133
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
The Democrats strongly supported voting by mail due to Covid-19, to avoid risk of infection, while Trump downplayed the pandemic.
ScienceDaily: COVID-19 opens a partisan gap on voting by mail
This is ...
- 1,267
125
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
Donald Trump spent months making statements, to the media and on Twitter, along the lines of:
Mail-in ballots are very dangerous. There’s tremendous fraud involved and tremendous illegality. (source)
...
- 2,581
106
votes
Why does having a college degree make a difference to how white Americans vote?
The experience of getting a degree exposes you to a wider circle of people.
I'm white, male, and went to a school near where I grew up. The school and church had an intertwined population, and my ...
- 1,670
100
votes
Accepted
Why does Canada require bilingualism in a lot of federal government posts?
Canada is an officially bilingual country, and federal government business can be conducted in either English or French.
The government wants to preserve the bilingual nature of the country, and is ...
- 115k
87
votes
Accepted
Why was Trump winning the 2016 election, when I know so few people who admit to voting for him?
This is a great question, but it's really impossible to answer for certain at this point in time. Trump's current success is defying a lot of "conventional wisdom" about how primaries go. ...
- 23.9k
70
votes
How does Israel decide what DNA is Jewish?
They don't decide what DNA is Jewish.
The article you link says (their bolding):
A DNA result that “proves” your Jewish origins does not grant the right to make aliyah according to the Law of Return.
...
- 36k
69
votes
Accepted
Why are Deep South states said to vote so lop-sidedly Republican, when they have high percentages of African Americans?
Using the Cooperative Congressional Election Study 2018, we can test your hypothesis that non-African Americans skew as far to the Republicans as African Americans do to Democrats. Let's limit ...
CDJB♦
- 105k
68
votes
Why are 150k or 200k jobs considered good when there are 300k+ births a month?
The obvious answer is that people get older and (presumably, hopefully) retire from the workforce.
If your country's demographic is otherwise more or less stable, it means that by the time those 300,...
- 1,936
64
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
I think the other answers are correct in that both of these are factors:
Trump and some of the Republican leadership (repeatedly) slamming postal voting
Republicans being less afraid of Covid-19 and ...
- 145k
63
votes
Accepted
Why is the US so religious compared to other Western democracies?
While the United States doesn't have a national religion, the US has fairly deep religious liberty roots, and it has lead to a few twists and turns in the religious sentiment
Religious Refugees
Every ...
- 45.9k
55
votes
Why was Trump winning the 2016 election, when I know so few people who admit to voting for him?
LA Times had an insightful article on the topic: "Polls may actually underestimate Trump's support, study finds", which contradicts the accepted answer's theory to an extent, and is much ...
- 91.8k
54
votes
Why is the US so religious compared to other Western democracies?
Answering this question properly would require a broad discussion of the religious tensions and transformations in England during the 16th and 17th centuries, starting with the English Reformation ...
- 67.7k
52
votes
Why are so many cities in the list of 50 most violent cities in the world located in South and Central America?
Cocaine
Coca leaf is native to South America and grows best there, so that's where the cocaine comes from. Not only does this produce a huge amount of profit for organised crime, the drug itself ...
- 22k
49
votes
Accepted
Is there a *political* schism between former Soviet Jews and other Jews in the US?
Yes. There is a tremendous schism. To use a technical statistical term the schism is earth-shattering.
Plagiarizing my own Skeptics.SE answer:
Overall, American Jews tend to vote 70-90% Democrat in ...
- 91.8k
49
votes
Accepted
Why do the Nordics have a low birth rate despite their government providing all parents with free childcare and parental leave?
The main factors that are seen as contributing to a lower birth rate include:
Improved educational opportunities for women
Lower child mortality
Access to effective contraception
Social welfare and ...
- 115k
46
votes
Accepted
What is this line of counties voting for the Democratic party in the 2016 elections?
A combination of the Black Belt and Northeastern region
What first appeared to be a long unbroken line of counties from north to south actually seems to be made of two major parts.
2016 elections[8]
...
- 1,054
45
votes
What is this line of counties voting for the Democratic party in the 2016 elections?
Image from CensusScope
As almost 80% of the African American voters voted for the Democratic Party, I think the correlation is both obvious and self-explanatory.
What should be held in mind is that ...
- 1,925
42
votes
Who is the oldest parliamentarian (legislator) on record?
I don't know if there are any older cases, but Strom Thurmond stepped down from the US Senate at age 100 years and 29 days, having served just short of 50 years as a Senator for South Carolina.
There ...
41
votes
Why did postal voting favour Joe Biden so much?
The Trump campaign did a lot to demonize mail in voting with accusations that there was a lot of fraud with it. This along with the downplaying of covid among his supporters likely led to a lower mail ...
- 15.4k
40
votes
Why do the Nordics have a low birth rate despite their government providing all parents with free childcare and parental leave?
The Nordics have Among the Highest Birth Rates in Europe
So it looks like those perks must be working.
Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland all have birth rates of 1.7 births per woman. (Norway and Finland ...
- 1,317
39
votes
Accepted
Why is the population of post-Soviet states declining?
Economic migration (temporary or more permanent) is considered the main factor. This is quite apparent in the Eastern EU countries. Note that the official EU terminology is "mobility" not migration, ...
- 145k
39
votes
Why are so many cities in the list of 50 most violent cities in the world located in South and Central America?
Because they're not at war.
Referencing this paper, Wikipedia clarifies the methodology:
The following 50 cities have the highest murder rates in the world of all cities not at war, with a ...
- 4,366
39
votes
Accepted
Why doesn't the US Census consider Hispanic a race?
The "Hispanic/non-Hispanic" is orthogonal to the White-Black-Asian-Native Amerian racial categorisation that the US census uses.
A Hispanic person is a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican,...
- 115k
37
votes
Accepted
Why is Colorado so different politically from nearby states?
One of the best predictors of voting patterns in the US is population density. You can see population density by state here. Although this isn't a perfect reflection of how urban a state is (a state ...
- 7,903
35
votes
How can a welfare state with high taxes survive in the face of an aging population?
Lots of countries are facing the challenge of an aging population. Basically the whole northern hemisphere does (with some exceptions, the most notable one being India). The only regions of the world ...
- 74.8k
33
votes
Why is there such a large difference between the US population and electorate?
The US has a significant number of non-citizen residents who belong to the population, but not to the electorate. (Here are official numbers, you have to multiply the foreign-born and non-naturalized ...
- 106k
31
votes
Accepted
What explains Trump's gains with Latino voters in the 2020 US presidential election?
First thing to note is that while there was a swing towards Trump in 2020, Biden still won a majority of the Latino (and Latina) vote.
One reason for the swing was rebalancing. Support for Trump ...
- 115k
30
votes
Who is the oldest parliamentarian (legislator) on record?
Manny Shinwell at 101
After quite a long career in the House of Commons (UK) as a Labour MP from 1922 to 1924, and 1928 to 1970 (and an arrest for Red Clydeside agitation in 1919 in Glasgow!), he ...
- 684
29
votes
Accepted
Why don't more people move to safe seats to run for office in the US?
Why don't more people who want to be representatives move to seats that are safe for the party they are members of?
Such districts tend to be represented by someone who is very well established, long ...
- 17.4k
28
votes
Has there been any country that successfully reversed a demographic decline in recent history?
The population of Germany declined from 2000 to 2011, it then increased.
This rise has been attributed to immigration. One way for a country to increase population, without increasing fertility, is ...
- 115k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible