It seems that the only thing Americans can agree on is that we are living in an era of extreme political polarization. … Worrying about decades of Thanksgiving dinners with relatives who support the other party might sound like clear evidence that America is hopelessly, alarmingly divided. But there’s also […] Read more »
How Far Left Is Too Far Left for 2020 Democrats?
In the current election cycle, bets on moderation have few takers. Leading Democratic candidates are supporting bold progressive policy initiatives that are supported by liberal primary voters but may prove to be a tough sell to the general electorate. President Trump and his Republican allies will certainly try to use […] Read more »
The Senate is a much bigger problem than the Electoral College
… Two parts in the original Constitution, written in 1787, that are often criticized by pundits and political scientists are the Senate and the Electoral College. It is easy to conflate the two, but here I want to point out they have important differences and thus pose distinct challenges in […] Read more »
A Historically Weak Presidency Just Keeps Getting Weaker
Donald Trump dominates the popular, electoral, and media landscapes of American politics like no other figure in living memory. Trump remains a ubiquitous presence in the daily press coverage of current events. The 2018 elections were almost entirely a referendum on Trump, with the various individual candidates running for Congress […] Read more »
Assessing Trump’s Chances: Forecasting the 2020 Presidential Election
There are still 10 months to go until the first ballots will be cast in the 2020 presidential caucuses and primaries. The identity of the Democratic nominee, in all likelihood, will not be known for more than a year. Nevertheless, it is not too early to begin speculating about Donald […] Read more »
The 2020 Electorate
A durable finding from political science research is that people who self-identify as “Independent” but who admit to leaning towards one party or the other in a follow up question behave very similarly to their partisan counterparts. Increasingly, research is treating these Independent “leaners” as soft partisans and distinguishing “pure” […] Read more »