and never was this more evident than when the famously social but obsessively secretive president considered whether to run for an unprecedented third term in 1940.