What’s going to happen in Washington over the next 2 years? Americans don’t expect much.

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Call them realistic: Americans are braced for little compromise and less action in Washington over the next two years of divided government.

The messy fight by Republicans to elect a new House speaker left the public convinced by 61%-17% that the GOP and President Joe Biden are less likely to get anything done together in the new era of divided government, an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds. By a wide margin, 58%-17%, they say it seems unlikely that Republicans will do any compromising with Democrats over the next two years. …

The Republican Party is rated as tougher on crime and better on the economy. The Democratic Party is rated as more likely to be inclusive, to be willing to compromise to get things done and to be effective in pushing its agenda, including using the media. CONTINUED

Susan Page, USA Today

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Will 2023 partisanship lead to another Covid surge?

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The calendar has flipped to January and the weather has turned cold in most of the country. For the past two years, that meant a Covid spike was imminent. How does 2023 look? In some ways similar and in other ways very different. But politics hasn’t gone away as a factor in how people see the virus. …

Overall, only 39% of the 65-or-older population has updated Covid booster shots. Among that same age group, more than 94% received the initial full set of Covid vaccine shots. That’s a pretty staggering drop-off for the new shot.

One lingering effect, however, is the political split on the virus. There is a noticeable divide at the state level around who is getting those booster shots when you look at the 2020 presidential results. There are 27 states and the District of Columbia where the percentage of 65-or-older vaccine takers is above the national average for that group. Of those 28 jurisdictions, three-quarters of them (21) voted for President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race. The other nine states voted for Donald Trump. CONTINUED

Dante Chinni, NBC News

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Party Preferences Evenly Split in 2022 After Shift to GOP

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Americans’ party preferences were evenly divided in 2022, with 45% of U.S. adults identifying as Republican or saying they were Republican-leaning independents, and 44% identifying as Democrats or saying they were Democratic-leaning independents. The last time preferences were this closely divided was in 2011, with Democrats holding at least a three-percentage-point advantage in each year of the past decade.

More generally, stretching back to 1991, when Gallup began regularly measuring party identification and leaning, Democrats have held an edge in most years. CONTINUED

Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup

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DeSantis Neck-and-Neck with Trump in Republican 2024 Presidential Matchup

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A new national University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll has found Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis running neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump in a potential head-to-head matchup for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

In a one-on-one matchup, DeSantis edges Trump among Republicans in the new national poll, 51-49, which is within the poll’s margin of error. When both are included in a larger field that includes potential candidates such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and others, Trump leads the field with 37% of Republicans choosing him as their preferred choice for the party’s nomination, with DeSantis close behind at 34%. No other candidate received double-digit support. CONTINUED

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Democrats’ Identification as Liberal Now 54%, a New High

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After hovering near 50% in recent years, the percentage of Democrats who identify as politically liberal rose four percentage points in 2022 to 54%, a new high for this group. At the same time, the 10% describing themselves as conservative is the lowest to date. …

Republicans’ ideology did not change appreciably in 2022, with 72% describing their political views as conservative, similar to the 74% doing so in 2021. CONTINUED

Lydia Saad, Gallup

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Meet the Republicans Who Are Facing Down the Hard Right

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… On Tuesday, McCarthy won House approval, in a party-line, 221 to 211, vote, to create a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, with Jim Jordan, one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump and the MAGA movement in Congress, as its chairman.

It’s possible, although not very likely, that the MAGA electorate will rise up en masse in 2024 to reward House Republicans with another two years in the majority while pushing state-level Republicans who have moved from the right to the center, joined bipartisan alliances or challenged the party’s extreme wing into political exile.

But the problem for House Republicans under the nominal leadership of Kevin McCarthy is that they have left themselves no choice. They are locked into a high-risk, take-no-prisoners, governing-be-damned strategy by the totality of McCarthy’s concessions to the Freedom Caucus, by his promised appointments to key committees and by the adoption of rules that turn any move toward moderation or bipartisan cooperation into political suicide. CONTINUED

Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times

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