Latinos lean Democratic on climate change, safety as midterms draw closer

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A new Axios/Ipsos poll of Latino American adults explores their position on three key policy items ahead of the 2022 midterm elections: climate change, police reform, and immigration. The poll finds that while a majority of Latino Americans’ preferences generally align with Democratic-leaning positions on issues around climate change and crime/policing, views are more evenly split on immigration and how open our borders should be. CONTINUED

Mallory Newall, James Diamond & Charlie Rollason, Ipsos

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Culture wars could be a winning issue — for Democrats

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The top lines for Democrats continue to be brutal heading into the November midterm elections: Voters are furious about inflation, they overwhelmingly believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, and President Biden is not at all a popular figure.

But based on recent polling, the issue matrix has shifted enough to provide Democrats some hope that they can limit some of their potential losses and outperform expectations, especially in statewide races for the U.S. Senate and governorships.

In an ironic twist, those issues giving them a fighting chance are what traditionally would be considered elements of the “culture wars” that Republicans previously considered their winning talking points. But a wave of mass shootings and the Supreme Court’s watershed ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade have vaulted gun violence and abortion rights way up the charts in terms of voter importance. Those two matters now rank just below the most important issue concerning voters: inflation and stabilizing the economy. CONTINUED

Paul Kane, Washington Post

See also: Center Forward Battleground States poll

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The Kansas abortion vote, in one graph

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On Tuesday, Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the legislature to restrict abortion rights. As the first state to vote on abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Kansas attracted attention from a national and international audience.

How did opponents of the amendment prevail? And what does this mean for party agendas and electoral prospects going forward?

With relatively few competitive races, primary elections in Kansas tend to be sleepy affairs. Not this time. CONTINUED

Nathaniel Birkhead (Kansas State U.), Monkey Cage

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Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College

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The Electoral College has played an outsize role in several recent U.S. elections, and a majority of Americans would welcome a change to the way presidents are elected.

Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (63%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency, while 35% favor keeping the current Electoral College system, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 27-July 4, 2022. CONTINUED

Rebecca Salzer & Jocelyn Kiley, Pew Research Center

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Exploring support for climate justice policies in the United States

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Climate change is unfair. Many of the people who are likely to face (and are already confronting) the harshest impacts of climate change are in communities that have endured historical injustices such as colonialism and the slave trade (Táíwò, 2022), as well as local injustices such as inadequate infrastructure investments and unequal exposure to pollution (EPA, 2021). These communities also tend to be predominately people of color and/or people with fewer financial resources. …

Here we report public support for policies in three key areas related to climate justice goals: an economic transition to clean, renewable energy sources; investment in frontline communities (i.e. communities who have been historically marginalized and also face disproportionate risk of harm from climate change); and climate-friendly job creation. These policies align with the climate justice principles of reducing unequal harms from climate change, and producing equitable benefits as part of climate solutions (IPCC, 2022), as well as major components of a just transition. CONTINUED

Jennifer Carman, Danning (Leilani) Lu, Joshua Low, Anthony Leiserowitz, Kristin Barendregt-Ludwig, Jennifer Marlon, Seth Rosenthal, Matthew Goldberg, Edward Maibach, John Kotcher & Gerald Torres, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

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Kansas Result Suggests 4 Out of 5 States Would Back Abortion Rights in Similar Vote

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There was every reason to expect a close election.

Instead, Tuesday’s resounding victory for abortion rights supporters in Kansas offered some of the most concrete evidence yet that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has shifted the political landscape. The victory, by a 59-41 margin in a Republican stronghold, suggests Democrats will be the energized party on an issue where Republicans have usually had an enthusiasm advantage.

The Kansas vote implies that around 65 percent of voters nationwide would reject a similar initiative to roll back abortion rights, including in more than 40 of the 50 states (a few states on each side are very close to 50-50). This is a rough estimate, based on how demographic characteristics predicted the results of recent abortion referendums. But it is an evidence-based way of arriving at a fairly obvious conclusion: If abortion rights wins 59 percent support in Kansas, it’s doing even better than that nationwide. CONTINUED

Nate Cohn, New York Times

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