… Just as rivers have changed direction, last fall we saw an election change direction in the last month. Talk of a Democratic wave seemed to trigger a counter-movement, attributed by some to the Left’s calls to defund the police, abolish ICE, decriminalize immigration, enact Medicare-for-all, and pack the Supreme […] Read more »
Why Married Men Might Be an Overlooked but Crucial Voting Bloc
… If both men and married people lean to the right, one would expect married men to be an extremely reliable Republican constituency. That is why it has been so surprising that recent analyses of the 2020 election show that in the past five years, married men, though still more […] Read more »
Americans And Experts Agree That Democracy Is Struggling
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we assess the state of American democracy with the help of a new survey from Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who monitor threats to our democratic systems. CONTINUED FiveThirtyEight The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new […] Read more »
Social Volatility, Meet Political Volatility
We’ve been buffeted in recent months by the coronavirus pandemic, widespread protests over police violence that often turned into outright civil unrest, and of course, the rampage through the Capitol on Jan. 6. This is truly a unique and unfortunate moment in our nation’s history. But too few seem to […] Read more »
Election Day 2022 will be Independents’ Day
A few weeks ago, I suggested in this column that independent voters would decide when Joe Biden’s honeymoon is over. Well, Independents’ Day has arrived. While the president’s support from his Democratic base remains strong enough to offset Republican opposition, several recent polls have seen his job approval rating begin […] Read more »
‘Lean Into It. Lean Into the Culture War.’
Should responsibility for the rampant polarization that characterizes American politics today be laid at the feet of liberals or conservatives? … Recently two columnists who are hardly sympathetic to Trump or Trumpism — far from it — raised questions about whether the right or the left deserves blame or responsibility […] Read more »