More than half of the state elected officials deciding new district lines in 2020 will be elected this year, a new study by the National Conference of State Legislatures found. Three-fifths of governors and one-third of all state senators elected during the 2018 midterms will still be in office during […] Read more »
Bright Line Watch Report on American Democracy
In April 2018, Bright Line Watch conducted its fifth expert survey, and its third public survey, on democracy in the United States. Between April 9 and 22, we surveyed an expert sample of 935 political science faculty at American universities and a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults. Respondents in […] Read more »
The Public, the Political System and American Democracy
At a time of growing stress on democracy around the world, Americans generally agree on democratic ideals and values that are important for the United States. But for the most part, they see the country falling well short in living up to these ideals, according to a new study of […] Read more »
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: Let’s Play Family Feud!
What are President Trump’s strengths and weaknesses? The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team plays “FiveThirtyEight Family Feud” — a new game we made up — to try to find an answer. The team also debates the merits of the census’s new citizenship question and discusses its potential effects on political representation […] Read more »
Census change will have a political impact. Question is: How much?
This week, the U.S. Census suddenly became a hot political topic in Washington – yes, you read that right, the U.S. Census. And now a partisan fight is brewing over the bureau’s crucial 2020 survey. It began on Tuesday when the Trump administration proposed a last-minute additional question to the […] Read more »
The Seats/Votes Relationship and the Efficiency Gap: House Elections 1972-2016
Redistricting for the U.S. House of Representatives is not a unified process, as is the case for most national legislatures, but rather the result of the cumulative actions in the states that have more than one representative. Nevertheless, it is useful to look at the entire House to see how […] Read more »