Noah Pittman, Honors College assistant dean of recruitment and indefatigable follower of politics, has led the first Honors College Forum, Tracking Trump and Hillary.
This year’s election has been, to say the least, one of the most interesting cycles the nation has ever seen. Amidst all of the noise and bluster, our students in Tracking Trump & Hillary have been trying to answer one central question throughout the semester: which candidate is helping—or hurting—his/her chances to cross the threshold of 270 votes in the Electoral College? With that question in mind, each student was assigned a swing/party lean state to analyze and make a prediction as to whether Mr. Trump or Secretary Clinton would carry the state this November. Our students looked at a number of important variables in their predictions, including historical voting trends, demographic data, campaign spending, and recent poling results from their assigned state. Over the next week, we will feature their predictions on this blog. We will preview the following states in this order:
Day 1: New Mexico (Braden Brown), Minnesota (Amanda Funderburg), and Indiana (Sam Harris)
Day 2: Michigan (Mary Beth Kennedy), Wisconsin (J.P. Gairhan), and Utah (Colin Gonzalez)
Day 3: Missouri (Zana English), Georgia (Courtney Cooper), Arizona (Taylor Pray), and Virginia (Darynne Dahlem)
Day 4: North Carolina (Baxter Yarbrough), Nevada (Carter Fox), New Hampshire (Summer Stallbaumer), and Colorado (Hannah Ray)
Day 5: Ohio (Maxwell Carter), Pennsylvania (Jake Kyte), Florida (Kelly McKenzie), and Iowa (Spencer Soule)
Following the election, each student will provide a postmortem analysis of their assigned state, trying to explain who won and why. Prepare to be impressed, but also please note that these are being published about two weeks out from election day. A few of these states are so close that the smallest change in the race’s dynamics could swing the vote in the opposite direction. Regardless, we hope you will appreciate the fact that the students’ analyses are rooted in objective data concerning their assigned states, not simple conjecture. We hope you enjoy their work!