KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE -- Party registration can be a lagging indicator of political change, but recent changes in some states are bringing registration more in line with actual voting. -- Republicans have taken the voter registration edge in states such as Florida and West Virginia somewhat recently, and...
Dear Readers: UVA Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato recently interviewed Jonathan Karl of ABC News and Rep. Ro Khanna (D, CA-17) about, respectively, their new books Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show and Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us. If...
Dear Readers: As we’ve stressed throughout this election season, the president isn’t picked by national polling or the popular vote, but rather by the individual states -- successful presidential nominees must cobble together a coalition of at least 270 electoral votes. With that in mind, we’re launching a series called...
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE -- Unlike in 2016, Bernie Sanders has a real chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination. -- However, he likely will have to broaden his base of support to do so. -- Namely, better showings in big urban and suburban areas are important, particularly as...
KEY POINT FROM THIS ARTICLE -- Altogether, there are 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) with party registration; in the others, such as Virginia, voters register without reference to party. In 19 states and the District, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 12 states, there are more...
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE -- Although Donald Trump is remaking the Republican Party in his image, he had among the shortest coattails of any presidential winner going back to Dwight Eisenhower. In 2016, Trump ran ahead of just 24 of 241 Republican House winners and only five of 22...
If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency -- and she took the popular vote by nearly 3 million -- the narrative of the 2016 election would be far different. Rather than the storyline being Donald’s Trump triumph in the heartland, with its beleaguered blue-collar workers, the emphasis now would be...
There is no doubt that this is a high stakes election. It is not Tweedledum and Tweedledee, as former Alabama Gov. George Wallace famously said of the major parties when he ran as a third-party candidate nearly a half century ago. Almost everyone nowadays agrees that a Donald Trump presidency...
Editor’s note: This is the first of two editions of the Crystal Ball this week. While we typically only publish once a week, this is an extraordinary political year and we hope to provide additional commentary and analysis throughout the rest of the cycle as warranted. In the piece below,...
For the first decade after Sept. 11, national elections showed a steady rise in voter turnout. The number of ballots cast in presidential elections jumped from 105 million in 2000 to a record 131 million in 2008, an increase of 25% in just eight years. Similarly, the midterm congressional turnout...
While potential presidential candidates are just beginning to jockey for pole position for 2016, there has already been one clear winner: the state of Iowa. Its precinct caucuses have retained the leadoff spot in the next nominating cycle in spite of one of the most embarrassing vote counts in modern...
The Democrats can use all the assets they can find as they approach a midterm election that grows increasingly challenging. The polls are daunting. The electoral map for both the Senate and House is unfavorable. And history is rarely kind to the president’s party in midterm voting. But the Democrats...
Probably no election this year has been more important to the presidential politics of 2016 than Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s landslide 60% reelection victory in Democratic-leaning New Jersey. It cemented his place in the front ranks of Republican presidential contenders by demonstrating his vote-getting appeal to constituencies that the GOP...
Accurately or not, Barack Obama has been compared to a number of famous politicians: FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan, even Jimmy Carter. But no one as yet has compared him to Michael Dukakis. Yet as a reference point, Dukakis might be as good as anyone. A look at his vote-getting performance...
It has been about two decades now that the two major parties switched roles in Washington. For much of the last half of the 20th century, Republicans dominated the White House while Democrats enjoyed a virtual monopoly on both chambers of Congress. But since 1994, their basic spheres of influence...
