“With straight-ticket voting gone, Texas House down-ballot races hang in the balance”
Commentary on the impact of the demise
of straight-ticket voting options in Texas.
Category Archives: political polarization
“What the French Revolution teaches us about the dangers of gerrymandering”
Rebecca
Spang with a Bastille Day connection to unabashed partisan redistricting.
Partisan Polarization: It’s _Less_ Bad Than We Thought?
An intriguing new study finds substantial split-ticket voting for downballot incumbents.
“The Historical Development of the U.S. Presidential Nominations Process”
Rick Pildes has posted this draft on SSRN (Forthcoming in The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times (E. Mazo ed.)) Here is the abstract:
The presidential-candidate nomination process is increasingly a train wreck. Voters are now asked to sort… Continue reading
“Republicans and the Voting Rights Act”
Michael Morley has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Tulsa Law Review). Here is the abstract:
This invited essay reviews Jesse H. Rhodes’s book Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act. The book’s main thesis is that… Continue reading
“How the Rural-Urban Divide Became America’s Political Fault Line”
NYT’s The Upshot:
It’s true across many industrialized democracies that rural areas lean conservative while cities tend to be more liberal, a pattern partly rooted in the history of workers’ parties that grew up where urban factories did.But urban-rural polarization… Continue reading
El-Haj on Kang on El-Haj on Responsive Party Government
Tabatha Abu el-Haj in the Columbia Law Review Online:
Despite finding my diagnosis of the ills of contemporary American parties and my indictment of responsible party government and its hold over First Amendment doctrine “almost undeniable,” Professor Kang raises two… Continue reading
“NC Democrats’ ugly double-standard on Kim Strach”
Charlotte Observer editorial:
Kim Strach, the executive director of the state Board of Elections, was doing a good job before she got fired Monday. She’d helped guide the board through the minefield of the 9th Congressional District election… Continue reading
“Balkinization Symposium on Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum, The Company They Keep– Collected Posts”
Balkinization:
Here are the collected posts for our Balkinization symposium on Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum’s new book, The Company They Keep: How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2019).
1. Jack Balkin, Introduction to … Continue reading
“With little fallout from nuclear option, Senate’s legislative filibuster is in jeopardy”
WaPo:
The fallout from the Senate’s so-called nuclear option has largely dissipated.And without much fallout, the fate of the once-revered process known as the legislative filibuster faces its greatest peril in more than a century.Senate Republicans are using a… Continue reading
“Siloed Justices and the Law/Politics Divide”
I have written this post for a Balkinization symposium on a terrific new book by Devins & Baum, The Company They Keep: How Partisan Divisions Came to the Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2019). My post begins:
In an … Continue reading
“The Geography of Partisan Prejudice”
A fascinating mapping of estimates of affective polarization (how Americans feel about members of the opposing major party). The polling question isn’t new, but I think that mapping the results onto counties by their demographic composition might be.
(Note: this… Continue reading
“Political competition is moderating Texas Republicans”
Behind a paywall, the Economist reviews
an apparent shift in Texas legislators’ priorities.
White Papers Assessing California Top-Two Primary
Three new white papers on California’s top-two primary out of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, by Charles Munger, Jr., a financial and political backer of the top-two system.