Nine months after the 2024 election, we've been graced with definitive dissections of the electorate and how it has changed since that escalator ride 10 years and one month ago. There's wide agreement in the analyses of the Associated Press/Fox News Vote Cast, the Democratic firm Catalist's What Happened and the Pew Research Center analysis.
— The “presidential lean” of a state can, over time, help us quantify its political trajectory.
— Much of the Heartland and Midwest has come to lean more to the GOP over the past two decades, though the Sun Belt has gotten more Democratic.
— By our “leans” metric, Donald Trump held up especially well in several swing states in 2020, even as he lost the presidency that year.
— Florida was the only state that was at its most Democratic in 2004, the earliest year that we consider, and its most Republican last year, showing a clear trend toward Republicans over two decades.
Environmental groups are now rich.
In 2020 (the most recent data available), they collected $8 billion in donations.
$8 billion!
The new "Superman" movie isn't an attack on Donald Trump's immigration policies, but it shows how alienated from America many liberals in Hollywood and politics now feel.
President Donald Trump should follow up on his historic "big, beautiful" tax bill with an extra booster shot for the economy by immediately indexing the capital gains taxes for inflation.
— In Nebraska, Dan Osborn, an independent candidate who held Sen. Deb Fischer (R) to a single-digit win last year, announced he’d challenge Sen. Pete Ricketts (R).
— Though Ricketts should be more formidable than Fischer, Osborn is still a credible challenger, so we are moving the race from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.
— We are also rating an imminent special election in TN-7 as Likely Republican. Republicans are still clearly favored to hold it but the dynamics of recent low-turnout special elections could make it more competitive than one might otherwise think.
— There will be a trio of special elections in some deep blue districts later this year. While Democrats are heavy favorites to retain them all, AZ-7 could represent an opportunity to see if the GOP’s recent gains with Latinos are sticking.
As we lit sparklers and grilled burgers this Fourth of July, a new Rasmussen Reports poll provided a sobering dose of reality. Only 36% of Americans believe the Founding Fathers would see today’s America as a success. Forty-one percent (41%) think they’d view it as a failure, and the rest aren’t sure.
The Big Beautiful Bill -- a massive package of tax relief, more funding for immigration enforcement, and savings from entitlement reforms -- is now law, and it's a triumph not only for President Donald Trump but for the whole Republican Party.
Everyone knows that the "big, beautiful" tax bill signed into law on the Fourth of July lowers tax burdens for families and businesses. It also averts a $4 trillion tax increase starting next year. That's enough reason to heartily celebrate.
Not many people today remember the exhilaration so many Americans felt after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in June 1967. The liberal folks around me at work and law school then had been frustrated and puzzled at the lack of progress being made in Vietnam by the 448,000 U.S. troops stationed there, and the sudden and astonishing success of the Israel Defense Forces, symbolized by the eye-patched Gen. Moshe Dayan, was a refreshing contrast. No talk then of Israelis as colonialist settler oppressors.
— The “presidential lean” of a state can, over time, tell us something about how it is trending.
— Though 2004 and 2024 produced similar topline national results, there has been some significant change in how individual states vote relative to the country.
— By this measure, Kamala Harris held up relatively well in Sun Belt Toss-up states, while it has been several cycles since the Rust Belt Toss-ups were at their most Democratic.
Zohran Mamdani is the latest sign establishment Democrats don't know how to handle a populist challenge.
Zohran Mamdani's lead in first choices in New York City's ranked-choice mayoral primary, and his inevitable victory when second, third, fourth and fifth choices of trailing candidates are allocated to candidates voters ranked lower, mean that he'll be the Democratic nominee for mayor of the nation's largest city and the likely winner of the general election in November.
— In New York City, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani pulled off an upset in the Democratic primary for mayor, defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
— One of the things that probably worked against Cuomo was the fact that some of his key constituencies are less likely to be registered to vote in Democratic primaries.
— Turnout in Virginia’s primary last week was slightly higher than what 2021’s primary saw, though there were some important locality-level changes.
— In winning the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D) won most of the state’s congressional districts.
— The close Democratic primary for Attorney General helped illustrate how primary turnout patterns differ from that of general elections.
Before Robby Starbuck became a problem for leftist companies, alerting consumers to stupid woke indoctrination policies, he directed music videos.
The Iran crisis of the past two weeks isn't just about nuclear weapons -- it's also an urgent reminder that border security is national security.
At the birth of the internet age in the early 1990s, the U.S. and Europe took opposite approaches to advancing this new economy-changing technology.
Events are moving fast. Seven days ago, as I write, Israel had not yet launched its first attacks on targets in Iran. Seven days from now, things may well have changed -- significantly.
