A question I’m getting asked a lot these days is: “What does President Biden need to do to turn this midterm election around?” To many, it seems like a political version of a Rubik’s Cube, a puzzle ready and waiting to be solved with the right approach. Don’t be so […] Read more »
The Supreme Court’s ‘Dead Hand’
The Supreme Court has set itself on a collision course with the forces of change in an inexorably diversifying America. The six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices have been nominated and confirmed by GOP presidents and senators representing the voters least exposed, and often most hostile, to the demographic and cultural […] Read more »
Ranking the States Demographically, from Most Republican-Friendly to Most Democratic-Friendly
Key Points• For all 50 states, we looked at 3 variables that are increasingly linked with partisan voting patterns: education level, race, and urbanization.• When the states are rank-ordered by their composite scores on these 3 measures, the Republican-voting states for the 2020 presidential election cluster on one end of […] Read more »
Most Americans and Republicans side with Pence over Trump
Former Vice President Mike Pence has caused an uproar by saying he did not have the lawful ability to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021. Pence has argued correctly, according to almost every single legal scholar, that his role as president of the Senate was largely ceremonial […] Read more »
The fight isn’t over whether America will be a democracy, but what kind of democracy
I and others often say that the partisan conflict in the United States puts our democracy at risk. And it’s true. But that framing implies that the core conflict is about democracy — as if we have one side that supports fair elections while the other prefers dictatorship. But the […] Read more »
Hotline’s Senate Power Rankings
Democrats had a rough 2021, and entering 2022, things still look bleak. A president’s party typically loses seats in their first midterm election, and President Biden doesn’t look to be an exception to that rule at the moment, with his approval rating mired in the low 40s. While the House […] Read more »