… Michael Barber and Jeremy C. Pope, political scientists at Brigham Young University, reported in their recent paper “Does Party Trump Ideology? Disentangling Party and Ideology in America,” that many Republican voters are: malleable to the point of innocence, and self-reported expressions of ideological fealty are quickly abandoned for policies […] Read more »
Clues for a Wave? A Look at the Generic Ballots of 2006 & 2010
Given President Donald Trump’s controversial start, it’s no wonder friends and foes alike are already buzzing about his impact on the 2018 midterm elections. It’s still early in the cycle, but not too early to look at what various indicators say about the two parties’ prospects. Presidential job approval and […] Read more »
Teflon Don confounds Democrats
Democrats tried attacking Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. They’ve made the case that he’s ineffective, pointing to his failure to sign a single major piece of legislation into law after eight months in the job. They’ve argued that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that […] Read more »
Democrats Must Take a Shot at Texas
When Democrats are desperate, they dream of Texas. … Texas is a large and utterly elusive grail. A 2016 simulation incorporating demographic and political trends in the state concluded that Texas would not fall into the Democratic column anytime in the next four presidential elections. “The juggernaut there is whites […] Read more »
GOP tax reform: likely loser
Republicans could score with their tax reform proposals. But they almost certainly won’t. Americans would be receptive to eliminating tax breaks for big corporations and lowering taxes for the middle class. Alas, the GOP is congenitally incapable of producing such a plan because its real objective has long been reducing […] Read more »
Trump’s Hardline Immigration Stance Got Him To The White House
President Trump’s decision to end the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (better known as DACA) seems like a political loser. Polling shows that most Americans support the program, which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation, and don’t want participants […] Read more »