Morning Jay

Liberal historians of American politics have long held, at least implicitly, a teleological view of our history. The assumption is that America is slowly moving toward a more “progressive” (read: statist) society, and the only thing the right can do is slow the movement. Conservatives cannot stop…

Barack Obama is now the first president in American history to win a second term with a smaller share of the electoral vote, a smaller share of the popular vote, and a smaller aggregate vote than when he was first elected. There are still votes to be counted, but as of this writing he actually has…

Here’s a thought experiment. Let’s say you want to do a quality poll of 1,000 likely voters. How many people would you have to contact?

When I started making election predictions eight years ago, I had a very different perspective than I do today. I knew relatively little about the history of presidential elections or the geography of American politics. I had a good background in political science and statistics. So, unsurprisingly…

There is a peculiar divergence between various public opinion polls at the moment. On the one hand, Mitt Romney has built a narrow but durable lead in the national polls, averaging around a 1 percent advantage over the last three weeks. This has cheered the hearts of conservatives everywhere.

Elections these days are determined in part by the swing of unaffiliated voters, which both sides closely contest. They also hinge on how strongly each party’s base turns out to vote.

Since about the beginning of President Obama’s tenure, the Gallup poll has generally been one of the least positive polls for the Democratic party. This has prompted outrage and pressure from the left--even from presidential advisor David Axelrod.

So where are we, four weeks out? Romney suddenly finds himself with a lead in the polls, making liberals panicked and conservatives jubilant -- an interesting change of pace. 

Most of the post-debate punditry has focused on Barack Obama’s failure to win last week's head-to-head match-up. Both the left and right seem to agree that Obama lost, with disagreement as to why that happened, naturally.

October in an election year tends to be a bad month for incumbents seeking reelection. Going back fifty years, we have six decent comparisons to this cycle – 1956, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1996, and 2004. On average, the late September margin in the Gallup poll of registered voters closed by six to seven…

The most recent RealClearPolitics average of the national polls shows President Obama holding a 3.1 point lead over Mitt Romney, 49.1 to 46.0. Additionally, his net job approval rating is now back to about even, 48.8 approve to 48.5 disapprove.

Republicans, by and large, are frustrated with recent polls of the presidential election because they think Democrats are being oversampled. Many pollsters respond by saying that “weighting” the polls for partisan identification creates its own problems and might end up skewing the polls in the…

Conservatives are growing worried, and Democrats gleeful, about Obama’s lead in the polls, basically for the same reason: it is late in the season (or so it seems), and the incumbent president has a lead. That is a good thing for Obama.

The media tut-tuts about the ebbs and flows of the polls in the presidential race because – well, because that’s what the media does. But, in fact, if you look at every presidential race going back over the years when the incumbent party was defeated or almost defeated – 1948, 1968, 1976, 1980,…

The gap between the way the media characterizes the presidential race and what is actually happening is growing larger by the day. In particular, we see a systematic emphasis on news items that favor the president and a discounting of evidence that disfavor him.

Since arriving on the scene in 2008, psephologist Nate Silver has been widely hailed as a “statistics guru.” That phrase is a good fit for what Silver does. While his writing style often mimics the technical wonkery one sees in political science journals, his work differs from science in important…

As we wait to see the extent and duration of Barack Obama’s post-convention bounce, it makes sense to do a little analytical house cleaning. In particular, a meme developed over the summer that Barack Obama was a strong favorite to win reelection, thanks to a sustained and substantial lead over his…

Last night, Barack Obama proved why he is the most partisan and divisive president in the modern era. Just as he has throughout most of his term, Obama accused the Republican party and American conservatism of being fundamentally un-American--and though he never came right out and said it, he left…

Over Labor Day weekend, three different theories of the 2012 presidential race were offered, all from Team Obama.

In every presidential cycle, there is a debate about partisan identification in polling. Conservatives complain about too few Republicans being sampled; pollsters, journalists, and liberals respond by saying it is inappropriate to weigh polls by party identification.

Earlier this week, we received final fundraising totals for the month of July – and the numbers were quite a shocker. The Republican side of the campaign (a joint effort between Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee) raised a total of $101.3 million dollars, and has $185.9 million in…

What to make of Joe Biden’s apparent racial demagoguery this week in Danville, Virginia? Team Obama dismissed it as having nothing to do with race, but this is likely wrong: Biden certainly seemed to be referencing slavery, was doing so in a Southern dialect, and speaking in a city that is roughly…

The conventional wisdom on the state of the 2012 presidential race is that, thanks to his endorsement of the House GOP Budget and his selection of Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Mitt Romney has opened himself up to one of the Democrats' favorite attacks -- fear-mongering over Medicare, or…

The conventional wisdom in the presidential race is that President Obama is a clear favorite. We hear this from the pundits in the press, we see it in the InTrade odds, and various predictive models built around the polling averages tell us this.

