… The phenomenon of disliking Congress intensely yet reelecting the same members election after election is so well known that political scientists have a name for it: Fenno’s paradox, named for Richard Fenno, the political scientist who first noted in the 1970s that people dislike the institution but like their […] Read more »
Joe Biden is gaining ground. But Democrats want someone else in 2024.
President Biden notched significant victories in 2022: He signed deals on climate change, infrastructure and gun control, and Democrats expanded their Senate majority in the midterm elections. But despite these accomplishments, only 47 percent of Democrats want him to seek a second term. Biden’s numbers are trending upwards: In November […] Read more »
McCarthy speaker saga shows Trump is far from untouchable ahead of 2024
Kevin McCarthy’s seven-year-plus dream to become House speaker finally became reality early Saturday morning. The California Republican’s tumultuous journey concluded after six Republican holdouts voted “present,” allowing him to win on the 15th ballot with a lower majority threshold. McCarthy credited Donald Trump for his support in the speaker’s race, […] Read more »
Gold-standard polls got it right in 2022. Others did not
Over the New Year’s holiday weekend, the New York Times published a 4,000-word article noting how some political polls, as well as the polling aggregators, overstated Republicans’ strength in key midterm races, feeding the narrative of a coming “Red Wave” that never came to be. But there’s a far simpler […] Read more »
Polls show Americans are divided on the significance of January 6
Today marks two years since Americans turned on their televisions to watch something that many thought was impossible—a violent mob attacking the Capitol of the United States with the intention of disrupting the Electoral College vote count. … Some days of violence, such as the December 7 attack on Pearl […] Read more »
Yes, it’s too early to focus on 2024 polling
Once upon a time, in this very same land we still inhabit, midterm election cycles ended and odd-numbered years were free from national campaigns and horse-race speculation. We could spend these off-cycle years discussing issues and policies and the handful of off-year state gubernatorial contests, free from all but the […] Read more »