Democrats have every right to be shocked at last week’s election results. But no one should be surprised.

Lots of forecasters told us the odds were 50-50, an assessment with which I agreed and repeated endlessly to all who asked my opinion.

If any Democrat woke up Tuesday morning more hopeful than frightened, they don’t really understand what 50-50 odds mean, or at least failed to internalize the concept.

There’s been a lot of discussion about what happened, less about why, which is where I plan to go here.

I’ve long identified myself as a fundamentalist when it comes to presidential elections. That’s not a statement about my religious convictions but rather an assertion about what I believe is important in presidential elections.

Fundamentals include the economy, incumbency, the partisan distribution in the country and the incumbent president’s approval rating, among others. These fundamentals exert a systematic grip on presidential election results, cycle after cycle.

We can see echoes of their effects in the exit polls as well.

Political scientists and economists have long touted the importance of the economy in determining election outcomes.

In 1976, using data going back to 1916, Yale economist Ray Fair demonstrated that one could accurately predict the national popular vote in advance of the........

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