“New report outlines the deep political polarization’s slow and steady march”
The WaPo with highlights from Dave Wasserman’s latest report, blogged here.
Category Archives: political polarization
“Realignment, More Than Redistricting, Has Decimated Swing House Seats”
Dave Wasserman reignites the forever wars over whether polarization and residential moving patterns or redistricting is more to blame for the drop in competitive congressional seats.
(Just about everyone believes that the answer is that it’s both. The political science… Continue reading
“Dividing the Body Politic”
Jim Gardner has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, University of Chicago Law Forum). Here is the abstract:
It has long been assumed in large, modern, democratic states that the successful practice of democratic politics requires some kind of internal… Continue reading
“Do We Need to Party Better to Fix U.S. Democracy?”
Didi Kuo and I recently spoke with Daniel Stid, Executive Director of Lyceum Labs about our recent article, Associational Party Building: A Path to Rebuilding Democracy. Daniel pushed us on the questions such as whether we are calling… Continue reading
Manheim on Election Law and Election Subversion
Lisa Marshall Manehim, Election Law and Election Subversion (Yale Law Journal):
Scholars of American election law used to take the rule of law as a given. The legal system, while highly imperfect, appeared sturdy, steady, and functional. Recent election cycles—culminating… Continue reading
The Limits of Federal Voting Rights Reform
Voting rights are under attack, both by Republican state legislature and by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court. Given Congress’s rejection of voting reforms in January 2022, Didi Kuo and I argue, in our new article, that it… Continue reading
“Associational Party-Building: A Path to Rebuilding Democracy”
Didi Kuo (Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University) and I are excited to share our new article, Associational Party-Building: A Path to Rebuilding Democracy, which is out today in the Columbia Law Review Forum.… Continue reading
“Ticket-splitting voters were going extinct. Now they may decide 2022’s biggest races.”
Fascinating new NBC report on polling: “In battleground states from Georgia to New Hampshire to Ohio, a potentially decisive slice of voters tell pollsters they’re supporting a Democrat for one high-profile office and a Republican for another. Nowhere is the… Continue reading
“Forget ‘polarization.’ The problem is right-wing extremism.”
Jennifer Rubin makes a key point in this Opinion piece in the Washington Post, arguing that the problem in American politics today is not polarization but “right-wing extremism”: Democrats are not selecting extreme candidates. For example, as of July, in… Continue reading
With or without what kind of parties? And at what cost?
Today was the 10th Anniversary of the Mischief of Faction Blog, which started from the premise that “on balance, a nation is better off with parties than without them.” Seth Masket and Julie Azari took the opportunity to… Continue reading
Pildes: “It’s not just us. Western democracies are fragmenting.”
Rick Pildes, in the Wash Post:
Three major elections on the same Sunday in June — in France, Colombia and Spain — tell the fundamental story of democracy in our era: the continuous disaffection with government, the collapse of… Continue reading
Pildes on Ranked Choice Voting
Fredreka Schouten of CNN interviews Rick Pildes. Here’s a highlight:
RCV … encourages the election of candidates with the broadest electoral appeal. It also makes it likely that candidates who win will have the support of a majority of… Continue reading
University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation
NYT has this story on the University of Maryland School of Public Policy’s Program for Public Consultation, which has issued this report entitled “The Demand for Public Consultation.” Here’s the NYT’s summary of the program’s work:
In simulations conducted… Continue reading
“How the Proud Boys Gripped the Miami-Dade Republican Party”
The N.Y. Times is reporting on the Proud Boys’s successful efforts to join the leadership of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, once the locus of Jeb. Bush’s power. “[A]t least a half-dozen current and former Proud Boys who have secured seats… Continue reading