Democrats requesting absentee ballots outnumber GOP in key swing states

As early voting in the presidential election begins Friday, with North Carolina becoming the first state in the nation to send out absentee ballots, key battleground states are seeing a significant increase in requests for mail-in ballots and registered Democrats are outpacing Republicans. Although voters in North Carolina have until […] Read more »

Democrats have voter registration advantage in four states

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak and the economic slump, President Donald Trump faced a big challenge in his 2020 re-election effort: a changing American electorate. Young voters have been a challenge for Trump since he entered politics (he lost voters under 40 by double digits in 2016) and every year […] Read more »

Here are the Trump battleground states that Harris can help Biden retake

It’s too early to tell how much Joe Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate will help boost support for the Democratic ticket among African American voters. But this much is clear: Increasing Black turnout from 2016 levels will be critical to Biden’s ability to win back […] Read more »

Political Conventions, Polls, and “Moneyball 2020”

With the Covid-19 pandemic, the conventions will look vastly different from previous years. In this episode, Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang discuss the run-up to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. They look at how a virtual convention might affect election coverage, voter enthusiasm, and rising political talent. Later in […] Read more »

Summer ad spending shows Trump in retreat, defense in key states

If you want to know what a campaign really thinks about its chances, you don’t listen to what it says, you watch where it puts its money. This week’s Data Download is looking at how the President Donald Trump and Joe Biden teams (and their main affiliated outside groups) have […] Read more »

Democrats Are on Track to Win Decisive Battleground Suburbs They Lost in 2016

Democrats’ path to victory in 2020 requires strong majorities in cities and minimizing losses in rural stretches, but it hinges on performance in the suburbs. … To better understand the dynamics in these decisive places, Third Way used data from the analytics firm Catalist to estimate how many people are […] Read more »