The Transformation of the American Electorate

Key Points• The American electorate has changed dramatically over the past 40 years, and a pair of factors — race and education — have driven the changes.• The electorate has become more diverse and more highly educated. Democrats rely heavily on nonwhite voters and have improved with white college-educated voters, […] Read more »

Republicans’ views of the US have become more pessimistic, polling shows

Heading into the next presidential election, an analysis of CNN polls shows that Republicans have reverted to the deeply negative national outlook they held prior to Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. They again are convinced the nation is in decline, and more often defensive against demographic and cultural changes […] Read more »

Why Congress Doesn’t Work

Control of the House of Representatives could teeter precariously for years as each party consolidates its dominance over mirror-image demographic strongholds. That’s the clearest conclusion of a new analysis of the demographic and economic characteristics of all 435 congressional districts, conducted by the Equity Research Institute at the University of […] Read more »

Why ‘MAGA’ is so appealing to older Republicans

… In the 2016 election, Trump leveraged concerns among older Republicans about the changing demography of the United States to his benefit. His slogan — make America great again — was not specifically about race, but it incorporated a sense that America had declined as it also was less disproportionately […] Read more »

The Resentment Fueling the Republican Party Is Not Coming From the Suburbs

Rural America has become the Republican Party’s life preserver. Less densely settled regions of the country, crucial to the creation of congressional and legislative districts favorable to conservatives, are a pillar of the party’s strength in the House and the Senate and a decisive factor in the rightward tilt of […] Read more »