Hidden Forces

In Episode 167 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with political data scientist David Shor. David was recently described in New York Magazine as Obama’s “In-House Nate Silver” for his work on the president’s re-election campaign where he was responsible for building and maintaining the campaign's election forecasting system, which accurately predicted the outcome to within a point in every state and was the primary input to the campaign's resource allocation decisions in the 2012 election. In this conversation, David shares his theory about why Democrats have struggled to win elections in recent years, why the polls have been so off in both of the last two presidential elections, and what the implications of his findings are for the viability of the party and its ideological platform and rhetoric.  We also look at how Republicans gained support from African American men and Hispanics in an election year that we were told was supposed to be a referendum on white privilege. Does this mean that identity po