Rural America has become the Republican Party’s life preserver. Less densely settled regions of the country, crucial to the creation of congressional and legislative districts favorable to conservatives, are a pillar of the party’s strength in the House and the Senate and a decisive factor in the rightward tilt of […] Read more »
Overall approval of U.S. Supreme Court has ticked up from post-Dobbs low six months ago
A new Marquette Law School Poll national survey finds that 47% of adults approve of the job the U.S. Supreme Court is doing, while 53% disapprove. Approval of the Court has been rising from a recent low point of 38% in July 2022, although it remains well below the 60% […] Read more »
The Politics of Respectability and Black Americans’ Punitive Attitudes
Existing research largely ignores Black support for punitive policies that target group members, even as this support challenges expectations of in-group favoritism and group solidarity. The current research fills this gap by leveraging a familiar concept: “the politics of respectability.” Building on historical and qualitative accounts of this worldview, which […] Read more »
The polarization paradox: elected officials and voters have shifted in opposite directions
During the past four decades, the two major political parties have steadily moved farther away from each other and are now as deeply divided as they have been for more than a century. For most of this period, analysts agree, Republican elected officials have moved more to the right than […] Read more »
Why Black voters are more important in Georgia than in any other state
The current list of swing states in American politics mostly features places where Black voters don’t play an outsize role – states such as Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin. Even in swing states where Black voters make up at least 10% of the voting public (e.g., Michigan and Pennsylvania), the Black […] Read more »
Public Opinion Roots of Election Denialism
Although the hardest dividing line between those who accept the election of Joe Biden as legitimate is partisan, there is still variation within the Republican Party between those who accept the 2020 election and those who do not. Among those who do not accept the outcome, they differ as to […] Read more »