The Midterm Elections Are a Jump Ball

We’ve lived through three riveting election cycles in a row—President Trump’s two races, with House Democrats’ midterm triumph sandwiched in the middle. But don’t get comfortable now, because we may be in for another one. With the Senate 50-50 and the current House split 218 to 212, with five vacant […] Read more »

The Virginia governor’s race will foreshadow the political future

The Virginia governor’s race, which historically offers a check against the national outcome of the previous year’s presidential election, is shaping up as a microcosm of our current politics. On the Democratic side, an establishment figure known as a glad-handing pragmatist leads the primary field, even as he’s been forced […] Read more »

Cuomo’s Approval Rating Has Fallen. He Could Still Win Re-Election.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has not had much good news over the past few months. His poll numbers have not been much of an exception. A new Siena College poll this week found that Mr. Cuomo’s ratings had fallen to the lowest level of his tenure, with […] Read more »

Presidential ‘fast starts’ come with electoral risk

“President Donald Trump is off to a fast start,” I wrote in a Jan. 30, 2017, column for Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, before warning that the same “aggressiveness could produce the same sort of reaction that Barack Obama’s fast start did in 2009: It could lead to a […] Read more »

It’s anything but the economy, stupid

… Democrats are betting that trillions in economic spending, from an already passed stimulus and a proposed infrastructure and welfare bill, will deliver tangible benefits to Americans, who will in turn reward them in next year’s election. Republicans are betting on the primacy of cultural or social-policy concerns, from the […] Read more »