Over the last six weeks, President Obama has launched a sustained advertising blitz focused primarily in nine swing states – Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Everybody is wondering: has it moved the needle in his direction?

A topic that inevitably receives a lot of focus during election season is the partisan spread of the major media polls. Conservatives regularly complain that the polls are tilted against their side, and thus favor the Democrats.

Most journalists will swear that, despite the fact they vote Democratic, they treat both sides fairly. Indeed, it is a rare event to read a news article that directly attacks the Republican party or one that praises the Democratic party.

Conservatives are increasingly frustrated by the vagueness of Mitt Romney’s campaign, which perhaps can be best summed up by his non-sequitur of a slogan, “Believe In America.” Romney has to put down some detailed policy proposals to win, the argument goes.

When you see a new poll, what do you look at first? With the general election campaign nominally underway, most people would say that they look at the head-to-head matchup between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Give the media enough time, and they will spin straw into gold – for Democrats, naturally. And so it has been over the last two weeks since the Obamacare ruling was handed down. We have seen media pundits debate whether the ruling hurts Mitt Romney. We have seen them criticize Team Romney for not…

The Hill reports:

Many conservatives are feeling betrayed by the chief justice's vote to uphold Obamacare. But there's a counterintuitive case to be made that John Roberts's decision is largely a victory for conservatives.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on Obamacare--and, in particular, the individual mandate, which requires individuals to purchase health insurance whether they want it or not.

Over the weekend, Mark Blumenthal of the Huffington Post published a lengthy review of the Gallup poll’s methodology. It is a technical read, but I encourage you to give it a careful look.

Yesterday, we got word that Artur Davis, the former Democratic representative from Alabama’s majority-black Seventh Congressional District and failed 2010 gubernatorial candidate, jumped from the Democratic party to the Republican party. What to make of this?

This campaign season, President Barack Obama has run across the country – often on the taxpayer’s dime – to rail against the privileged station of the wealthy. It is Obama and the Democrats who will cut down on the power of the elite and restore the egalitarian ideals of the country’s founding.…

In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson inaugurated his “War on Poverty,” he travelled to the heart of coal country in eastern Kentucky, one of the poorest regions in the country. It was, until recently, most reliably Democratic: In the 20th century when Democrats won the presidency, they almost…

There is dissension in the Democratic ranks on President Obama’s reelection strategy. His campaign team has decided to focus on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital – which ended over a decade ago – as an illustration of what a Romney presidency might look like. Loose-lipped Democrats like Harold…

Since Obama’s flip flop on gay marriage earlier this month (he supported it in 1996, before opposing it for 8 years starting in 2004), there has been a lot of talk about whether he will lose support with African Americans in the fall. African American voters, after all, are both a core Democratic…

Regarding Dick Lugar’s loss to Richard Murdock, the Old Gray Lady wants you to know one thing: He went down because he was just too gosh-darned moderate and sensible for those insane Tea Party Republicans in Indiana and the dastardly outside groups that targeted him:

Like many others, I was quite struck by the images of a partially empty stadium for President Obama’s campaign kickoff rally in Columbus. Media reports put the crowd at roughly 75 percent capacity, with the “nosebleed” sections largely unfilled.

Another terrible jobs report today: The establishment survey reported the economy added just 115,000 jobs. While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, according to the household survey, it was once again for the wrong reason. The unemployment rate is simply a ratio – the number of people…

Writing on Monday, Michael Goodwin blasted Team Obama for its Osama bin Laden reelection campaign ad:

On Wednesday I argued that only a tiny swath of the actual electorate – maybe 10 percent – will be up for grabs in November. Today, I want to answer the obvious follow-up question: what are these voters thinking?

An emerging genre in popular commentary on politics is the use of statistical models to predict election results. Once the domain of academics writing for the scholarly journal P.S., it has become very widespread in recent years. And now, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein offers up his own model:

The conventional wisdom in American politics is that Democrats win poor voters, Republicans win the rich, and the two sides battle over the middle class. That used to be true – indeed, that was basically the case during the earliest Whig-Democratic battles in the 1830s and 1840s, and the…

Sean Trende has an important column that connects presidential job approval to reelection results. You really should read the whole thing, but here is the big take home point:

Karl Rove had a spot-on column in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. He wrote, in part:

Sean Trende wrote an important column yesterday connecting presidential job approval to reelection results. You really should read the whole thing, but here is the big take home point.

