The fierce political struggles erupting across the Sun Belt this summer over mask mandates and other public health precautions against Covid-19 point toward epic governors’ races next year that will test how much the political balance of power has changed in the rapidly growing states at the epicenter of the […] Read more »
How the political environment is moving toward Republicans
Republicans gained a seat in the Connecticut state Senate this week. They won a special election in a district that President Joe Biden won by more than 20 points in 2020. Any individual special election such as this one comes with its caveats, but the trend in special state elections […] Read more »
Californians and their views on crime
Nearly all Californians say crime is an important issue, including more than two in three who consider it very important. Among the top-rated answers were increased economic opportunity and jobs. Closely following this was having more mental health services available. CONTINUED Fred Backus & Anthony Salvanto, CBS News Read more »
‘Breaking point’: Why the red state/blue city conflict is peaking over masks
Political and population trends are colliding as the steadily escalating tension between red states and their blue cities across the Sun Belt is reaching a breaking point over the volatile issue of school masking. For more than a decade, GOP governors and Republican-controlled legislatures in states from Florida and Georgia […] Read more »
California’s vaccinated say unvaccinated are adding risk; strong support for mandates
As Californians express widespread concern about the Delta variant, they overwhelmingly say the state’s recent rise in cases was preventable, had more people gotten vaccinated and taken more precautions. … Meanwhile, as the effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom heads into its final month, Newsom faces what looks like a […] Read more »
The Trump Factor for 2021 and 2022
For the first time in more than four years, Donald Trump has receded into the background. He no longer grabs the headlines and wall-to-wall cable TV coverage that he craves. Banned from social media, his opinions on everything from the women’s national soccer team to the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, […] Read more »