Both are moderate Midwesterners who have pitched their presidential campaigns on a promise to speak to the heartland voters who moved away from Democrats in 2016. Both come from mostly white states where black leaders have questioned their records on issues of racial justice. And both are polling at or […] Read more »
How Trump Reshaped the 2020 Democratic Primary
After a long campaign of ideological clashes, policy debates and talk of a grand reckoning on the direction of the Democratic Party, the presidential primaries starting on Monday will be shaped by a less lofty but increasingly urgent matter: determining the best candidate to defeat an incumbent who has already […] Read more »
The One Way That Iowa Looks Like the Democratic Party
It’s no secret that Iowa has been only lightly touched by the increasing racial diversity that has reconfigured the Democratic Party nationwide. But while the demographic change evident in the Democratic coalition has largely bypassed Iowa, the state has been swept up in the party’s most important geographic change. Democrats […] Read more »
The Great Wide Open: Democrats Remain Divided on Candidates, United in Opposing Trump
… Primary election narratives frequently center on ostensible divisions within a party because reporters, commentators, and analysts focus on the question of who voters plan to support. When a survey question asks voters to choose their top candidate, it often appears that they are rejecting the others. But many voters […] Read more »
The Head vs. the Heart in Iowa
In politics, as in real life, we are often confronted with this conundrum: do I make the logical, practical choice, or do I go for the more inspired and emotional one? In Iowa, that dynamic is playing out in stark relief. Should voters go with the candidate that looks best […] Read more »
Sanders, Biden are neck-and-neck in new NBC/WSJ national poll
Just days before the first votes are counted in the Democratic primary, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll finds Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden statistically tied at the top of the Democratic field. Sanders gets 27 percent support from Democratic primary voters around […] Read more »