2016 Election Night

On the FiveThirtyEight Elections podcast Monday, my colleague Clare Malone said that this election has felt like one that has centered on Trump. I tend to agree. He’s certainly camped out in my brain space for the past 18 months. But I wonder if a case could be made that the animating force on the GOP side has been a white-hot hatred of Clinton and the establishment she’s seen to represent. We know, for instance, that more Trump voters are motivated to vote against Clinton than for their own candidate. It has certainly felt like this election is a referendum on Trump, but maybe Trump is simply the most extreme standard bearer for what was going to be a referendum on Clinton all along. I wonder what my colleagues and you, dear readers, think. In the end, was this election more “about” Clinton or Trump?

By now, there have been numerous reports of long lines and crowded polling places, and the possibility of high Latino turnout in Nevada and Florida. If it turns out to be true that this is a high-turnout election, what will that tell us? Political science has turned up a great deal of evidence to help us understand why some individuals vote and others don’t, but understanding the variation from election to election is more complicated. Polarization seems to be good for turnout, as more people have strong preferences about who wins. And that may be primarily what’s at work this year. But there may be something different going on, too. If some voters went to the polls because of a sense of existential threat, that might be a qualitatively different thing from party polarization. It might also shed light on the question of whether negative campaigns depress turnout – or perhaps help to raise it? With more data, we may also be able to learn more about the potential for “ground game” to get out new and non-habitual voters.

When urbanites learn that I raise chickens on my farm, they often recount an episode of the comedy sketch Portlandia where two diners ask a series of escalating questions about the chicken they’re about to order: How was the chicken raised? How big is the area where the chickens can roam free? What was the chicken’s name? (If you must know … mine are woodland and orchard-ranged, they roam on about five acres, and I don’t give them names.) These are earnest questions with answers that are hard to verify if you’re buying your food far from the farm, which may explain why measures to ensure that farm animals are raised in a humane way have made their way to the ballot in recent years. In California, Proposition 2 passed in 2008, set rules prohibiting certain methods of confinement for chickens raised for eggs; a 2006 Arizona proposition bars tethering or confining pregnant pigs or calves raised for veal, and a 2002 Florida measure specifies the way pregnant pigs can be housed. Now Massachusetts is getting a say on the issue with Question 3, the Massachusetts Minimum Size Requirements for Farm Animal Containment, which would prohibit the sale of eggs, veal and pork produced from animals confined in such a way that they were prevented from lying down, standing up, extending their limbs or turning around. Recent polls suggest that support for the measure outweighs opposition. Supporters include organic farmers and environmental and animal rights groups such as the Sierra Club and the Humane Society of the United States. Opposition comes from industry groups such as the National Pork Producers Council, the Massachusetts Farm Bureau and the National Association of Egg Farmers, who say it would significantly increase the cost of these products.