The bad news keeps on coming for President Biden. He ended 2021 at a low point in his presidency, hoping to turn it around in the new year. But things have only gotten worse. His spending and voting rights plans are at congressional dead ends. Inflation remains at multi-decade highs. […] Read more »
The Gender Gap Is Taking Us to Unexpected Places
In one of the most revealing studies in recent years, a 2016 survey of 137,456 full-time, first-year students at 184 colleges and universities in the United States, the U.C.L.A. Higher Education Research Institute found “the largest-ever gender gap in terms of political leanings: 41.1 percent of women, an all-time high, […] Read more »
If Democrats can’t pass their agenda now, they may not get another chance for years. Here’s why
The last four times a president went into midterm elections holding unified control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, as Joe Biden and Democrats do now, voters have revoked it. It happened to Donald Trump in 2018, Barack Obama in 2010, George W. Bush in 2006 and […] Read more »
Do Republicans really believe Trump won the 2020 election? Our research suggests that they do.
All credible evidence tells us that the 2020 election was very secure. … Nevertheless, the vast majority of Republican voters say they agree with Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen. In our most recent University of Massachusetts at Amherst poll, fielded online Dec. 14-20 by YouGov among a […] Read more »
Trump Isn’t the Only One to Blame for the Capitol Riot
… The riot was an attack on our institutions, and of course, inflammatory conservative rhetoric and social media bear some of the blame. But our institutions also helped produce that violent outburst by building a sense of entitlement to power within America’s conservative minority. … If the basic mechanics of […] Read more »
Not all polarization is bad, but the US could be in trouble
Protesters and counter-protesters face off at a political rally in September 2021. AP Photo/Nathan Howard Robert B. Talisse, Vanderbilt University For the first time, the United States has been classified as a “backsliding democracy” in a global assessment of democratic societies by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, […] Read more »