In his letter, “November Election showed voting still counts,” rebutting my earlier letter, Correspondent of the Day Brian Glass rightly points out that “voting for the House of Delegates is by district, not statewide.” However, Glass’s letter misses the point: Gerrymandering ensures that, while all votes are equal, some votes…
On Nov. 7, Ralph Northam defeated Ed Gillespie by 233,444 votes, or 8.93 percent. The Democratic tidal wave also reshaped the House of Delegates. There, Democrats gained 15 seats and now have 49 seats to the GOP’s 51. The conventional wisdom is that Democrats won a resounding victory. But was…
The number 538 is so culturally relevant that Nate Silver, perhaps the best-known statistician of our era, named his website after it. Let’s examine 538, and its component parts. This is the number of votes in the Electoral College. It is the result of an equation: 435 + 100 +…
Every election cycle, there are some stories that never change. One of the most commonly reported stories is that America’s voter turnout rate is terrible. It’s so bad that every four years, despite choosing who the most powerful man in the world will be, a bit more than half of…