C. Brandon Ogbunu at Undark:
Questions about voting patterns have long been the object of inquiry from thinkers across a breadth of fields, and especially in social science domains like political science, psychology, and economics. Studies in these realms are often reflective and retrospective, telling detailed stories of how, for example, the American electorate has changed over decades. These scholars ideally slow-cook these stories through meticulous analysis before they enter a peer review process that itself operates at a snail’s pace.
But because coverage of elections is such a time-sensitive endeavor, we often rely on the quick trigger of political journalists to tell us the stories at the timescale that we need to grasp the world around us. To have enough information to cast a vote on election day, we may need to know how the race for mayor has changed on a given day and what those changes mean. The problem here, well known throughout journalism, is that the rush to report can sensationalize or oversimplify voting dynamics.
More here.
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