The first two months of 2018 have given both parties reasons for optimism. Republicans have cut Democrats’ lead in the FiveThirtyEight average of generic congressional ballot polls in half, from roughly 12 points in December to about six points today. As debates over unpopular health care and tax bills have […] Read more »
It’s Tribalism Not Trump
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in DC these days about the way in which President Trump has undermined the legitimacy of our nation’s top law enforcement agencies. Trump’s steady stream of Twitter tirades against the FBI and the integrity of the entire Russia investigation has eroded the traditionally […] Read more »
Improving poll numbers give Republicans hope that the midterms might not be so bad
If it felt like a tsunami was headed for Republicans at the end of the year, now it’s looking more like a normal wave. Under the radar, a flurry of new public polls points to incremental improvements in GOP fortunes and challenges the narrative that has been gelling in most […] Read more »
White Women in the Rustbelt Are Turning on Trump
A massive new measure of state-by-state attitudes toward Donald Trump offers important clues about the pressure points that could tip the 2018 elections. Last week, Gallup released Trump’s average approval rating in all 50 states in 2017, based on more than 171,000 survey interviews it conducted over the course of […] Read more »
A Viewer’s Guide to ‘Special Election Watch’
Today starts a regular feature of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab called “Special Election Watch.” The idea is to follow special elections in 2018 as a guide to the extent of the Democratic swing in the November 2018 election. First, a couple of words of background, and then […] Read more »
Senate 2018: Republicans Still Have Plenty of Targets
The victory by Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in a special election in December did provide Democrats a potential path to a Senate majority, albeit a narrow one. The Democrats need to defend all 26 of the 34 seats they currently hold, and then flip two of the eight Republican-held seats. […] Read more »