This time last year, the Republican Party was hitting bottom. … What a difference 12 months make. Entering a pivotal election year, a resurgent GOP is poised to reclaim one, if not both, chambers of Congress and retain its lock on dozens of state legislatures and governor’s offices. While victory […] Read more »
Why 2022 Rhymes With the Previous Four Midterms
It feels safer to bet on unpredictability than stability in this era of tremendous political and social churn and upheaval. While we know that the midterm elections favor the ‘out’ party (i.e. the party that doesn’t control the White House), many wonder if history can be a reliable guide when […] Read more »
2021 CBS News polling: What Americans thought about COVID-19, Biden, the January 6 attack and more
2021 was a year of ups and downs in the minds of the American public. The year began with public concern about the state of U.S. democracy, yet positive ratings for newly-elected President Joe Biden; ratings that would turn more negative over the course of the year. In the spring, […] Read more »
‘An American Tradition’: Lessons from a year covering conspiracy theories
… I have spent this year thinking and writing about the draw to conspiracy theories, the perverse comfort they provide and the damage they can cause. Today in the United States, we are living in an era of segregated belief, of divergent realities, at a time when social media has […] Read more »
‘Slow-motion insurrection’: How GOP seizes election power
In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block then-President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people. In the year […] Read more »
An Early Midterm Forecast
Political observers seem to be treating a Republican takeover of the US House next year as an inevitability. And maybe that’s true, but I wanted to apply a bit of simple modeling to it to see if we can get some handle on how likely that is to happen. The […] Read more »