Britain has been rocked by eight major electoral contests in the last nine years. Four general elections, two referendums on Scotland’s independence and European Union membership and two sets of European Parliament elections have pushed one of the world’s oldest and historically most stable democracies into a period of churn […] Read more »
What Are Independent Voters’ Burning Issues?
After we recently wrote about the priorities of Democrats and Republicans using data from the Democracy Fund + U.C.L.A. Nationscape Project, readers had two main questions for us. The answers may provoke more questions. CONT. Lynn Vavreck (UCLA), John Sides (Vanderbilt) & Chris Tausanovitch (UCLA), New York Times Read more »
Impeachment fits Trump’s populist strategy perfectly
Donald Trump’s electoral appeal is populist. It is populist in the specific sense in which Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser defined it in their Populism: A Very Short Introduction. For them, populist appeals invoke a conflict between “the people” and “the elites.” … In this framework, the role of […] Read more »
Tracing The Roots Of A Partisan Impeachment
President Trump was impeached Wednesday night on two articles of impeachment — one for abuse of power, the other for obstruction of Congress. And they both got more votes than either of the other two impeachments in American history. But it was also partisan — zero Republicans broke ranks, and […] Read more »
What Unites Republicans May Be Changing. Same With Democrats.
In a book released on the eve of the 2016 election called “Asymmetric Politics,” political scientists Matthew Grossmann and David Hopkins argued that America’s political parties don’t just have different ideologies, but are really different kinds of organizations. “Republicans are organized around broad symbolic principles, whereas Democrats are a coalition […] Read more »
What Turned the Tide on Gay Marriage?
I don’t think people can fully comprehend how unique an issue gay marriage is when it comes to public opinion research. Most political scientists study issues that may shift a few percentage points across a decade. By and large, change in public opinion is downright glacial. Gay marriage is not […] Read more »