A frank admission: Political reporters, including yours truly, absolutely cherish exit polls of voters. … Here is one gem from the last presidential election that really surprised me. … Among the just over one in five voters who answered “cares about people like me” as their most important quality in […] Read more »
Americans may be divided on abortion, but it won’t matter for the midterms
… A large majority of Americans now hold opinions on abortion that are consistent with the position of their party. Moreover, roughly equal proportions of Democrats and Republicans hold opinions on abortion that conflict with the position of their party and these voters still cast their ballots overwhelmingly for their […] Read more »
How politically moderate are Americans? Less than it seems.
… While it is true that most Americans consider themselves to be near the center of the ideological spectrum (either moderates or “slightly” liberal or conservative using the standard seven-point liberal-conservative scale), there are two reasons to expect that many of these moderates are illusory. In truth, the American electorate […] Read more »
A game changer for campaign reporting
The Gamble by John Sides & Lynn Vavreck Game Change 2012 by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin … Modern campaign journalism was born the day Theodore White published “The Making of the President 1960.” White was the first to frame a campaign as a novel, portraying the candidates as protagonists, […] Read more »
Bush-Dukakis, 25 Years Later — Electoral Ground Has Shifted
Today marks a quarter-century since Republican George H.W. Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election. It’s striking how the Electoral College map has evolved over a generation. Let’s review: CONT. Gregory Giroux, Bloomberg Read more »
The Reselling of the President
Richard Wolffe’s account of the 2012 election [“The Message: The Reselling of President Obama”] is a fine behind-the-scenes campaign-trail book that makes me wonder about the future of behind-the-scenes campaign-trail books. … Yet “The Message” is actually most interesting when Wolffe descends from the executive suite to the “boiler room,” […] Read more »