Rachel Bitecofer

Rachel Bitecofer (born 1977 or 1978)[1] is an American political scientist serving as lecturer and assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University (CNU) and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center.[2] Author of the 2017 book The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election on the election of Donald Trump, her research interests include political and election analysis. She rose to national prominence for her successful prediction of the 2018 United States midterm election results.

Early life and career

Bitecofer received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in political science and international affairs from the University of Georgia. In 2015 she became a lecturer at CNU, teaching four classes a term. She applied to convert her position to tenure track, which would lighten her teaching responsibilities, but was denied by the university. As a result, she intends to leave CNU in the summer of 2020 to devote more time to her freelance and journalism work.[2]

Election analysis and prediction

In 2017, Bitecofer released a book called The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election, where she argued that the election of Donald Trump was not the result of one or two causes, but rather the product of a long process that began in the 1950s. She noted several breaks from past political reporting in the media's coverage of Trump, such as the number of days where Trump received 60% or more of all candidate coverage and his paucity of newspaper endorsements.[3] She later criticized the media and public for characterizing Trump's 2016 performance in the blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as a "mythic legend of invincibility"; instead, she attributed the 2016 result to complacency, depressed African-American turnout, Russian interference, and dislike of Hillary Clinton.[4]

Bitecofer was nationally recognized for predicting the results of the 2018 United States midterm elections more closely than most other forecasters.[1] She first predicted that Democrats would pick up 42 seats in the House of Representatives in September 2018,[5] revising her forecast to 45 seats in November,[6] just days before the election even as others were revising their estimates downwards.[1] Democrats ultimately gained 41 seats in the House election, making her prediction one of the most accurate of that cycle.[7] However, there were some errors in her Senate election forecast, where she incorrectly predicted that Democrat Bill Nelson would win reelection in Florida.[1]

Bitecofer's main thesis is that modern elections are not decided by the swing vote, but rather negative partisanship, which prioritizes defeating the other side over any specific policy objective.[1] Under her theory, shifts in voter turnout decide everything, and the "swing" mainly comes from whether voters decide to vote at all rather than deciding who to vote for. This view has been criticized by traditional political analysts like David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report, with others such as Kyle Kondik and Sam Wang taking a more balanced approach. Bitecofer has disagreed with Nate Silver's take that ideologically extreme candidates pay a political price, believing instead that a candidate like Bernie Sanders would not cause significant downside for the Democrats, though she does not find much upside either, arguing that he did not bring many new voters to the polls in 2016. The fact that progressive favorites like Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke often came much closer to winning their races in red states in 2018 than Blue Dog moderates who tried to ingratiate themselves with Trump has been held as validation for her theory.[1]

In July 2019, Bitecofer predicted that President Trump would lose the 2020 election, with the Democratic candidate winning 278 electoral votes.[4][8][9] During the 2020 Democratic primaries, she attributed the increased turnout and Joe Biden's success in the primary process to the eagerness of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (and in particular, Black voters) to remove Trump from office,[7] likening their views of him to the Terminator.[8]

References
  1. Freedlander, David (February 6, 2020). "An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter". Politico. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  2. Jones, Matt (March 24, 2020). "Election forecaster Rachel Bitecofer to leave CNU after denied shot at tenure". Daily Press. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  3. Smith, Hillary (September 25, 2017). "Christopher Newport University professor writes book on 2016 presidential election". Daily Press. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  4. Bitecofer, Rachel (July 1, 2019). "With 16 Months to go, Negative Partisanship Predicts the 2020 Presidential Election". Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  5. Bitecofer, Rachel (September 26, 2018). "Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs: Why Democrats Will Win Big in the 2018 Midterms". Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  6. Bitecofer, Rachel (November 2, 2018). "The Battle of the Bases: Negative Partisanship Will Decide Election 2018". Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  7. Capehart, Jonathan (March 12, 2020). "'Black Americans are saving America from itself' in the Democratic primaries". Washington Post. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  8. Rodrigo, Chris Mills (July 1, 2019). "Trump predicted to lose reelection in model that forecasted Democratic takeover of House". The Hill. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
  9. Ress, Dave (July 2, 2019). "Regressing, to look forward: CNU's Bitecofer forecasts a Trump defeat in 2020". Daily Press. Retrieved June 12, 2020.
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