Increasingly, the 2012 presidential election appears to be dividing along a pair of fault-lines. The first is demographic: old versus new America. … The other divide of surpassing importance in this year’s presidential election is geographic: it’s the gulf between a relative handful of “battleground” states, which are already getting […] Read more »
President Obama makes gains in winnable race
President Obama’s approval has improved to 47 percent, and he now leads Mitt Romney on the ballot by a 3-point margin, 49 percent to 46 percent—a net 3-point improvement since last month, according to the latest national survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps. … Romney is dragged down […] Read more »
Skip College Math
… Notwithstanding the almost daily e-mails that I get protesting that the election will be a slam dunk for either Obama or Romney, this race will be close. Obama has a high floor, meaning that he has a fervent base of support. He also has a low ceiling, meaning that […] Read more »
A victory for Obama in June, but what about November?
President Obama won a major legal victory on Thursday. The question now is whether Mitt Romney and the Republicans can translate the divided Supreme Court’s decision on the health-care law into a political victory in November. … William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar, noted in the run-up to the decision […] Read more »
Bending Toward Universal Health Care
… For as long as political scientists have measured public opinion, we have known that Americans respond to abstract questions by opposing “big government” but evaluate particular government benefits and actions very differently. As long as opponents of health reform could ask “Is it constitutional?” the argument was on their […] Read more »
Supreme Court healthcare ruling gives Obama a political boost
… Most voters have told pollsters that the healthcare issue is important to them, but when Americans were asked in a recent Gallup poll what they considered the most important matter facing the country, only 6% said healthcare, while more than half mentioned the economy and jobs. David Winston, a […] Read more »