Democrats Don’t Need a Message. They Have Trump.

… Midterm elections are about grievances, often directed against an incumbent president. There are more than four-dozen competitive House races, and Democrats may settle on similar themes. But they don’t need a single agenda. … The anti-Trump message will resonate almost everywhere. In some places, it’ll amount to an all-out […] Read more »

What Are They Hiding?

The Special Counsel Investigation: Americans want the investigation to continue, but are more interested in indictments and crimes than in rehashing 2016. For many Americans, the cover up is the crime. When we ask Americans what this investigation is about, they say it’s about Russian interference and collusion rather than […] Read more »

Bright Line Watch Report on American Democracy

In April 2018, Bright Line Watch conducted its fifth expert survey, and its third public survey, on democracy in the United States. Between April 9 and 22, we surveyed an expert sample of 935 political science faculty at American universities and a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults. Respondents in […] Read more »

Donald Trump’s presidency has a disturbing parallel in the political career of Huey Long

Ninety years ago, a southern politician with a populist agenda was beginning to dominate American national politics: his bombastic rhetoric and narcissistic personality, cynical use of patronage, selfless addiction to power, and calculating manipulation of the media all foreshadowed the central characteristics of today’s Trump presidency. His name was Huey […] Read more »

America’s Top Fears 2017

The Chapman University Survey of American Fears Wave 4 (2017) provides an in-depth examination into the fears of average Americans. In May of 2017, a random sample of 1,207 adults from across the United States were asked their level of fear about eighty different fears across a huge variety of […] Read more »

Alabama’s Senate runoff election mirrors the national struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party

Thanks to a traditionalistic political culture and modern-day culture wars, public humiliation and scandal have plagued all three branches of Alabama government in the last year. In July 2016, former House Speaker Mike Hubbard was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for felony ethics violations for soliciting money […] Read more »