… White men sometimes feel besieged and baffled by these suggestions of systematic advantage. When I wrote a series last year, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” the reaction from white men was often indignant: It’s an equal playing field now! Get off our case! Yet the evidence is overwhelming […] Read more »
Democrats Call for Focus on Narrative, White Voters After 2014 Losses
The Democratic Party’s autopsy of its devastating defeat in 2014 calls for a renewed focus on the party’s message and winning back white Southern voters. In preliminary findings unveiled Saturday at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, a task force studied the party’s defeats in 2010 and 2014—despite its […] Read more »
The Most Valuable Voters of 2016
Where will demographic change most transform the landscape for the 2016 presidential race? … In the charts below, we summarize the two demographic trends that may most affect the political landscape in the 11 states that both parties now treat as decisive swing contests. As the charts show, all of […] Read more »
Clinton’s Greatest Political Strength May Be Hiding in Plain Sight
Much of the debate about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s potential appeal to female voters may be focusing on the wrong group of women. Probably the most frequently asked question about Clinton’s possible coalition as a Democratic nominee in 2016 is whether she can win back the working-class white women who have […] Read more »
California: Record-High Approval for Gov. Brown, Bipartisan Support for His Budget
Californians give Governor Jerry Brown a record-high job approval rating and his budget proposal has strong bipartisan support in a statewide survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), with support from The James Irvine Foundation. Strong majorities of state residents favor the governor’s plan to require […] Read more »
Where Obama Has—and Has Not—Recovered
President Obama heads into his State of the Union address tonight enjoying reviving approval ratings from key groups in his coalition but still facing entrenched skepticism from the older and blue-collar whites who were crucial to GOP victories last fall. … Whatever the economy’s condition, African-Americans, Hispanics, and college-educated white […] Read more »