Unemployment is abnormally low. Growth has sped up. A $1.5 trillion tax cut, signed by President Trump last year, is fueling consumer spending. Faced with strong Democratic enthusiasm and fund-raising, and hindered by an unpopular president, Republicans were counting on that economic strength to lift them at the polls, or […] Read more »
What the ‘Trump tax’ cost Republicans
… The Trump tax is conceptually the difference between where President Trump’s approval ratings are and where a more typical Republican president’s would be given national conditions. A Vox analysis in 2016 suggested that Trump was running several points behind a generic Republican presidential nominee in that election. As John […] Read more »
Providing Context for the Midterm Election Results
The Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s voting not only followed the historical pattern of the president’s party losing seats in the midterms but it fulfilled expectations set by the political environment. Gallup’s national polling this fall found relatively high public displeasure with President Donald Trump and […] Read more »
The Rising American Electorate and white working class strike back
The Democrats had a very big election on Tuesday, with a 5-point national congressional margin that allowed them to pick up 32 House seats, to elect a record-breaking 100 women to the House, and to flip six statehouses and seven governors’ mansions. Democrats now occupy nearly half of the 50 […] Read more »
Senate: Geography is Destiny – Part II
… One of the premises we have talked about all cycle is that if Republicans won a majority of the seats in the Toss Up column, then geography would be political destiny because it meant that Democrats lost the seats they were defending in red states. If, on the other […] Read more »
GOP Didn’t Have a Turnout Problem, It Had a Focus Problem
Did the 2018 midterm electorate break new political ground as the media had predicted for months or was it déjà vu all over again? The answer is both. In my last column before the election, I suggested that four key measurements would tell the story of this year’s midterms: party […] Read more »