Two new polls this week attempt to quantify the public’s feelings for the Common Core State Standards. The K-12 benchmarks in English and math were little known this time last year. But they’ve since become the subject of a high-profile political fight. Now a majority of the public opposes them. […] Read more »
The mythical swing voter
… The short story is much of the apparent changes in public opinion are actually changes in patterns of nonresponse: When it looked like Romney jumped in popularity, what was really happening was that disaffected Democrats were not responding to the survey while resurgent Republicans were more likely to respond. […] Read more »
How Libertarians Snookered The New York Times Magazine
The premise underpinning Robert Draper’s New York Times Magazine cover story on the “Libertarian Moment” is that libertarians offer the cure for the Republican Party’s political difficulties. The story has lots of problems — a failure to account for recent history, in which the GOP already moved toward libertarianism after […] Read more »
Why Obama’s Approval Ratings Languish
I don’t normally focus too much attention on one survey, but when it helps illuminate a broader (and not uncontroversial) argument I’ve made it becomes too good to pass up. CONT. Matthew Dickinson, Middlebury College Read more »
NYT: Dotty Lynch, Pollster Who Saw the Gender Gap
Dotty Lynch, who was the first woman to be chief polltaker for a presidential campaign and one of the first to recognize the potential benefit of developing campaign themes aimed specifically at winning women’s votes, died on Sunday in Washington. CONT. Paul Vitello, New York Times Read more »
Dotty Lynch, CBS News veteran and political trailblazer
Dotty Lynch, the former CBS News veteran who paved the way for a new generation of political operatives and journalists, died Sunday in Washington at the age of 69 after battling melanoma. … Lynch was not only a “political junkie of the first order,” as “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl […] Read more »