On Election Day, a small but crucial percentage of Republican voters deserted their party, casting ballots for Democratic nominees in several elections that featured Trump-backed candidates at the top of the ticket. These Trump-driven defections wrought havoc on Republican ranks. At the extreme, a once-strong Republican Party in Michigan was […] Read more »
Bad Vibes v. Good Results. Lynn Vavreck on the ’22 Midterms.
Dr. Lynn Vavreck, professor of political scientist at UCLA and contributing columnist to The Upshot at The New York Times, sits down with Jon to talk about 2022 midterms. After 2020, Lynn and her colleagues interviewed over 500,000 voters, leading them to conclude that our politics aren’t just polarized, but […] Read more »
Hillary Clinton Accepted Her Loss, but a Lot Has Changed Since 2016
America is holding its first coast-to-coast elections since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. That revolt, an attempt to stop the certification of the last presidential election, cost several lives. A lot is at stake. … The need to keep the other party out of government, no matter […] Read more »
If Democrats prevail during the midterms, TV advertising might have something to do with it
A vote sign appears at a campaign event for Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Mastro in Las Vegas on Nov. 1, 2022. Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images John M. Sides, Vanderbilt University The neck-and-neck race for control of the U.S. Senate is particularly unwelcome news for […] Read more »
These Two Big Unknowns Make the 2022 Midterms Unusually Unpredictable
Here are a few things to keep in mind about the next week’s midterm elections. Let me start with a preface. The Democrats could do fairly badly on Tuesday yet still better than presidential parties have historically performed in similar situations. This could be true without the election providing a […] Read more »
American Democracy on the Eve of the 2022 Midterms
Two years ago, America’s democracy was tested when Donald Trump refused to concede Joe Biden’s presidential win, a violent mob stormed the Capitol to try to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory, and a majority of congressional Republicans, including two-thirds of House members, voted against certifying the result. Public confidence […] Read more »