Don’t overinterpret Tuesday’s election

I’ve spent the better part of the past 12 years thinking about how we interpret election results, and from that perspective, Tuesday was a big night. As I mentioned at the time, interpreting elections seems to have become an American obsession. Our fixed-term elections mean that off-year contests serve as a referendum on national issues, and narratives allow the losers in a winner-take-all system to tell their side.