“Vance, who admits to being a “flip-flop-flipper” on Trump, may seem like a counterexample to this narrative. In 2016, he tweeted that the then–presidential candidate “makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible.” Responding to the Access Hollywood tape, he lamented, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man.” He deleted those tweets, and others critical of the 45th president, while bidding for Trump’s endorsement in the Senate primary, which he eventually received. (Trump then publicly joked that Vance had “kiss[ed] my ass” to get his support, proving that no act of abject fealty goes unpunished.)”
“former President Donald Trump announced that he would seek a second nonconsecutive term as president. While it’s too early to predict Trump’s chances of going all the way, the former president is the current favorite to win the Republican primary again. But nothing is assured.
First, Trump remains popular and influential among Republican voters. According to Civiqs, 80 percent of registered Republican voters have a favorable view of the former president, and only 11 percent have an unfavorable view. Admittedly, he is a little less popular than on Election Day 2020 when 91 percent viewed him favorably. But the decline has been gradual.”
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“Republican voters also demonstrated their loyalty to Trump — or at least his vision for the party — when they nominated 82 percent of the nonincumbents he endorsed in contested Republican primaries for Senate, House and governor.
Granted, that isn’t as impressive as it seems. Several times, Trump endorsed candidates who were already well on their way to winning. And Trump’s endorsees did fail to win certain highly watched contests, like the primary for Georgia governor. But just as often, Trump’s endorsement seemed to give a meaningful polling boost to its recipient. For example, Ohio Senate candidate and author J.D. Vance went from trailing in the polls before Trump’s endorsement to leading in almost every survey afterward.
Trump also leads early polling of the Republican primary by a substantial margin. In most national surveys, he registers in the high 40s or low 50s, 20-30 points ahead of his closest competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Though DeSantis is polling higher than he did earlier in the year.)”
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“Finally, Trump leads in polls of early primary states, albeit generally by smaller margins. A poll of Iowa conducted by a pro-DeSantis group over the summer showed Trump leading DeSantis 38 percent to 17 percent. In August, a poll of New Hampshire conducted by Saint Anselm College put Trump up 50 percent to 29 percent. And most recently, Susquehanna Polling & Research found Trump at 41 percent and DeSantis at 34 percent in Nevada in late October.1”
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“we’re still more than a year away from anyone casting their votes, so those numbers could change. But an analysis by my colleague Geoffrey Skelley in 2019 found that national primary polls in the first half of the year before the election are pretty predictive of who will win the nomination. Historically, from 1972 to 2016, candidates with high name recognition who polled in the 40s and 50s nationally won the nomination more than 75 percent of the time.”
“With Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s narrow victory over president Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil—the two-time former president defeated the incumbent by a 1.8 percent margin (50.9 to 49.1)—the Latin American left has completed its strategic dominance over the region’s seven largest countries.
In the 2000s, much was made of Latin America’s so-called “Pink Tide,” which began with Hugo Chávez’s first electoral victory in Venezuela (1998) and da Silva’s first term in Brazil (2002–2006). There followed an unprecedented rise of left-wing governments across the region. However, there were still important holdouts at the time; Mexico and Colombia didn’t veer left at all; Chile maintained its post-Pinochet social democracy; Peru’s original “Pink Tider,” Ollanta Humala, initially scared the markets in 2011 but proved to be mostly moderate in power.
By late 2022, however, hard leftists—often in cahoots with local communist parties—had handily won the last elections in each of these countries and in Argentina, which returned to Peronist Kirchnerism in 2019. Bolsonaro was the last right-winger standing”
“Georgia Republicans passed S.B. 202 to overhaul the state’s voting law just two months after losing both of the state’s Senate seats to Democrats and four months after President Donald Trump lost reelection. The so-called “Election Integrity Act of 2021″ sought to undo pandemic-era changes to voting rules intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.”
