The Crystal Ball typically focuses on national or statewide politics, but given our base at the University of Virginia Center for Politics and our substantial readership in the Old Dominion, we decided to take a comprehensive look at the race for the state’s House of Delegates. All 100 seats are...
Is politics a zero-sum game? Imagine, for a moment, if Sen. John McCain (R) had somehow won the presidency in 2008. How might the country be different? We would not have the Affordable Care Act. Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would not be on the Supreme Court. And the stimulus...
Last week, we highlighted 10 classic or notable political ads that we thought 2014 candidates might consider studying (or “borrowing,” to use a euphemism for copying) for their upcoming campaigns. We then asked readers to respond with their own ideas. Five of the best suggestions follow, along with some words...
If you’re looking for a major difference between the last midterm election in 2010 and the one coming up in 2014, we’ve got one for you: gubernatorial incumbency -- the lack of it in ’10 and the abundance of it in ’14. Back in ’10, just a baker’s dozen of...
Over the next several weeks, we’ll run full updates on 2014’s House, Senate and gubernatorial races. But as an introduction we wanted to offer a little history about the ebb and flow of American politics from Ronald Reagan’s last midterm in 1986, a seemingly odd election that saw Democrats make...
Almost all states consistently use primaries to nominate their candidates for statewide office (U.S. Senate, governor, lower statewide elected officials), although there are some exceptions. Utah, for instance, uses a hybrid convention/runoff system, which readers will remember led to an incumbent U.S. senator, Robert Bennett (R), failing to even advance...
There were real victims in the Boston bombings last week -- the dead, the wounded, the grieving families, the terrorized communities -- but there was substantial collateral damage done to news media credibility. We’ll leave to others the listing of specific winners and losers. Goodness knows, there have been enough...
There’s apparently nothing like a Bahamas vacation to remind someone that there’s more to life than politics. After flirting with an independent bid for governor -- and getting away to the Caribbean for a few days to clear his head -- Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) announced that he...
UPDATE: The Crystal Ball's Kyle Kondik spoke with Paul Brandus of West Wing Report about this article. To hear the audio, click here. A Star Trek fan quibbled (Tribbled?) with our piece last week, noting that the character James T. Kirk was actually an admiral, not a captain, during the...
At first blush, Saxby Chambliss and the Michigan right-to-work episode seem completely unrelated. Most Republicans approve of both, of course, but there is a deeper connection. The Georgia senator and Michigan’s effort to restrict organized labor’s power are both byproducts of a phenomenon that, despite the electoral problems currently facing...
With 38 gubernatorial contests and 35 Senate races to be decided during the next two years (and with perhaps more to come), there are a ton of names that get bandied about as possible candidates, particularly when there’s more than a year until the possibilities are winnowed down in primaries....
The University of Virginia Center for Politics is pleased to announce that our post-election book, Barack Obama and the New America: The 2012 Election and the Changing Face of Politics, will be released next Tuesday, Jan. 15. To order the book -- which is published by Rowman and Littlefield --...
Now that we have official election results from nearly every state, we wanted to offer some closing thoughts on election 2012. So here are 10 bite-sized nuggets, an appetizer for your holiday feasts. As a programming note, we’re taking the next two weeks off to recharge for the next cycle....
One way or another, the fiscal cliff dilemma is going to produce a larger, wealthier federal government. Either going off the cliff pumps hundreds of billions in new tax revenues into the U.S. Treasury via the end of the Bush tax cuts, or avoiding the fiscal cliff pumps hundreds of...
