Democrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?

Democrats emerged from the 2020 election with full control of the federal government and a pile of lingering questions. In private, party leaders and strategists have been wrestling with a quandary: Why was President Biden’s convincing victory over Donald J. Trump not accompanied by broad Democratic gains down ballot? With […] Read more »

Republicans Struggle to Derail Increasingly Popular Stimulus Package

Republicans are struggling to persuade voters to oppose President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan, which enjoys strong, bipartisan support nationwide even as it is moving through Congress with just Democratic backing. … More than 7 in 10 Americans now back Mr. Biden’s aid package, according to new polling from […] Read more »

The Four Concentric Circles of Voters

The current political moment reminds me of the story about the guy who had one foot in a pot of boiling water and the other foot in a bucket of ice. On average, he was quite comfortable. Indeed, in politics, we too often focus on averages—the overall numbers—which even if […] Read more »

With polarization at a peak, the number of House ‘crossover districts’ is at its lowest in a century

Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 House seats nationwide concludes, appropriately enough, with Pennsylvania, the state whose electoral votes sealed Joe Biden’s victory four days after Election Day. … With figures from the Keystone State in hand, we now know that Biden carried 224 congressional […] Read more »

Greatest Threat: Democrats Say White Nationalism, Republicans Say China

Just a few weeks into taking control of the White House, the Biden administration faces a variety of threats. On the home front, President Joe Biden warned about domestic terrorism in his inaugural speech, including the rise of political extremism and white supremacy. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken identified […] Read more »