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“there is plenty to dislike about the bill: In addition to sharply narrowing who can request absentee ballots, it significantly curtails the number of ballot drop boxes a county is allowed to have. The New York Times estimated that the four counties comprising metro Atlanta would go from 94 drop boxes to 23. The law also removed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously resisted Trump’s entreaties to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia to the former president, as both the chair and a voting member of the State Election Board.
That board further has the power to “suspend” state and county election officials and appoint “temporary” replacements in their stead. In the months after the law passed, it remade entire counties’ election boards by replacing Democrats with Republicans.
Clearly, Georgia’s voting law has issues: The ability of the state to directly meddle in counties’ election boards is a fundamentally illiberal exercise of power, and based on the timing, it seems obvious that the law was intended to placate Trump’s ego.”
“Five states had abortion-related measures on their 2022 midterm ballots, and voters in all of these states seem to have sided with reproductive freedom.
In three states—California, Michigan, and Vermont—voters endorsed constitutional amendments protecting the right to an abortion, while Kentuckians voted against an amendment stating that there is no such right.”
“Voters on Tuesday approved the legalization of recreational marijuana in Maryland and Missouri while rejecting similar measures in Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Meanwhile, voters in five Texas cities passed ballot measures that bar local police from issuing citations or making arrests for low-level marijuana possession. But the most striking election result for drug policy reformers looking beyond the ongoing collapse of marijuana prohibition happened in Colorado, where a broad psychedelic decriminalization measure is winning by two points with 80 percent of votes counted.
Prior to yesterday’s elections, 37 states had approved marijuana for medical purposes, and 19 of them also had legalized recreational use. The Maryland and Missouri results raise the latter number to 21.”
“The ads may have taken different tacks, but all have the same emphasis: presenting moderate Republican candidates as less appealing to the party’s base. If Republican primary voters choose candidates further from the mainstream, then Democrats hope to have an easier time beating them in the general election. By now this is a familiar pattern: In states from Maryland to Pennsylvania to Michigan, Democrats have collectively spent tens of millions on ads painting Republican candidates as “too conservative” or “handpicked by Trump.”
It’s a bad idea in any context, but the tactic looks especially craven in light of President Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia earlier this month.
From Independence Hall, Biden warned that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He said they “promote authoritarian leaders,” “fan the flames of political violence,” and are “committed…to destroying American democracy.” Opposing these forces constituted “a battle for the soul of this nation.”
But Biden’s warning rings hollow while his party is spending a fortune propping up MAGA Republican candidates, hoping to make them just electable enough for primary voters but not quite electable enough for the general public. It’s a considerable gamble that could easily backfire.”
“Oregon is known nationally for being solidly blue, but its internal politics are more nuanced. The biggest source of friction is in the state’s environmental politics, because outside blue Portland, the eastern area of the state is home to both old-growth forests and a large logging industry.
“Timber is to Oregon what coal is to West Virginia,” Pedery said. “There’s legacy logging money that funds all of our right-wing causes in the state.”
The timber industry’s power makes for more unusual politics than the typical left-right divide on climate change. You can find plenty of Democrats who, like Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia, are supported by an industry that opposes climate change policies.”
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“Johnson trails far behind both Kotek and Drazan in polling. She’s endured in the race this long because she is also the best-funded candidate, thanks to the state’s richest man, Knight, the co-founder and chair emeritus of footwear giant Nike.
He has single-handedly flooded Johnson’s campaign with $3.75 million in cash, and another $2 million to a PAC dedicated to electing more Republicans to the Oregon legislature. In October, he contributed his first $1 million to Drazan’s campaign.
A third candidate’s presence, boosted by Knight’s cash, has upended all normal expectations for the race. In a “normal” cycle”
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“as Johnson is a former Democrat, her candidacy is pulling away support that might otherwise go to Kotek. “There’s a real attempt to stop Democrats from defecting to Johnson,” said Horvick. If Kotek loses, it could be Knight’s money that’s to blame.”
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“If Johnson’s presence does manage to tip the race to the Republican, the use of a third candidate to siphon off Democratic support could become a model in reliably blue states to reverse climate action. All Republicans would need is a deep-pocketed backer and a viable moderate or conservative Democrat.”