Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are locked in a tight race for Virginia governor, with McAuliffe standing at 50 percent to 47 percent for Youngkin among likely voters in a Washington Post-Schar School poll. Among registered voters, McAuliffe has a 49 percent to 43 percent edge over Youngkin […] Read more »
Can You Be My Bellwether?
Democrats are happy — and rightly so — to have pulled out a decisive win in the recent California recall. Despite earlier signs of a Democratic enthusiasm gap, Democratic voters turned out in big numbers for this off-year election. Even a dip in President Biden’s job approval ratings didn’t have […] Read more »
Why a Troubled Polling Industry Whiffed on the California Recall
The political arm of the public-opinion industry famously had a tough election cycle in 2020. Nobody much noticed when polls of primaries went awry after the COVID pandemic struck; we were in unchartered territory when it came to understanding the likelihood to vote or even how to contact voters. But […] Read more »
What the exit polling tells us about the California electorate, and why it might be wrong
The only exit poll from California’s recall election showed Mr. Newsom winning with an unusual coalition. In a departure from nearly every recent election, longstanding racial and ethnic divides between white voters and voters of color seemed to vanish. … But the actual results of the recall election tell a […] Read more »
The California Recall Was a Warning
Governor Gavin Newsom of California defeated yesterday’s recall election by a large enough margin to squash earlier Republican threats to challenge the results no matter the outcome. But the proliferation of those allegations of voter fraud before the election, including ungrounded claims from former President Donald Trump that the contest […] Read more »
Newsom’s winning recall strategy offers a playbook for Democrats in 2022
… The biggest lesson from this race is that California should immediately change its recall law, which mandates a recall election for a statewide elected official if just 12 percent of voters sign a petition supporting it. But I think there are also lessons from California for Democrats as they […] Read more »