How did absentee voting affect the 2020 U.S. election?

The 2020 U.S. election saw a record turnout, saw a huge increase in absentee voting, and brought unified national Democratic control—yet these facts alone do not imply that vote-by-mail increased turnout or benefited Democrats.

Feasible Policy Evaluation by Design: A Randomized Synthetic Stepped-Wedge Trial of Mandated Disclosure in King County.

Evidence-based policy is limited by the perception that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are expensive and infeasible. We argue that carefully tailored research design can overcome these challenges and enable more widespread randomized evaluations of policy implementation. We demonstrate how a stepped-wedge (randomized rollout) design that adapts synthetic control methods overcame substantial practical, administrative, political, and statistical constraints to evaluating King County's new food safety rating system.