UMass Amherst Poll on Election Reforms Shows Continued National Support for Expanding Voting Rights

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A new nationwide University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll released today finds Americans continue to support a wide variety of election reforms, intended to make voting easier, while also maintaining a strong desire for photo ID requirements at voting booths.

The poll of 1,000 respondents found majority support for reforms including automatically registering voters (52%), making Election Day a national holiday (58%) and making vote-by-mail a permanent option to all registered voters (54%), all within three points of the results of a similar UMass Poll conducted in April. Sixty percent of respondents also support restoring voting rights to convicted felons who have served their sentences, identical to the response in April’s poll. CONTINUED

UMass Amherst

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Why Isn’t Biden’s Expanded Child Tax Credit More Popular?

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… While polls about last year’s expanded credit found it to be popular on net — most showed it with approval in the 50s — it lagged the popularity of lowering costs for prescription drugs, expanding Medicare and other policies Democrats are seeking to pass. As the party continues to debate whether and how to resurrect the expanded credit, polls generally suggest that Americans have reservations about making it a more lasting fixture of the social safety net. …

Experts offered several theories, ranging from how the credit was passed to Americans’ deeply rooted beliefs about who deserves government support. CONTINUED

Ian Prasad Philbrick, New York Times

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A televised insurrection: AP video documents Jan. 6 riot

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The Jan. 6 riot was an insurrection with a 360-degree view. …

The Associated Press compiled a short film of the day’s key moments to capture the record and rebut falsehoods that continue to spread about what happened. CONTINUED

Nathan Ellgren, Associated Press

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‘But the people like me the best, by far’

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Six weeks after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Donald Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, conducted a survey of Republicans that looked at how well liked the former president was among several distinct groups of voters within the party. …

The people who described themselves as the most committed Republicans were also the most likely to say they were committed to Trump, Fabrizio found in his post-Jan. 6 survey. Feelings about the former president, he explained in his analysis, were so intertwined with the understanding many voters had about what it meant to be a strong Republican that “Trumpism and party fidelity” were becoming one and the same. CONTINUED

Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times

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The Holiday Redistricting Flurry

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Key Points
• There was a flurry of redistricting activity over the holidays, with 7 additional states finalizing their congressional maps.
• Republicans are up a little overall in the roughly 2/3rds of completed districts, while Democrats would have to sweep the Toss-ups — a very difficult task — just to achieve rough parity with what they currently hold in these states. CONTINUED

Kyle Kondik & J. Miles Coleman, Sabato’s Crystal Ball

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2022 House Overview: Still a GOP Advantage, but Redistricting Looks Like a Wash

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The surprising good news for Democrats: there are on track to be a few more Biden-won districts after redistricting than there are now — producing a congressional map slightly less biased in the GOP’s favor than the last decade’s. The bad news for Democrats: if President Biden’s approval ratings are still mired in the low-to-mid 40s in November, that won’t be enough to save their razor-thin House majority (currently 221 to 212 seats).

The start of 2022 is an ideal time to take stock of the nation’s cartographic makeover. New district lines are either complete or are awaiting certification in 34 states totaling 293 seats — more than two-thirds of the House (this includes the six states with only one seat). CONTINUED

David Wasserman, Cook Political Report with Amy Walter

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