I was on a panel at an event in the nation's capital Sept. 10. The subject was the elections, and another panelist and I discussed the race for the White House and the fight for control of Congress.
Toward the end of the event, someone in the audience…
One week after the end of the Democratic convention it’s still hard to know whether the small Obama bounce in polling after the conventions reflects a permanent shift in the presidential race toward Obama’s benefit or is merely a momentary blip on the radar screen.
Some campaign watchers…
Democrats started licking their chops moments after Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney announced that he had selected Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to be his running mate.
Whether the reaction came from the national party's House and Senate campaign committees, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign or individual Democratic campaigns…
Not long ago, Democrats had it all: the first African-American president sitting in the Oval Office, the first female Speaker of the House and even a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Four years later, the only remaining piece - the presidency - might be taken away from them.
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Did last week's Republican Convention spell the beginning of the end for national political conventions, at least in their current form? I'm not certain, but it should.
Like the GOP's Ames straw poll, which gets a huge build-up in the media but tells us almost nothing about who…
Eight years ago, right before Republicans gathered in New York City from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 to renominate President George W. Bush for a second term, a newly released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Bush vulnerable and in a dogfight against his challenger, a Massachusetts Democrat.
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As a reformed political scientist who still looks closely at polls and is always knee-deep in past electoral results, I understand that people are impressed by statistical analysis, even when it creates a faulty sense of precision. But what makes politics so fascinating is the unexpected development, the unquantifiable…
It’s time for another caution about polls and what they mean.
The most recent set of six CBS News/New York Times state polls conducted by Quinnipiac University and the latest Fox News national poll should remind us how important each survey’s sample is in understanding the ballot test.
…It’s not news that voters in presidential swing state media markets are being bombarded with political ads on television.
According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, $13.6 million in presidential ads has aired so far in the Cleveland media market, $4.6 million in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and $15.2…
Those of us who have been reporting on and discussing politics for the past few decades have come to expect rough-and-tumble campaigns. As Chicago writer Finley Peter Dunne once observed: “Politics ain’t beanbag.”
But the nature of the 2012 presidential campaign so far raises questions about how, or…
