Matthew Yglesias, writing in Vox, says that "For all the deep reporting and complex quantitative analysis that’s been sunk into the study of the 2016 election, the best — and in some ways, most disturbing — account of what’s going on comes from a recent work of political science that doesn’t mention Clinton or Donald Trump at all...." Yglesias explores Democracy for Realists in some depth, using Christopher Achens' and Larry Bartels' work to understand the dynamics of this year's Clinton/Trump election.

Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels are the authors of Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton University Press 2016). Christopher H. Achen is the Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences and professor of politics at Princeton University, and a CSDP faculty associate. Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University, and was the founding director of CSDP.