A trailer for the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ forthcoming documentary, This Is The House That Jack Built, is now available. The documentary is the latest collaboration between the Center for Politics and Community Idea Stations, which regularly partner to produce documentary films for public television on American politics...
In 2008 Barack Obama carried Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win the Old Dominion. Obama’s victory broke a run of 10 consecutive Republican victories in the commonwealth, and 13 of 14 going back to 1952. The 2008 presidential election...
Editor’s Note: The Crystal Ball is taking a break for the July 4 holiday next week. So we will not publish on Thursday, June 29. We’ll be back on Thursday, July 6. Have a safe and pleasant holiday. -- The Editors A new book tells the story of a president...
In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, many observers understandably focused on the numerous places that swung from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. Because many of these areas congregated in swing states within the Rust Belt and Midwest, they played a pivotal role in Trump’s victory, as shown...
As the nation marks the 100th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s birth on Memorial Day, a University of Virginia Center for Politics-Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that Americans rate JFK more highly than other recent presidents. The online poll of American adults found that of the presidents who served from 1950-2000...
Last week, we released the results of a national poll of voters who said they supported President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, as well as focus groups of mostly Trump voters (but also some voters who either supported Hillary Clinton or voted third party last year). We found that...
Voters who supported President Donald Trump in last year’s election have few regrets as Trump enters his 100th day in office this weekend, although his support is not uniformly firm. A new University of Virginia Center for Politics poll of Trump voters shows his approval rating at 93% with these...
Dear Readers: Our new book on 2016’s remarkable election, Trumped, is now available. Trumped features some of the nation’s sharpest political reporters and analysts breaking down an election that truly broke all the rules. The following is taken from Chapter 10 of the book, authored by Ariel Edwards-Levy and...
On election night in November, exit polls provided the first insight into how different demographic groups voted. But months later, other richer data sets are being released, and they provide researchers with new information about the election and the voters that participated in it. One such tool is the Cooperative...
Tomorrow marks the start of the brave new world of President Donald J. Trump. But today marks the end of the Obama-to-Trump transition. They, and we, survived the interregnum, more or less -- and it was not guaranteed and is worth celebrating. Truly, has there ever been as dramatic a...
Dear Readers: Several times a year, Bruce Mehlman releases a fascinating PowerPoint presentation filled with interesting nuggets about American politics and government. Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist with the bipartisan firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, is a University of Virginia Law School graduate and friend of the Crystal Ball. Because...
It’s already clear that the very strange political year of 2016 is bleeding over into the New Year. How could it be otherwise? President-elect Donald Trump, loved and hated by about equal numbers of Americans, continues to ignore or break with convention in a wide variety of areas. Just as...
