The unchanging election
No, it’s not your imagination. Even political professionals agree that this presidential election has been remarkable only in how truly stomach-churning it is. “What has surprised me most about this election is how much it has been a race to the bottom,” veteran public opinion analyst Peter D. Hart told students and faculty Wednesday. Early on, “this election year had all the earmarks of an election that would not only help to usher in a new era, but would also provide a tremendous insight into where and how the Republican Party would be positioned for the future. And what we’ve ended up with is anything but that.” Yet despite the perception that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been locked in a seesaw-like race, he said that polling going back to October 2015 suggests otherwise. When asked to blindly pick whose words best reflected their sentiments about the stakes in this election,...