Senior Fellow, Elections, The Niskanen Center

Rachel Bitecofer is assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, where she teaches classes on political behavior, elections, & political analysis and conducts survey research and elections analysis. Her research has been featured in many media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, and she is a contracted commentator on CBC Radio. Her book, The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election (Palgrave McMillan) is available via Amazon.

Her innovative election forecasting model predicted the 2018 midterms five months before Election Day, far ahead of other forecasting methods. Her forecasting work argues that American elections have become increasingly nationalized and highly predictable; with partisanship serving as an identity-based, dominant vote determinant for all but a small portion of Americans.