Democrats debating whether to impeach Donald Trump may be misreading the evidence from the last time the House tried to remove a president. It’s become conventional wisdom—not only among Democrats but also among many political analysts—that House Republicans paid a severe electoral price for moving against Bill Clinton in 1998, […] Read more »
Trump Character Ratings Improved, but Still a Weakness
More Americans today (40%) than two years ago (33%) believe President Donald Trump has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have, although that still represents a minority of the public. In contrast, roughly six in 10 Americans thought George W. Bush and Barack Obama had the right presidential […] Read more »
What Happened To George W. Bush’s GOP?
The Bushes, and in many ways Texas, shaped the identity of the Republican Party across three decades. In a live taping of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast in Houston, the crew discusses how and why the GOP has changed since the end of President George W. Bush’s tenure. Houston Chronicle columnist […] Read more »
The Obama moment is gone. For 2020, Democrats need a different kind of magic.
Barack Obama can’t run for president again. But so far, it seems as though the 2020 Democratic primary could be defined by efforts to recapture the magic he briefly seemed to sprinkle over the party. It’s a logical ambition. The former president is very popular among Democrats. Hillary Clinton would […] Read more »
Americans Are Divided by Their Views on Race, Not Race Itself
Amid the uproar over the Ralph Northam blackface photograph, a Washington Post poll asked Virginians if he should remain governor. The results were striking: Only 48 percent of whites felt that he should stay in office. That percentage was exceeded by the nearly 60 percent of black Virginians who thought […] Read more »
Presidential Approval Up After Last Three States of Union
As President Donald Trump prepares to give the State of the Union address, he is hoping to reap some political benefit from it, as has occurred after the past three such addresses. Trump, in 2018, and Barack Obama, in 2015 and 2016, saw modest two- to four-percentage-point increases in approval […] Read more »