Yesterday, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll seemed to confirm the meme that Barack Obama is pummeling Mitt Romney among women, helping the former open up a 7-point lead in the general election horse race.

Many commentators have expressed outrage over the president criticizing Paul Ryan and demagoguing the Supreme Court. Personally, I can't muster outrage. I think it's just a sorry spectacle.

Mitt Romney won a clean sweep Tuesday night, with victories in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Wisconsin. It is the latter state I want to focus on, as it was the most important of the bunch (from a political standpoint), and caps off an interesting back-and-forth between Romney and Rick…

The month of April is a big one in the GOP nomination battle, with major states in the Midwest and Northeast up for grabs, and more than 300 delegates at stake.

This week has really reminded me of Election Day 2004. Liberals, then, were just plain convinced John Kerry was going to be elected president, so much so Bob Shrum actually called Kerry, “Mr. President.” The left had convinced itself  Bush was unpopular, Kerry had closed the deal, and everything…

Today, I want to talk about a group of voters in the GOP primary process that I call the “Post Office” Republicans.

It is true that Mitt Romney is a weak frontrunner who simply cannot close the deal against two opponents who have both little money and organizational support. (After all, even Bob Dole and John McCain had it in the bag by mid-March.) But one explanation has to do with the primary calendar this…

Rick Santorum won two surprise victories last night in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, and he did so by poaching voters from Newt Gingrich’s coalition. To appreciate this, let’s take a look at some data.

Super Tuesday confirmed two trends that had been somewhat evident prior to yesterday. First, while there is an ideological dimension to this contest – with very conservative voters backing Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich and less conservative voters backing Mitt Romney – there is also a regional…

Mitt Romney won solid victories Tuesday night in Arizona and Michigan, two important swing states. How did he do it, and what does it mean? 

What happened to Rick Santorum on Wednesday night?

As the nomination battle on the Republican side drags on, with no ostensible end in sight, I can’t help but ask myself: Who is responsible for the Republican party? What person or group is out there to make sure that the GOP does not shoot itself in the foot before November? Who is there to…

Two news stories from this week underscored the most important development in Democratic party politics in the last thirty years. First, from the Washington Free Beacon:

Sarah Palin recently suggested that a brokered convention could be a good thing for the Republican party. This view seconds the attitude of several commentators, who suspect that the GOP’s position could be enhanced by a battle in Tampa over who will be the next nominee.

Some people were surprised by the Obama administration’s ruling on contraceptive provision by religious institutions. I was not one of those people.

Last Friday’s jobs report generated a great deal of chatter among politicos, many of whom viewed it as a turning point for the president in his quest for reelection. I discussed some of the technicals of the report over the weekend, but today I want to step back and look at the bigger picture on…

Mitt Romney won another decisive victory in Nevada over the weekend, his third out of a total of five contests to date. In what might be a surprise to many, he carried the Silver State caucuses with strong support from conservatives – winning 57 percent of the “somewhat conservative” voters and 48…

Mitt Romney won a decisive victory last night in Florida, carrying 46 percent of the vote. Let’s take a close look at how he did it.

In his latest Bloomberg column, Ezra Klein pushes back on the GOP critique of the president. As far as he is concerned, the president is really a pragmatic center-leftist.

In his last work, The Responsible Electorate (1966), the great scholar V.O. Key argued against the thinking of political scientists of his age that the mass public was too ill-informed to make wise decisions:           

Newt Gingrich won a decisive victory in South Carolina tonight, defeating Mitt Romney by more than 10 points, after having been down by 10 points just a week ago.

You might have noticed recently that Barack Obama’s job approval has ticked up slightly in the last few weeks. What to make of this?

Mitt Romney won a decisive victory in New Hampshire, carrying over 39 percent of the vote, a slightly better result than John McCain’s 37 percent in 2008.

