Where History Rhymed and Where It Didn’t

Earlier this cycle I compared midterm elections to Mark Twain’s famous quip about history not repeating, but often rhyming. Each midterm election is unique, but there are also patterns and norms that are constants from one midterm to the next. With the dust now (almost) settled, Twain’s quote was a […] Read more »

What the data show about angry parents rocking the 2022 election

Angry parents of school-aged children were supposed to rock the gates of the establishment and send a message in the 2022 elections, at least according to the conservative narrative. “Woke” school curricula, extended COVID-19 restrictions in schools, and policies around transgender athletes were supposed to drive voters to the polls […] Read more »

New state voter fraud units finding few cases from midterms

State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems. That’s just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units […] Read more »

Thankful for paths to reform

… It is a tense time in U.S. politics. Separation of parties along lines of class and race, technological disruption, increasing economic inequality, and bitter and close national elections. This combination of problems is reminiscent of the original Gilded Age. … Perhaps counterintuitively, the parallels make me optimistic about our […] Read more »

Higher young voter turnout in midterms changes approach to major political issues

This midterm cycle, young voters turned out in historic numbers and helped Democrats stave off the Republican red wave. They were still a small portion of the electorate, but voters under 30 have shown increased participation in the last few elections. John Della Volpe of the Harvard Kennedy School Institute […] Read more »