Like a previously undiscovered earthquake fault, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is threatening to fracture the Republican electoral coalition along new lines. In the process he could disrupt both the demographic and geographic alignments that have defined previous races for the GOP nomination—and scramble the assumptions of his rivals about the […] Read more »
Bernie Sanders Is Making Surprising Gains With Less Affluent Whites
Bernie Sanders’s coalition once looked very familiar: He had strong support among well-educated and affluent liberal white voters of the sort who backed Barack Obama, Bill Bradley and Jerry Brown. He struggled among less affluent voters. But his coalition has evolved over the last few months. He now fares much […] Read more »
How the ‘Trump factor’ came to dominate the 2016 election
It’s easy to dismiss Donald Trump’s campaign as pure theatre – many have; many still do. But there’s more to the Trump drama than meets the eye. For all his theatrics, Trump has caused a stampede in the Republican Party and he’s done this using a classic, class-based divide-and-rule strategy. […] Read more »
For Trump and His Rivals, The Race to Iowa Is Strictly a Numbers Game
… Over the past two weeks, six polls released nationally, and in Iowa and New Hampshire—the critical first two states—show Trump’s support converging with noticeably little variation at around one-third of the Republican vote. Each of those polls shows Trump leading his rivals. Four polls released Tuesday morning also largely […] Read more »
Two Versions of America Emerge in the Presidential Campaign
The cultural and demographic gulf between the Republican and Democratic electoral coalitions can now be measured not just in space, but time. Today, the two parties represent not only different sections of the country, but also, in effect, different editions of the country. Along many key measures, the Republican coalition […] Read more »
These Voters Could Decide GOP Race
GOP presidential leaders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz may have their battle decided by voters at the intersection of their competing strengths: working-class Republicans who are also evangelical Christians. Those blue-collar culturally conservative voters represent a big share of the Republican electorate not only across the south but also in […] Read more »