Based off last Friday’s jobs report, Jonathan Chait thinks the answer to the title question might be “Yes:”

Republicans all across America like to think of their coalition as the “party of Ronald Reagan,” but have you noticed how frequently the party nominates somebody who opposed Ronald Reagan in 1980?Since Reagan’s last nomination in 1984 the GOP has nominated four men to lead the Republican party into…

Mitt Romney received eight more votes in the Iowa caucuses than Rick Santorum. The media is spinning this as if it matters who actually receives more votes. It really doesn't. This is a battle for delegates -- a long one. It's not a winner take all election to serve as Iowa governor, senator, or…

We’re just a few short days away from the Iowa caucuses. And with that in mind, here are five big points to consider about the caucus, and what they mean for the GOP nomination battle.

Clouds so swift, rain won't lift.Gates won't close, railings froze.Get your mind off winter time.You ain't going nowhere. And so begins “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” the opening track of the Byrds’ classic album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and an apt description of the year that was 2011. 

With last week’s GOP presidential debate, we have virtually come to the end of the pre-primary season--that 12-month process of posturing and policticking between the various candidates leading up to the first contests in January. This cycle’s experience has been a sour one for me, as I have come…

One of the classic tropes of romantic movies is meeting atop the Empire State Building or some other famous landmark. That, of course, is what is supposed to happen in An Affair to Remember, when Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr planned to meet there six months after a whirlwind romance. The concept has…

Across a series of news articles (e.g., this story by Jackie Calmes and Mark Landler and this one by Jim Rutenberg), blog posts (e.g., this piece by Thomas Edsall and this one by Josh Kraushaar), and analyses (e.g., this paper by Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers), it has become clear how Team Obama…

Throughout this pre-primary season, I’ve argued that the number one priority for Republicans is to find a conservative who can articulate the party’s beliefs in a way that appeals to independent, middle-of-the-road voters. Now that Newt Gingrich has surged to the top of the polls, it is fair to ask…

Earlier this month, I looked at the Democratic campaign argument. Today, I’m going to look more closely at the GOP’s.

We are just a few weeks from the first primaries and caucuses, when Republican voters will begin choosing a nominee. In light of this, I'd like to offer some advice for their consideration -- specifically, four enduring truths of American elections that conservatives and Republicans would do well…

The conventional wisdom about Barack Obama’s path to reelection is that, though the president is unpopular, he will run a strongly negative campaign against the GOP nominee – tarring him as a radical or (in the case of Mitt Romney) an unprincipled flip-flopper. Thus, voters who might not be happy…

There is great consternation among many Republicans over the prospects of a Mitt Romney nomination. I’ve heard various opinions, ranging from “I guess I can live with him” to “I really can’t stand him!” Among the latter camp, there is widespread sentiment out there that the inevitability of the…

Over the last week, Barack Obama’s job approval rating has ticked up slightly, as this graph from RealClearPolitics shows:

What to make of this whole Politico-Cain dustup?

The prospect of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination has many conservatives anxious. AWR Hawkins of BigGovernment sums up the sentiment well when he writes:

Harry Reid said something colossally stupid this week: “The massive layoffs we’ve had in America today—of course, they’re rooted in the last administration—and it’s very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine. It's the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that's what…

The Obama administration’s abandonment of its efforts to implement the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act underscores something that conservatives have been arguing for two years: Regardless of what you think about more or less government regulation of health care,…

Over the last 50 years, we have seen a remarkable transformation of the American electorate. The percentage of people identifying as Democrats has been cut nearly in half – from 51 percent in 1961 to 30 percent in 2011. Republicans have seen some gains from this, but the biggest jump has been in…

The United States is just over a year from choosing the next leader of the free world. So why was one side of the battle totally hung up on whether Rick Perry would make any gaffes in last night’s debate? Isn’t that more than a little ridiculous? Is this what the framers of the Constitution had in…

What to make of these anti-Wall Street protests? The Democrats seem to think they can tap into the anti-banking sentiment these protesters embody … to attack the Republicans:

Despite continued claims that he’s not running for the White House, credible news outlets continue to report that Chris Christie is still considering running for president. But should he run?

After a well-received debate performance last week, Herman Cain surprised everybody by finishing atop the Florida straw poll. This week, he's finally seeing traction in the polls, and now serious people are starting to take him seriously. It's far past time for us to take a closer look at Cain, who…

Over the last few days, Joan Walsh of Salon and Melissa Harris-Perry of the Nation have been debating if and when a white liberal is being racist for souring on Barack Obama. 

We’re just a few months away from the start of primary elections, and the Republican race is clearly shaping up as a two-man contest between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. And, so far, all signs point to Florida being a big deal this cycle, perhaps the decisive battle.

