Public opinion surveys ahead of the 2020 presidential election were the most inaccurate in 40 years, according to an expert panel convened by the main trade group for pollsters, which said its work hadn’t yet pointed to a way to correct the error. In the aggregate, the panel said, polls […] Read more »
The Senate’s new normal: Tiny, fragile majorities
There’s a new normal in the Senate: tiny majorities. Democrats currently have a shaky one-vote advantage in the upper chamber. Every senator is a potential deal-breaker; Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) — the chamber’s most moderate Democrat — has something akin to veto power over every Democratic proposal. Over the […] Read more »
How the Senate’s Long-Term Equilibrium Could Shape Democratic Decisions on the Filibuster
Key Points• A majority of states are now either solidly Republican or solidly Democratic on the presidential level, and the party a state prefers for president increasingly has a big edge in winning the state’s two Senate seats. Given these patterns, it’s possible to game out the basic contours of […] Read more »
Republicans should disband if they don’t win back the House in 2022
Failure, disappointment and embarrassment. Those three feelings should come to mind for Republicans if they don’t win the House majority in 2022. Democrats have their narrowest majority in more than a generation, and Republicans have redistricting and history on their side in the midterm elections. There’s really no excuse for […] Read more »
The Six Factors That Will Shape 2022
In politics, as in weather, there can be a sudden change in the prevailing winds. Take the last three weeks before November’s elections, when a narrow but pivotal slice of voters, mostly independents, got cold feet about giving Democrats the big win that had appeared to be almost certain. Perhaps […] Read more »
How the economy is turning into a strength for Biden
… Biden, it seems, is getting at least some of the credit for what voters see as an increasingly good economy. The CNN poll put his approval rating on the economy at 50% among voters. This was about equal to his overall approval rating in the poll of 52% with […] Read more »