… Republicans are more than confident that they will hold or even expand their House majority this fall. And they are increasingly optimistic about taking control of the Senate. The danger is that party leaders and perhaps some of the prospective GOP presidential candidates will conclude that success in November […] Read more »
Hiding in Plain Sight: Congressional Primaries and the Future of American Politics
Congressional primaries are the neglected stepchildren of American elections. Journalists mostly ignore them, except when a scandal-ridden incumbent is defeated. News organizations never conduct exit polls of primary voters. Congressional primaries also receive scant attention from scholars. … But the surprise arrival of the Tea Party in the 2010 midterm […] Read more »
Democrats face turnout problem, dissatisfaction in ranks leading to midterms
… Democrats have a turnout problem because they have a motivation problem. In 2010, their biggest problem was that they ran into an energized Republican electorate. The rise of the tea party and hostility to Obama’s health-care law brought Republicans to the polls while Democrats stayed home. Obama’s vaunted political […] Read more »
5 key insights into the midterm elections, courtesy of Mitt Romney’s pollster
In a new episode of Political Wire’s podcast, we spoke to GOP polling guru Neil Newhouse, co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies and Mitt Romney’s one-time campaign pollster, about what recent polling data portends for the 2014 midterms and beyond. Here are five takeaways from our conversation: CONT. Taegan D. Goddard, […] Read more »
Groucho Marx’s Republican Party
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” —Groucho Marx In just a few words, Groucho Marx summed up the current state of the Republican Party heading into the 2016 presidential elections. Since the start of George W. Bush’s […] Read more »
Political Déjà Vu
Political aficionados like to look at elections the same way sports fans fill out their NCAA basketball brackets, assemble a fantasy football team, or play rotisserie baseball. The real import is what the final governing configuration will be after Election Day: Which party will control the House? Who will hold […] Read more »