Whenever there is a special election or an off-year one, you can count on both parties to react in a familiar fashion. They focus on the bright spots and dismiss losses by telling us, “Don’t read too much into it.” Last Tuesday’s elections were a mixed bag for Republicans with […] Read more »
The picture in Iowa just got muddier, not clearer
For all of the legitimate (and occasionally overblown) hand-wringing about “horse race” coverage of national politics, it is a lamentable fact that horse racing generally offers a good analogy for polling. … On Tuesday afternoon, Monmouth University gave us a new snapshot of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination […] Read more »
Democrats Need to Mind the Gap Between Their Base and Swing Voters
Sometimes things can seem contradictory but are not necessarily so. A variety of polls released this week on the 2020 presidential race painted very different pictures of President Trump’s odds for reelection, depending on how narrowly they zoomed in on the electorate. CONT. Charlie Cook Read more »
Democrats may be caught in a 2020 time warp on race
A diversity paradox looms over the Democrats’ hopes of recapturing the White House in 2020. The field of Democratic presidential candidates includes the most racial minorities ever, and more minorities will likely vote next year in the party’s primaries than ever before. Yet four white contenders consistently lead in state […] Read more »
Five Polling Results That May Change the Way You Think About Electability
Democratic voters have a clear ideological choice in this year’s presidential primaries. But if there is any lesson from the recent New York Times/Siena College surveys of the six closest states carried by the president, it’s that the Democrats have been presented with a series of choices about how to […] Read more »
Running For President May Make You More Unpopular In Your Home State
Over the course of this election cycle so far, 25 major presidential candidates — by FiveThirtyEight’s definition — have entered the race for the Democratic nomination. That gobsmacking number sparked criticism that there were perverse incentives to run for president even if a candidate plainly had no shot at winning […] Read more »