A handful of voters will decide Senate control in 2022

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If you are from New York, Nebraska, Oregon, Vermont or Mississippi, you have the same right to vote that everyone else in the country does. But that doesn’t mean that you will have the same political clout. In fact, you are likely to be irrelevant in this fall’s elections. …

Voters in seven states will decide who controls the U.S. Senate in 2023-24: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If Republicans net even one seat in the fall midterms, they can block President Joe Biden’s judicial, diplomatic and executive branch appointees for the rest of his term. CONTINUED

Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call

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How partisanship is making polling Americans more complicated

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There’s something strange about how Americans see the economy these days – or, at least, how they’re describing it to pollsters.

For one thing, there’s a stark partisan divide in responses to even factual economic questions. Take an April CBS News/YouGov poll that found Democrats were not only 41 percentage points likelier than Republicans to say that the condition of the national economy was good overall but also 29 points likelier than Republicans to correctly say that the number of jobs in the US had risen over the past year. …

But although the results are obviously influenced by partisanship, it’s less clear what precise form that influence is taking. In one reading, the divides are largely an example of partisan cheerleading – respondents using polls as a convenient opportunity to tout their partisan allegiances, rather than a faithful recounting of what they believe to be the truth. In another reading, they’re a sign that partisan thinking, fueled by polarization and reinforced by partisan divides in news consumption, has fully overtaken the way many Americans perceive their own reality.

That ambiguity can make it difficult to figure out the extent to which people mean what they tell pollsters – a challenge that has key implications for understanding public opinion not only on the economy, but also on everything from vaccine refusal to a susceptibility to political misinformation, such as the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen. CONTINUED

Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

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World Unhappier, More Stressed Out Than Ever

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Emotionally, the second year of the pandemic was an even tougher year for the world than the first one, according to Gallup’s latest annual global update on the negative and positive experiences that people are having each day.

As 2021 served up a steady diet of uncertainty, the world became a slightly sadder, more worried and more stressed-out place than it was the year before — which helped push Gallup’s Negative Experience Index to yet another new high of 33 in 2021. CONTINUED

Julie Ray, Gallup

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An Early Look at (Too) Early Data on SCOTUS Abortion Ruling

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The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade is a historic event, but it will take at least a few weeks, if not longer, to know whether it is an election-changing event.

Arguably the worst time to measure the political impact of an event is while it is still going on. The second worst time would be the immediate aftermath. The best option is to wait for the event to settle, let voters wrestle with it, and give enough time for pollsters to hear from those voters.

Of course there’s an appetite for immediate reaction, so there are already at least two surveys helping shape the early narrative. CONTINUED

Nathan L. Gonzales, Inside Elections

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Politics in the Post-Roe World

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Key Points
• The president’s party often struggles in midterms, although extraordinary circumstances can save them from losses. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade could be 2022’s extraordinary circumstance.
• Beyond abortion, Republicans still retain powerful political advantages.
• Democrats could get their version of 2018’s “Kavanaugh Effect.”
• 2022 won’t definitively resolve the abortion question. CONTINUED

Kyle Kondik, Sabato’s Crystal Ball

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Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade “will have huge political ramifications”

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On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending nearly 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion. The ruling is expected to result in abortion bans in nearly half the states. Harvard Kennedy School Professor of Public Policy Maya Sen is a political scientist who studies the politics of the judiciary and leads SCOTUSPoll, a project jointly coordinated by Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Texas that studies public opinion of Supreme Court rulings. We talked to her about the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, how it aligns with public opinion, and the possible political and legal ramifications. CONTINUED

Sarah Grucza, Harvard Kennedy School

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