Was the 2016 election a one-off — a once-in-a-lifetime contest between two fundamentally flawed contestants? Or, was it a realignment election; the end of Democratic dominance in the industrial Midwest as well as the loosening of the Republican grip on southwestern states like Arizona and Texas? Was Clinton the outlier […] Read more »
Why Texas Is Nearing Battleground Status (It’s Not Just About Beto)
The dream of a “Blue Texas” has captured the imagination of Democrats for nearly a decade, and Beto O’Rourke has come closer than anyone to making a statewide victory a reality. His strengths as a candidate in his narrow loss in a 2018 Senate race against Ted Cruz — by […] Read more »
Political Independents: Who They Are, What They Think
Independents often are portrayed as political free agents with the potential to alleviate the nation’s rigid partisan divisions. Yet the reality is that most independents are not all that “independent” politically. And the small share of Americans who are truly independent – less than 10% of the public has no […] Read more »
No 2020 Democrat Has a Monopoly on Younger Voters
Beto O’Rourke’s announcement Thursday that he’s seeking the presidency will compound a demographic mismatch that could powerfully shape the outcome of the 2020 Democratic race. … Even in a rapidly diversifying party, it’s virtually certain that most Democratic primary voters next year will be older than 45. Yet most of […] Read more »
One in Six U.S. Jews Identify as Republican
Prior to Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent comments questioning U.S. support for Israel and the subsequent backlash suggesting that Jewish Americans may be abandoning the party over the issue, roughly half of U.S. Jews identified as Democrat in Gallup polling. Far fewer, 16%, said they were Republican. CONT. RJ Reinhart, […] Read more »
Should Democrats Really Worry About a Contested Convention?
David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report published an op-ed article in the New York Times on Wednesday provocatively titled “Why a Long Democratic Primary Slugfest Might Help Re-Elect Trump.” In the piece, Wasserman argues that the Democratic presidential nomination race in 2020 could well turn out to be a […] Read more »