CMC Introductory American Government -- Honors: Elections I

For Wed, read After the People Vote, Part I (do not worry: it is short). Available via link and the Sakai resources box.

Party in the Electorate (PIE)

A cinematic map of presidential voting
Historical party affiliation (Party registration and party affiliation or identification are not the same thing)
Recent trends
Party coalitions

Demographics and the 2020 exit poll

Laws on voting rights

Bush v. Gore: "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U. S. Const., Art. II, §1.

But election administration takes place mostly at the state level.

Modes of voting:

What now?

Likely outcome one: Democrats prevail in California statewide elections.

Likely outcome two: most ballot measures lose.

Likely outcome three: Republicans win a majority in the US House.

Other outcomes are harder to predict because of polling challenges:

Most people have caller-ID, either through cellphones or landlines. And most people won't answer calls from unknown numbers.
Partisan nonresponse bias.
Screening for likely voters is an inexact science.
And all of these issues come in addition to the regular margin of error (plus or minus 2 or 3 points). So any race in low single digits is a tossup.

Senate tossups: average poll margins (as of this morning)