Midterm elections are all about turning out base constituencies. Over the last few decades, there have been few more reliable voters for Republicans than white evangelical Protestants. This year, however, GOP candidates may be getting less help from this group—not because white evangelical Protestants are becoming less supportive or less […] Read more »
The South’s Lesson for the Tea Party
Last week’s Republican primary in Tennessee resulted in a comfortable win for Senator Lamar Alexander over his Tea Party-backed challenger, State Assembly Representative Joe Carr. But make no mistake: The Tea Party is on a roll across the South, having mounted major primary challenges in Texas, Mississippi and South Carolina, […] Read more »
Why an Improving Economy Isn’t Improving Obama’s Numbers
New polling from NBC/Wall Street Journal shows a public still struggling to regain its economic footing six years after the financial meltdown of 2008. Americans’ real economic distress is one reason why President Obama is not getting credit for a steadily dropping unemployment rate and improved economic growth. The other […] Read more »
Black Southern Voters, Poised to Play a Historic Role
… Nearly five decades after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, black voters in the South are poised to play a pivotal role in this year’s midterm elections. If Democrats win the South and hold the Senate, they will do so because of Southern black voters. The timing — […] Read more »
Population Shifts Turning All Politics National
… For all the talk about how partisan polarization is overwhelming Washington, there is another powerful, overlapping force at play: Voters who are not deeply rooted increasingly view politics through a generic national lens. Friends-and-neighbors elections were already a thing of the past in congressional campaigns. But the axiom that […] Read more »
The Mississippi Gamble
Over the last few weeks, it has been hard to watch six-term Sen. Thad Cochran fight for political survival in Mississippi’s Republican primary without thinking of some of the lyrics from Kenny Rogers’s song “The Gambler.” In the second stanza, we hear an old-timer say, “Son, I’ve made a life […] Read more »