The story of the Democrats’ stinging defeat in the 2014 midterm elections is as well-told by the millions of Americans who did not cast ballots on Election Day as by those who did. The United States Election Project estimated voter turnout at 36.2%, the lowest since 1942. CONT. E.J. Dionne, […] Read more »
Straight-Ticket Voting Rises As Parties Polarize
The center continues to collapse in Congress. The 2014 election accelerated a trend of straight-ticket voting, the phenomenon of people voting for the same party for Congress as they did for president. With the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans growing bigger than ever, the result is a Congress sharply […] Read more »
Nonvoters Would Have Leaned Toward Democrats in Midterms
Democrats bemoaned midterm election turnout that reached historic lows. Turns out, those who sat out the Nov. 4 vote say they would have voted for Democrats had they shown up, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found. The survey showed 50% of people who didn’t vote said they would […] Read more »
Why House Republicans Did Even Better Than They Expected
… By winning just 52 percent of votes cast for the House, Republicans were able to win 57 percent of all House seats. Thanks in part to favorable redistricting after the 2010 Census, Republicans will likely have won five more seats than they did in 2010, even though Republican candidates […] Read more »
For Democrats, Turnout Efforts Look Successful (Though Not Elections)
The Democrats invested millions of dollars in a vaunted field operation to mobilize the young and nonwhite voters who do not usually participate in midterm elections. Yet it was not enough to save Democrats from a Republican landslide. Does the decisive Republican victory mean that the Bannock Street Project, as […] Read more »
How Democrats Owe Their Midterm Losses to Student Loans
… Younger voters did not show up on Election Day in the numbers necessary to avoid a Republican wave, and the younger voters who did show were not nearly as likely to vote for Democrats as they had been in years past. … One of Democrats’ struggles is that voters […] Read more »