So, it appears that the president has decided to channel the candidacy of Walter Mondale from 1984. Here’s President Obama, on Monday:

I couldn’t help but take note of this video:

The president sure seems excited about his jobs bill, as he runs around the country like it’s a political game-changer. Liberals seem pretty jazzed about it, too. They all appear to think that this is just the tonic the White House needed: an obviously excellent proposal that will reveal…

Since Rick Perry has surged to the front of the GOP pack, questions have been raised about his past membership in the Democratic party, which ended in 1989. Ron Paul recently posted a pretty hard-hitting web video blasting Perry for having backed Al Gore in 1988, and Joe Scarborough – MSNBC’s token…

It’s often been said that Barack Obama is an audacious leader. But perhaps it's better to consider the possibility that he is just a politician who lacks a sense of irony, at least when it comes to himself. For example, last weekend in Detroit, the president said:          

You don't suppose the White House believes this nonsense, do you?

Earlier this week, Gallup published a sobering graph:

In a recent interview with CBS, President Obama said:

Check out this short clip from MSNBC’s Hardball  (h/t Allahpundit):

When discussing the Republican nomination battle, it is critically important to understand the invisible primary that happens between now and the Iowa caucuses in early January and how it will affect the nomination.

With President Obama’s job approval ratings falling to new lows, liberal thinkers are rushing forward to offer the president some free advice.

The following facts about the federal budget deficit are, as far as I know, widely accepted:

Yesterday, I argued there is no reason to expect that a serious Democratic candidate would primary Obama. Today, I’ll make the case that, in the 2012 general election, Obama will get the full, unequivocal support of the left.

Froma Harrop wrote a column this week, arguing that Democrats should primary Obama:

Liberals are unhappy with the president over the debt ceiling battle.

The next presidential election is about fifteen months away. And even though the outcome is highly uncertain, we nevertheless can get an early read on the “fundamentals”--and these do not look good for President Obama.

Steve Wynn’s comments about the Obama administration caused quite a stir this week. The Las Vegas tycoon said:

 As the debt limit battle drags on, my mind has gone back to the two previous instances in the postwar era when a Republican Congress was forced to square off against a Democratic president. The first was in 1947-1948, when Harry Truman was pitted against the 80th Congress. The second was 1995-1996…

Contemporary journalism is much more episodic than systematic, focusing on one-off events and the colorful personalities involved rather than the long-term trends that brought about the current situation. Beltway reporting on the current debt ceiling battle has been no exception, relentlessly…

Pity poor John Boehner: He really, truly is fine with hiking taxes by $800 billion, but his political coalition – hijacked by those deranged Tea Partiers – has moved his party so far to the right that he just can’t agree to such a hike! This is the 10-cent version of Dana Milbank’s latest column,…

On Wednesday, Peter Wehner drew an interesting contrast between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama:

Eugene Robinson is outrageously outraged over Republican perfidy:

In Wednesday’s press conference, Barack Obama said:

The Des Moines Register poll of Republicans caused quite a stir this week. The congresswoman from Minnesota could not have asked for a better piece of news to correspond with her official announcement: It showed Michele Bachmann down just one point to Mitt Romney in Iowa. Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty…

All reports from the Obama campaign suggest strongly that the president and his advisors will run a very intensive base mobilization strategy. There is good reason for this electoral strategy.

Last week, in a piece entitled “The right really, really wants Obama to be Jimmy Carter,” Salon’s Steve Kornacki cited my item on Carter as the prime example of a systematic effort on the right to invoke Carter as a bogeyman to “fill the GOP base with resentment and hostility, which translates into…

In my column on Wednesday, I drew a comparison between the Obama administration and the Jimmy Carter administration of 1977-1981, arguing that both were engaging in political theater in lieu of real power to affect the fundamentals of the American economy. Other analysts have also drawn the…

And so the great machinery of the Obama-Biden campaign has slowly begun now to turn. Consider the following:

Looks like we're in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for an eye... There's a bad moon on the rise. -Creedence Clearwater Revival  

With Mitch Daniels having taken himself out of the GOP nomination battle, the field has come into sharp focus, and the view is not good for President Obama and the Democrats.

Lately I have been writing a lot about the Republican nomination battle, and every time I do I receive a good number of emails from readers who are worried that there is no candidate who really enthuses the party. I thought it would be good to dedicate a whole column to the question: when and how…

There is definite discontent among plugged-in Republicans about the GOP field. From what I gather, lots of people feel as though no candidate offers the right combination of conservatism, authenticity, and excitement. Those seem to be the main grievance points.

