An almost unfathomable gap divides public attitudes on basic issues involving gender, race, religion and politics in America, fueled by dramatic ideological and partisan divisions that offer the prospect of more of the bitter political battles that played out in Washington this month. … While these issues divide a variety […] Read more »
How Both Parties Ignore What Their Voters Want
One reason a serious budget negotiation seems unlikely this fall is that any meaningful assault on the federal deficit would require each party to confront the contradictions between its fiscal agenda and its electoral coalition. Two long-term trends are creating this tension. One is an electoral reshuffling: Republicans increasingly depend […] Read more »
The implosion of the GOP brand, in one chart
… Polling released this week by the Washington Post and ABC News found the GOP’s unfavorability ratings among Americans at an all-time high of 63 percent. But a closer look at the numbers reveals that this has been accompanied by a massive collapse in 2013 of the GOP brand among […] Read more »
Everyone Is a Centrist, According to People Who Love Centrists
It turns out that the American political center is occupied by a purple-colored straw man, according to a well-designed and numbers-heavy report from Esquire magazine and NBC News. It’s a report that tried its damnedest to find a centrist majority in the United States, and, thanks to some clever categorizing, […] Read more »
No, there isn’t a ‘New American Center’
Esquire, a magazine about fancy clothes and ordering drinks like an asshole, has teamed up with NBC News to poll a bunch of soft-liberal white voters. They discovered that those voters exist, they’re white, and they’re a bit liberal. … No one was claiming that America was strictly divided between […] Read more »
The new American center: Why our nation isn’t as divided as we think
It’s the most conventional wisdom in Washington, the unchallenged idea that America is a divided nation, a country ripped into red and blue factions in perpetual conflict. The government shutdown this fall would seem like only the latest evidence of this political civil war. But is the idea of two […] Read more »