The latest unsympathetic-to-Trump piece on the BBC News website informs us that Donald Trump may have only won the presidency because his name was listed first on the ballot in certain key swing states - at least according to veteran election analyst Jon Krosnick.
It's what political scientists call "the primacy effect", and Professor Krosnick says that it brings an unfair bias into elections.
He contends that it probably cost Hillary Clinton the election:
If all of those states had rotated name order fairly, most likely George W Bush would not have been elected president in 2000, nor would Donald Trump have been elected president in 2016.
As others have already noted though, the primacy effect doesn't seem to have helped Remain win our very own EU referendum:
#bbceditorialintegrity in action.
ReplyDeleteIf it suits, it's in.
If it doesn't suit...
Or a banning (not the not invited kind).