The 2014 election was a major defeat of Democrats – a wave election that will have long-term consequences. It was produced by the Republicans who were energized by nationalizing the election around Barack Obama and it was also produced by the President’s failure to engage with an economic narrative and […] Read more »
How the Midterms’ Turnout Games Turned Out
Down the stretch in the 2014 campaign, when the polls began to slide toward Republican candidates in key states, Democrats defiantly countered that they would ultimately be vindicated by their superior turnout effort. Not this year, said Republicans, who countered that their own turnout machine was growing more powerful and […] Read more »
Impatience with Washington drove off-year electorate
House Speaker John Boehner said that his job is to listen to the priorities of the American people. The GOP leadership outlined their new agenda, including authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and revising the Affordable Care Act. Gwen Ifill talks to David Winston of the Winston Group and Frederick Yang […] Read more »
Yup, It Was a Wave
It might not have been 1994 or 2010, but 2014 was a wave all its own: A late-breaking surge that lifted Republicans to some surprisingly strong performances across the country. Notably, though, the argument for this election being a “wave” has more to do with the House and gubernatorial races, […] Read more »
What 2014 Elections Can Tell Us About the 2016 Ones: Not So Much
America has again embraced our long history of electoral overreaction. While it’s true that Republicans won a major victory at the polls, the results tell us far less about future elections than some commentary has suggested. … Historically, midterm results, which are typically unfavorable to the president’s party, tell us […] Read more »
Who else had a bad night? Pollsters
The polls were wrong. And so were the predictions about how the polls would be wrong. Instead of being biased against Democrats, who still hoped they could overcome modest deficits in a number of states, the surveys of the 2014 Senate landscape turned out to have significantly underestimated Republicans. CONT. […] Read more »