House Democrats More Trusted on Pandemic Issues

This release features findings from a national online survey of 1,012 registered voters conducted May 21-25, 2020. • Trump’s approval rating on handling health care remains low as Democrats are more trusted on a variety of health metrics related to the pandemic.• Americans have increasingly favorable views of the ACA […] Read more »

How Much Trump Could Help (Or Harm) Down-Ballot Republicans In November

Looking ahead to November, the presidential race could decide more than just who the next president is. It could also determine which party controls the Senate or House or even a state’s legislature. And that’s because of something political science calls the “coattail effect,” which is when the popularity of […] Read more »

Does Partisanship Affect Compliance with Government Recommendations?

… I examine three cases of government vaccine recommendations – Smallpox in 2003, H1N1 in 2009, and measles in 2015. In the first case, the president, George W. Bush, was a Republican. In the latter two, the country was governed by a Democratic administration. Using survey data, I test whether […] Read more »

Senate Republicans’ Spending Is Almost Entirely Defensive

Enough of the talk about the possibility of another split between electoral and popular votes for president, which would be the third in 20 years. Here’s a better challenge for 2020 election aficionados: First, if Republicans only hold onto one thing, is it more likely to be the White House […] Read more »

Changing Southwest may bring Democrats a milestone win

In a critical mark of the shifting political landscape, Democrats in November could secure a clean sweep of the Senate seats from the four key Southwestern states — a milestone the party hasn’t reached in nearly 80 years. … Even as Democrats struggle to maintain their position in slow-growing, predominantly […] Read more »

Donald Trump, Joe Biden and the Vote of the Irish

In 2016, my vantage point on the donnybrook between Donald and Hillary was an Irish bar in Queens, where I was a bartender a few nights a week. … Half the patrons were Irish immigrants who considered Mr. Trump a real “eejit,” but the other half, the Irish Americans, thought […] Read more »