Is Texas a purple state now, and if not, how soon will it be? Continuing this series investigating the Lone Star State’s evolving partisanship, in this post I consider whether Texas could be competitive in the 2020 presidential election—and what, specifically, we might expect in terms of the impact of […] Read more »
Why Trump’s Favorite 2016 Map Should Scare Him
This week, as President Donald Trump went on the offensive to bolster his case against impeachment, he tweeted a county-by-county map of the 2016 presidential race that showed a vast sea of red interrupted only by a few blue inlets, mostly along the coasts. The map, captioned with the headline […] Read more »
Why Republicans Play Dirty
… The growing diversity of the American electorate is making it harder for the Republican Party to win national majorities. Republicans have won the popular vote in presidential elections just once in the last 30 years. … The problem runs deeper than electoral math, however. Much of the Republican base […] Read more »
California’s Exclusive Electorate: A New Look at Who Votes and Why It Matters
The people who go to the polls in California are very different from those who don’t—a gap that has far-reaching implications for our democracy and political future. The fact that a relatively small, unrepresentative group of Californians elect officials and make policies is an urgent challenge for the state, especially […] Read more »
Grassroots Blossom Across America, Reshaping Country’s Political Geography
As the 2018 midterm campaigns hit their stride last summer, there was finally some mainstream recognition that post-2016 grassroots groups — sometimes discussed as “Resistance” groups — had become an electoral force to be reckoned with. Reporters and academics have established certain baseline facts: • The new groups are disproportionately composed […] Read more »
The Suburban Vote Isn’t as Blue as It Looks
My colleague, David Wasserman wrote a (typically) insightful analysis on GOP state Sen. Dan Bishop’s narrow win in Thursday’s special election in North Carolina’s 9th district. His main conclusion was that the special election continued a trend we’ve seen since 2016 of suburbs voting more Democratic, while small town and […] Read more »