Turn on a television in any state with a competitive Senate or gubernatorial race, and you’ll see that the criminal-justice reform agenda is under constant attack. … These attacks assume that the changes in criminal-justice policies that some states and many cities have pursued over the past few years are […] Read more »
The Uncomfortable Truths That Could Yet Defeat Fascism
Polls swing this way and that way, but the larger story they tell is unmistakable. With the midterm elections, Americans are being offered a clear choice between continued and expanded liberal democracy, on the one hand, and fascism, on the other. And it’s more or less a dead heat. It […] Read more »
The 2022 Ad Wars
Key Points• To get a flavor of the 2022 ad messages from both sides, we watched nearly 350 campaign ads that came out in the second half of September.• Abortion dominates Democratic messaging, while Republicans are much less likely to mention it. Crime has become a huge focus for Republicans, […] Read more »
Name-calling in politics grabs headlines, but voters don’t like it – and it could backfire in the 2022 midterm elections
A voter and her child cast a ballot during the midterm primary elections in Virginia in June 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images Beth L. Fossen, Indiana University Spending on political advertising is setting records in the midterm elections. But evidence shows that negative messages might discourage voters from casting ballots altogether. […] Read more »
Political Campaigns Flood Streaming Video With Custom Voter Ads
… Although millions of American voters may not be aware of it, the powerful data-mining techniques that campaigns routinely use to tailor political ads to consumers on sites and apps are making the leap to streaming video. The targeting has become so precise that next door neighbors streaming the same […] Read more »
‘They’re getting killed among women’: Skeptical female voters stand in way of GOP Senate
Republicans this election cycle thought they had finally achieved a breakthrough with suburban women after years of losing support. Now, as the primary season has all but ended, the GOP is back where it once was: Appealing directly to skeptical female voters, the women whose support will make or break […] Read more »