History will record last week as a moment when President Trump turned to raw racial appeals to attack a group of nonwhite lawmakers, but his attacks also underscored a remarkable fact of his first term: His rhetorical appeals to white working-class voters have not been matched by legislative accomplishments aimed […] Read more »
Americans Not Sold On Trump — Or Democrats
Democratic presidential candidates are proposing lots of progressive policies in this election. And while those policies may resonate with the party base, some of those ideas are not popular with a general election electorate, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. And overall, independent voters said they were not impressed […] Read more »
Health care: Democrats say focus should be on costs
Health care remains a dominant — perhaps the dominant — issue in the 2020 Democratic primaries. Nearly nine in 10 Democrats in the early states through Super Tuesday call it “very important,” outranking any other issue we asked about in the latest CBS News Battleground Tracker poll, and the split […] Read more »
Wealth Tax and Free College Get Poll Support. Democrats Worry It Won’t Last.
There is a puzzle for the Democratic challengers hoping to unseat President Trump, and it is evident in public reaction to some of their breakout policy ideas. Polls show several of those ideas are quite popular with the electorate, including taxing the assets of very wealthy Americans and offering free […] Read more »
It May Not Seem That Way, but Politicians Often Do What Voters Want
Do politicians care what voters want? New evidence may suggest they don’t — and many voters are skeptical, too. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center reports that less than half the country says elected officials care what ordinary people think. In reality, policy outcomes at the state, congressional […] Read more »
President Trump’s handling of the economy, taxes, and trade
Sixty-three percent of Americans describe the national economy as good, up from 53% in an AP-NORC Center poll conducted in January during the 35-day federal government shutdown. Fewer are giving the president credit for the economy. Forty-seven percent approve of Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and 51% disapprove, not […] Read more »