Mitt Romney brings out strong feelings among Republicans. Some see him as the conservative exemplar, the man who can return the party to its pro-business, fiscal conservative roots. Others see him as an “establishment RINO” who says what needs to be said in order to win a political…

On Sunday, Byron York offered a fascinating report on the thinking among Republican insiders in South Carolina:

I have noticed something unsettling in my own life lately: I know a lot of people who are on food stamps or some kind of extraordinary government assistance. The count right now stands around 10 people, which is a lot for a small town denizen such as myself.

The conventional wisdom is that the emerging Republican field for 2012 is a very weak one. However, like so much else in the topsy-turvy age of Obama, the conventional wisdom on this one is completely upside down. The idea of a weak GOP field is almost as ridiculous as a debate about a…

In Obama’s speech on the budget deficit earlier this month, the president went out of his way to praise the free market, but balanced it against the need for collective action sponsored by the government:           

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s First Read posed this question:

Picture yourself, for a moment, in a version of John Rawls’s original position. You’ve been tasked with selecting the next president of the United States, only you have no idea what political party he/she is from, or his/her ideological beliefs. You only have knowledge of his/her background and…

Lately, I’ve been staying up late at night because I’m just too stressed over the state of the union. Unable to sleep, I often find myself toggling between scores of Excel spreadsheets, crunching all sorts of numbers to get my mind around the gaping budget deficit that is threatening the country.…

Presidential résumés have run the gamut -- from commanding general of the United States Army (Ulysses S. Grant) all the way down to collector of the Port of New York (Chester A. Arthur). Unfortunately, since George McGovern ruined the presidential nominating system in 1971, there has been a new…

Donald Trump going after Obama on the Today Show strikes me as a big deal. A lot of the attention from the various Trump interviews has been directed at his unsubstantiated comments about Obama’s birth certificate. However, I think there is another angle here worth considering. Put those comments…

A media meme has developed about the economy and the 2012 election: if Barack Obama gets the unemployment rate at or below 8 percent, he will be well positioned to win reelection. To that end, the press greeted last Friday’s jobs report (the addition of 216,000 jobs, and unemployment falling to 8.8…

It's difficult at this point to try to determine who has the best chance to be the Republican candidate in the 2012 election. Still, it's fair to say that Tim Pawlenty could pursue a potentially successful "Goldilocks Strategy" for the nomination.

On the Fox New Sunday panel last weekend, there was an interesting discussion about Obamacare, a year after the controversial bill became law. Nina Easton said:

There are three significant issues or factors that will keep President Obama from forging a coalition of almost-everybody, à la Reagan in 1984 or Johnson in 1964, in the 2012 election. The first is the continuing weakness of the economy. Obviously, jobs remain a problem – and this weakness is also…

The invisible phase of the presidential campaign is upon us, as prospective GOP nominees are travelling to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, meeting with donors, and of course making appearances on Sunday news programs to deny that they have any interest in the party nomination. And with all…

As the world goes topsy-turvy, what has President Obama been doing lately? One thing is for sure: the president has not been hammering out a compromise on the deficit:

Modern presidents are often most remembered for single, iconic moments. Some are good. FDR's inaugural address proclaimed we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Kennedy's challenged us to ask not what we can do for ourselves, but for our country. Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanded…

On Monday, Jim Geraghty offered a thought experiment about the nascent candidacy of Jon Huntsman:

This item from Reuters caught my eye:

This story from Politico on Monday has been making the rounds:

On Wednesday, Nate Silver – in a piece playfully entitled “Is Mississippi The New New Hampshire?” – presented an interesting analysis of Gallup’s recent data dump on statewide changes in President Obama’s job approval. Silver rightly notes that the president’s job approval – measured against his…

As we all know, Mitch Daniels has advocated a “truce” on social issues. This edition of Morning Jay will offer a defense of that idea, arguing that, given the unique circumstances of next year's election, such a proposition could increase the chances of Republican victory in 2012.

For all of its complexities, American politics is sometimes reducible to a single enduring conflict, symbolized by the historic battle between Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay in the election of 1832.

