It has been almost 80 years since the world witnessed a land war in Europe. As such, we should be cautious about making broad pronouncements of what Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will mean to the current world order. We also shouldn’t assume we know how Americans will respond and react, […] Read more »
Foreign Policy Unlikely To Save Democrats in the Fall
… While we don’t know the trajectory that the Russia/Ukraine crisis will take, and there are many factors that can impact on midterm elections, we do know that in the absence of a large number of U.S. military deaths, Americans rarely vote on foreign-policy issues, particularly in midterms. The state […] Read more »
As Ohio became reliably red, the Republican Party was changing
Once upon a time, Ohio was a swing state. While it was slightly more Republican than the country as a whole, the Buckeye State voted with the winning presidential nominee fourteen consecutive elections, from 1964 to 2016. But that now seems like ancient history. … What is strange is how […] Read more »
Russia’s objective in the U.S. has already largely been achieved
Russia’s desired outcome in the months before Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was not simply to see him elected. It aimed, instead, to more broadly “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” (in the words of a January 2017 intelligence assessment), an effort that Russia believed would be aided far more […] Read more »
Redistricting and Competition in Congressional Elections
Key Points• Based on presidential voting patterns, a much larger proportion of U.S. House districts strongly favor one party and a much smaller proportion are closely divided than 50 years ago.• However, gerrymandering is not the major reason for this trend. Partisan polarization has increased dramatically in U.S. states and […] Read more »
Moderates or extremists?
… Replicating similar results in other research, Stanford’s Andrew Hall found, “When an extremist … wins a ‘coin-flip’ election over a more moderate candidate, the party’s general-election vote share decreases on average by approximately 9–13 percentage points.” While some argue the benefits of moderation have declined in recent years, I […] Read more »