Key Points• Despite — or perhaps because of — the relatively high share of the vote third party candidates received in 2016, we expect the two major parties to have a better showing in 2020.• Voters generally feel better about their major party nominees this year than they did in […] Read more »
Geography and gerrymander
… In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the national popular vote by less than two-tenths of a percentage point, while winning some 1,155 of the nation’s 3,143 counties. In 2012, Barack Obama won the popular vote by 4 points but took just 705 counties. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton won […] Read more »
Many governors win bipartisan support for handling of pandemic, but some Republicans face blowback over reopening efforts
Governors collectively have been winning widespread praise from the public for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic, often with the kind of bipartisan approval that has eluded President Trump. But a large-scale Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds that some Republican governors who have embraced reopening their states are struggling to achieve […] Read more »
The Urban-Rural Gulf in American Political Behavior
… Places commonly differ in terms of the composition of the people who reside there. No one is arguing about that fact. The question is whether composition is all there is, or whether place has an independent effect. Are two people, identical in their demographic profiles, likely to vary in […] Read more »
Will 2020 be the year the RNC’s ‘autopsy’ was right?
At least once a year, I look back at the March 2013 Republican National Committee’s “Growth & Opportunity Project,” the party’s post-2012 “autopsy” examining why Republicans were falling behind in their battle against the Democrats. “Falling behind?” you might ask, after seeing the GOP sweeps of 2014 and 2016 and […] Read more »
Senate battleground map shifts during pandemic response
The 2020 election is now less than six months away and in recent weeks the battle for the U.S. Senate seems to have tilted in the Democrats’ favor, according to polls and campaign analysts. The numbers suggest that, as Washington and the states weigh various responses to the coronavirus, Republican […] Read more »