“Election years are loud. From the shows we tune into during our morning routines to the Facebook feeds we scroll through before we doze off in bed, there seems to be an endless yammering of campaign talking points desperate to convince us to vote for one candidate over the other. These aren’t just any talking points though. These are election-year talking points — countlessly rewritten, rigorously tested on focus groups and heavily paid for. What tends to get left out during this political fermentation process is arguably the most important and, unsurprisingly, the most sobering: the historical context and the numbers.”