A few weeks ago, Greg Koger examined Donald Trump’s approval rating by state and foresaw a difficult reelection effort for the President. Trump, Greg noted, had negative net approval in 30 states, and he didn’t have an easy path for even getting back to his slender victory margins in 2016. […] Read more »
The four charts to keep in mind when you look at early-primary polling
… It’s all interesting and the stakes are obviously enormous. It’s just that … we might want to be wary about reading too much into things. Since 2008, the states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have held 15 party primary contests. Of those 15, only five times were […] Read more »
Joe Biden is the Democratic Mitt Romney
When Joe Biden first entered the presidential race, he was supposed to be a Jeb Bush redux — a relic of a bygone era who would quickly be swept away by candidates who appealed to the party’s insurgent wing. … Instead, Biden is more like Mitt Romney: a poll leader […] Read more »
2020 Democrats face 2012 GOP challenges
It’s been a month now since Joe Biden announced he was running for president and the Delaware Democrat has been sitting atop the polls since then. The Biden boomlet has come despite conventional wisdom that said the candidates on left of the Democratic Party held all the energy going into […] Read more »
Battleground States Then (2012/2016) vs. Now (2018/2019)
Was the 2016 election a one-off — a once-in-a-lifetime contest between two fundamentally flawed contestants? Or, was it a realignment election; the end of Democratic dominance in the industrial Midwest as well as the loosening of the Republican grip on southwestern states like Arizona and Texas? Was Clinton the outlier […] Read more »
Presidential Primary Debates Can Make — And Break — A Campaign
It might sound strange, but presidential primary debates are arguably more important than general election debates. Primary voters have weak initial preferences and can vacillate among candidates, so they can be heavily influenced by events like debates. Primary debates do not attract nearly as many eyeballs as general election debates, […] Read more »