Eric Cantor wasn’t the only person at a loss for words on Tuesday night. His pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, found itself trying to explain the impossible — how a projected 34 percent lead for the House majority leader 12 days before the election could end up an 11-point loss on […] Read more »
Conversation with Stan Greenberg
Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg joins us on the Political Wire podcast to look at how well President Obama laid the groundwork in his State of the Union address for the 2014 midterm elections. CONT. Political Wire Read more »
Frank Luntz as a Man Out of His Time
… Focus groups and dial sessions were the cutting edge of 1994. They’re laughably antiquated today. And what’s more, they were never a perfect approximation of public opinion. … The problem for Frank Luntz isn’t that people have gotten “more contentious and argumentative.” The problem is that his two nifty […] Read more »
The Agony of Frank Luntz
… It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, […] Read more »
Middle America assails Washington machine as indifferent and ‘above us’
America has met the enemy, and it is Washington. That was the message from a focus group of 11 Cincinnati-area voters, who issued a scathing and impassioned indictment Wednesday of Washington, D.C., and everyone in it — from lawmakers to the president and, most strikingly, a political system that makes […] Read more »
Nashville focus group: A raw sense of betrayal
Could Americans really get any angrier at Washington? Even before the recent government shutdown, congressional approval hovered around 10 percent, a minority thought the country was on the right track, and a “throw the bums out” mentality was rampant. Railing against the toxic mess in D.C. has been a winning […] Read more »