Election Beat 2020: Preventing an election night nightmare
Focusing on the electoral vote on election night will highlight yet-to-be-counted ballots and slow the urge to call the election too soon.
Expert Commentary
Expert Commentary
Election Beat 2020: Polls, polls and more polls — navigating the numbers
As Election Day has drawn closer, opinion polls have taken up ever more of the news hole. Which of the dozens of polls that cross journalists’ desks are reliable, and which should be ignored?
Expert Commentary
Election Beat 2020: Will white working-class voters be decisive this time?
How should journalists think about white working-class voters in the closing weeks of the 2020 campaign? Like 2016, their concentration in a few key battleground states makes them a group deserving of special attention.
Expert Commentary
Election Beat 2020: The mysterious voter registration deadline
The news media would perform a public service by making Americans aware of voter registration deadlines and what they need to do to participate in elections, writes media scholar Thomas E. Patterson.
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Election Beat 2020: How journalists influence the public’s response to presidential debates
“The first presidential debate is but a week away. The challenge for news outlets will be to try to capture the debate as a whole and not through the lens of its most sensational moment,” writes Thomas E. Patterson.
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Election Beat 2020: The ongoing watchdog obligation to cover the US census
Tom Patterson asks whether the press has an obligation to increase its focus on the U.S. census as the new deadline for the count approaches.
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Election Beat 2020: Where did all the swing voters go?
Today’s presidential nominees need not only convince voters that they’re the better choice but also that their party is an acceptable choice, writes Thomas E. Patterson.
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Election Beat 2020: The influential roles of white evangelicals and ‘religious nones’
Scholar Thomas E. Patterson considers the roles of white evangelicals and the religiously unaffiliated in the 2020 election.
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Election Beat 2020: An exploration of the ‘convention bounce’
Every presidential nominating convention since 1996 has produced a bump in the polls — referred to as a “convention bounce” — of 2% or less, Tom Patterson writes.
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Election Beat 2020: Focus on America’s two largest recent immigrant groups
“In 2020, Hispanics and Asian Americans — the nation’s two largest recent immigrant groups — deserve close attention,” writes Harvard professor Thomas E. Patterson
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