In the Sunday Washington Post, Chris Cillizza asked an interesting question:

1. Who's Extreme? For decades now, we have been told that the extremism of the conservative movement is so beyond the boundaries of rational political discourse that the Grand Old Party is set to fall into a pathetic, rump minority. Not coincidentally, these warnings have corresponded to the period…

1. Make no mistake: Obamacare is in trouble. For the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to go fully into effect, two things need to happen. First, the Democrats need to hold the presidency and the Senate in 2012. According to Keith Hennessey, Republicans can repeal most of Obamacare via…

Welcome to the return of Morning Jay! From a civic perspective, I have mixed feelings (at best) about the permanent campaign, but from a professional point of view, it's awesome! We're just three months off the last election, and already there is so much to discuss about the next one! For the time…

Today's entry is the last in our series reviewing the 2010 midterm electoral results. Our final chapter covers the Midwest. This region has been swinging electoral outcomes in the United States for more than 200 years. It was a key element in the Jeffersonian majority from 1800 to 1824, then it was…

Today we continue our post-election overview by looking at the West. Historically, the West has been a fairly volatile region. In the 1880s the Republican Party figured that the West would be a GOP bastion, and accordingly the 51st Congress (1889-90) added four western states to the Union (plus…

Today we continue our post-election review with an examination of the Northeast. Let’s start with a look at the region-wide House map. Here are the results at the end of 2008.

Today's post is the first entry in a four-part series analyzing the 2010 midterm election. My plan is to break it down by region, and I begin today with the South – or more specifically, the 11 states that made up the old Confederacy.

Conservatives nationwide must still be in shock over this news:

One of the most important results of Tuesday's election occurred below the governor, Senate, and House lines on the ballot. The Republicans overwhelmed the Democrats in state legislative races all across the country, picking up more than 500 seats and flipping a dozen and a half legislative…

1. Intro. I have to say that I am of two minds about this midterm election. On the one hand, it is great to see the Republican party in resurgence. And not just in terms of raw politics: The Tea Party movement has given the GOP a sense of meaning and purpose in the domestic political debate that it…

My internal conflict between “Bruce Banner,” who predicts a 1994-style scenario, and “The Incredible Hulk,” who thinks 2010 will be as Republican as anything since the 1920s, has been resolved.

November 2nd is going to be a great day for Republicans. You can feel the good vibrations coming through strong now.

1. Senate Outlook. Last week I wrote that the Senate outlook was still cloudy. This week it has cleared up a bit, as expected.  Mixed results for the Grand Old Party. The good news is that the Republican position in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Nevada has firmed up a bit.

1. An Unsustainable Strategy.  It’s become increasingly clear that one strategy of the White House this midterm is to amp up African-American and Hispanic turnout, and this has occasionally gone so far as to include pitting ethnic groups against each other.

I have to admit, I’m of two minds about this midterm election.  There’s Bruce Banner and there is the Incredible Hulk.

1. The House.  The following chart reviews the independent vote in the polls in the RealClearPolitics average of the generic ballot:

Increasingly, House Democrats from moderate districts are calling on the enormously unpopular Nancy Pelosi not to run for speaker next year.  The latest comes from Jason Altmire:

1. Senate Races Get Closer. Public Policy Polling made big headlines yesterday with a poll showing Democrat Joe Sestak in the lead over Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Senate battle.  Last week, Hotline On Call noticed the NRSC starting to amp up its commitment to Toomey.  Late last night, a new…

Another week, another outlying Gallup generic ballot result.  Gallup finds the Republicans with either an 11- or 17-point lead, depending upon the likely voter screen.  Compare that to a Republican advantage of a little under 7 points in the RealClearPolitics average.

1. Obama’s Dime Store Sociology.  This recent story from Politico caught my attention.

We’re a little more than two weeks out from the election, and now is a good time to check in with electoral prognosticators to see what they think is going to happen.

1. OFA To GOTV?  This story from Matt Bai caught my attention:

My goal between now and Election Day is to run through the major regions of the country to explain the political dynamic in each.  Yesterday, I looked at the Great Lakes Region.  Today, I want to look at the South.

"They're counting on your silence. They're counting on your amnesia. They're counting on your apathy. They're counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home and middle-class families staying home." President Obama made this comment at a rally in…

1. Can John Dingell Be Defeated This Cycle?  On Friday, a poll from Rossman/Team TelCom reported that Republican challenger Rob Steele is running ahead of Democratic John Dingell in Michigan’s 15th congressional district.  Dingell has been in Congress since 1955, replacing his father who was swept…

1. Will the GOP Take Control of the Senate?  It's looking better and better for Republicans in the upper chamber.  While some factors are still variable – like how the unusually large number of undecideds break in Illinois – their path to a Senate majority is getting clearer every day.

