It was a revealing convergence Monday when the five-member conservative Supreme Court majority delivered the Hobby Lobby contraception decision even as President Obama announced that House Republicans had officially shelved immigration reform. Both disputes reaffirmed the GOP’s identity as the champion of the forces most resistant to the profound demographic […] Read more »
As Numbers Grow, Single Women Emerge as Political Powerhouse
The decline of marriage over the last generation has helped create an emerging voting bloc of unmarried women who are profoundly reshaping the American electorate to the advantage, recent elections suggest, of the Democratic Party. What is far from clear is whether Democrats will benefit in the midterm contests this […] Read more »
Mapping the Complicated Politics of Immigration
Washington has again failed to pass immigration reform this year, but on Friday thousands of new American citizens will be sworn in at hundreds of locations across the country. The July 4 naturalization ceremonies have become a staple of the holiday’s celebration. Statistically speaking, the foreign-born population in the U.S. […] Read more »
Women’s Economic Agenda: Powerful Impact on the Vote and Turnout in 2014
This is a turning point in the 2014 off-year elections when parties, candidates and leaders can recognize how central are unmarried women and the Rising American Electorate to the Democrats’ chances and how clear a path there is to get their votes and get them to vote. This is the […] Read more »
Political Participation of LGBT Americans
Until recently, little was known about the participation of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people in American democracy. Historically, most of the national surveys and polls have failed to ask identifying questions on sexual orientation, making it difficult for researchers to track down participation trends among this population. This situation, […] Read more »
Home Is Where The Political Heart Is – Or Is It?
… More importantly, questions like those in the Washingtonian exercise, or in the recently released Pew survey on political polarization, that ask where we prefer to live based, in part, on political preferences, aren’t very good at telling us where we actually live. That is because as Clayton Nall and […] Read more »