One of the strangest things about the final days of the 2012 presidential campaign was that the battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney became something of a sideshow, at least in the greenrooms of Manhattan and Washington, D.C., and on the Acela trains that shuttled the crème de la […] Read more »
GOP Faces Steep Climb With Young Voters
… The millennial generation — voters ages 18 to 29 — was widely expected to stay home on Election Day, deflated by partisan politics and disappointed by the president they overwhelmingly endorsed four years ago. Instead, young voters matched their participation rate from 2008, with about 50 percent of eligible […] Read more »
Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race
As Americans’ modes of communication change, the techniques that produce the most accurate polls seems to be changing as well. In last Tuesday’s presidential election, a number of polling firms that conduct their surveys online had strong results. Some telephone polls also performed well. But others, especially those that called […] Read more »
Political Racism in the Age of Obama
… Four years ago, when Mr. Obama became our first African-American president by putting together an impressive coalition of white, black and Latino voters, it might have appeared otherwise. Some observers even insisted that we had entered a “post-racial” era. But while that cross-racial and ethnic coalition figured significantly in […] Read more »
The Demographic Excuse
… Reliable Republican constituencies — whites, married couples and churchgoers — are shrinking as a share of the electorate. Democratic-leaning constituencies — minorities, recent immigrants, the unmarried and unchurched — are growing, and voting in larger numbers than in the past. But Republicans are also losing because today’s economic landscape […] Read more »
The Building Blocks of Re-election
President Obama secured a second term by preserving much of the diverse mosaic of voters who rallied around him four years ago, overcoming weakened support in his coalition. Women, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, voters under 45, liberals and moderates, those living in the Northeast and the West, and urban dwellers gave […] Read more »