1. The Latest Sign of the Dem-Pocalypse.  Today’s sign of Democratic doom comes from the Penn Schoen Berland polling outfit, which is conducting a series of polls sponsored by The Hill and America’s Natural Gas Alliance (huh?).The first round of polling is of freshmen House Democrats, and the…

1. Obama’s Job Approval in Comparative Perspective.  A key factor in the congressional midterm is the standing of the president.  Even though he is not on the ballot, the president is seen as the leader of the government and a political party, and candidates from that party are inevitably viewed in…

1. Generic Ballot. Conflicting numbers last night from Gallup and Rasmussen on the generic ballot. Rasmussen finds a tighter race than earlier, with the GOP holding a three-point lead.  Gallup, meanwhile, says that if the election were held today, the Democrats might be on track for a 1920-style…

Normally, I use this space to run down various news items related to the campaign, but today I am going to deviate from that practice to offer a snapshot of where I think the midterm battle stands.

1. Obama’s Best Pick.  Yesterday, Gallup found that Barack Obama has just a 15-point lead over Hillary Clinton for the 2012 Democratic nomination, with 10 percent undecided.  Yikes.  Gallup accurately notes:

1. CNN/Time Oversamples Democrats in California?  Yesterday evening, the CNN/Time poll of the California Senate race found Barbara Boxer up nine points among likely voters over Carly Fiorina. 

1. Does Linda McMahon Stand a Chance in Connecticut?  Rasmussen and Quinnipiac both find the Republican nominee for Senate in Connecticut, Linda McMahon, well within striking distance of Democrat Richard Blumenthal.  Can she pull this off, or is this a dead cat bounce?

1. How To Read The Polls, Part 2 of a Series. Here’s another tip for consuming the polls: From this point forward, likely voter polls are really a requirement. 

1. Obama's Falling Numbers.  Barack Obama’s job approval numbers reached a new low over the weekend in the RealClearPolitics average.  Generally, I’ve seen two types of explanations for the president's decline.  One is a structural account that asserts that the president is largely a prisoner of…

1. Goodbye To The Clinton Majority?  Recently, Franklin & Marshall College put out a poll of Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, in the Philadelphia suburbs, that shows incumbent Democrat Patrick Murphy down an eye-popping 14 points to his Republican challenger, former Republican…

1. A Pledge To America.  That’s the title of a leaked draft of the Republican congressional agenda. As it currently is outlined, "A Pledge To America" contains four main sections: a plan to jumpstart the economy, cut spending, repeal Obamacare, and reform Congress.  It does a very good job of…

1. Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia!  The blogosphere was abuzz with talk of the PPP poll showing Republican candidate John Raese ahead of Democrat Joe Manchin, 46-43, in the Senate battle in West Virginia, the Mountain State. 

1. A Note on the Latest Generic Ballot Numbers. Gallup just released its latest generic ballot number, still of registered voters, and finds the Democrats up one over the Republicans.  Generally speaking, the RealClearPolitics generic ballot average has shown some tightening in the last week.  Is…

1. Desperately Seeking Strawmen.  One of President Obama’s chief rhetorical tricks since he was inaugurated has been to attack strawmen, tendentiously drawn caricatures against whom Obama can contrast himself.  Usually, the president does this to create the false impression that he is a centrist –…

1. Pennsylvania poised to go for the GOP?  My goodness, are the polls for Democrats in Pennsylvania just terrible, or what?  It’s as if Pennsylvania and Ohio are in a pitched battle to see which one will swing the farthest away from the Democrats this November.

1. NRSC To Back O’Donnell?  That was the story yesterday morning. So says NRSC chairman John Cornyn:

Delaware Senate. It wasn’t even close.  Republican Christine O’Donnell jumped out to a lead against Mike Castle right away last night and did not look back.  Final result: O’Donnell 53 percent, Castle 47 percent, with a little more than 3,500 votes separating the two. Turnout was 32 percent of…

1. Fun Facts about Delaware.  The GOP circular firing squad is finally set to begin shooting today, as Delaware will hold its primary vote to decide between moderate Republican Mike Castle and Tea Party Express-backed Christine O’Donnell.

1. Delaware Primary.  The stakes are high in Delaware as First State Republicans are set to choose between moderate Republican Mike Castle and conservative, Tea Party-backed Christine O’Donnell.  PPP is now finding a statistical tie between the two, and the battle has turned conservative allies…