One’s confidence in predicting what’s likely to happen in the contest for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination correlates neatly with how closely one is looking at it. In the abstract, it seems like a mess, with a field of more than two dozen trimmed down only partially and a leading […] Read more »
What Decades Of Primary Polls Tell Us About The 2020 Democratic Presidential Race
… Early national polls conducted in the year before the first nominating contests do have predictive value, but remember there isn’t one national primary. Instead, parties choose presidential nominees via state-by-state elections over the course of a few months. And that sequential nature of the primary makes it hard for […] Read more »
Political fallout from Soleimani could be biggest for Senate
President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, and it was rightfully treated as a big deal. But as with breaking news of any size and scope, it’s best to pause before determining the political fallout. While most of the subsequent conversation revolves around potential future […] Read more »
Trump’s approval rating has already recovered from its impeachment slump
Tensions with Iran have rightly dominated the news in the past week, but one important item has escaped attention: President Trump’s job approval rating has regained all the ground lost after his telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to light and now stands close to a three-year high. […] Read more »
How Democrats Can Win Back Obama-Trump Defectors
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, analysts fiercely debated the role of the approximately six million voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but shifted their support to Mr. Trump in 2016. Democratic strategists also had to worry about their future behavior: Was 2016 a temporary […] Read more »
Why Republicans will stick with Trump in 2020 — even if they don’t love his behavior
… The Republicans who make a living hating Trump today hated him before he was elected. The rest of the party remains solidly behind him. The reason for that, as we enter this election year, is less granular than feeling happy or sad about a specific presidential behavior. Rather, it […] Read more »