In March, I had a post on public opinion concerning busing in the 1970s. I didn’t expect that to become an issue in the presidential campaign, but in the wake of the exchange between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in last week’s debate people are talking about busing again (although […] Read more »
A Single Day Exposed the Central Tension Driving American Politics
The same explosive question rumbled through this week’s Supreme Court ruling on the 2020 census and the two nights of Democratic presidential debates: How will America respond to the propulsive demographic, social, and economic changes remaking the nation? The juxtaposition of these two events, purely coincidental, underscored how much of […] Read more »
Context Is Critical When Parsing Biden’s Words
Few ardent supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden would argue with the suggestion that he chose his words poorly when discussing his ability to work with Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia in the context of the civility that once existed in the Senate. … […] Read more »
There Are Really Two Distinct White Working Classes
… Marginal shifts in partisan balloting by the white working class have been a crucial determinant in the outcome of elections since 1968. This non-college white constituency — pollster shorthand for both the white working class and the white middle class without college degrees — makes up a massive bloc […] Read more »
Support for Religiously Based Refusals to Serve a Range of Minority Groups is Small, but Increasing Over the Last Five Years
Just as the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case of a bakery who refused to serve a gay couple due to the owner’s religious beliefs, a new PRRI survey finds that while at least two thirds of Americans oppose allowing small business owners to refuse products or […] Read more »
The Electoral Time Machine That Could Reelect Trump
Amid all the ongoing changes in the country that generally favor Democrats, is it still possible that President Donald Trump will be reelected in 2020? Because I study religious and demographic change, I hear this question a lot. Much of the early punditry on Trump’s reelection prospects has focused on […] Read more »