This week’s developments—the guilty verdict of Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign head found guilty on tax and bank-fraud charges, and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, for campaign-finance-law violations which he says were directed by Trump—have to leave Republicans unnerved. And then there was Wednesday’s […] Read more »
A Labor Day Status Report
We’ve been starting Crystal Ball pieces with a few “key points” summing up the article. As we head into Labor Day weekend and the start of the sprint to Election Day, we thought we’d do something different. Instead of key points from this article, here are some key points about […] Read more »
Impeachment? It’s the elephant in the room this election season
The elephant in the room for the Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll released Wednesday is the question of impeachment. Democrats want it, but they don’t want to talk about it in districts held by Republicans; it could rile up the GOP base and backfire on the effort to take over the […] Read more »
Michael Cohen’s guilty plea raises serious questions about Donald Trump’s behavior
The guilty plea by Donald Trump’s former lawyer to campaign finance and other charges raises serious questions about the president’s own behavior, an overwhelming majority of Americans say in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll. Nearly two-thirds say the president should voluntarily agree to be interviewed by special counsel Robert […] Read more »
How will the Michael Cohen and Duncan Hunter scandals affect the November election?
… Do voters care about campaign finance violations? Yes. In new research, we argue that campaign finance violations inform voters’ views about the elected official’s character. Members of Congress who were randomly audited and found to have violated campaign finance law fared about 5 percentage points worse in their general […] Read more »
NBC/WSJ poll: Trump approval ‘remarkably stable’ after a stormy week of bad news
After a week that saw President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman convicted on eight counts of fraud and his former lawyer plead guilty to felony campaign finance charges, the president’s job approval rating remains virtually unchanged, new polling from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows. But the stability […] Read more »