Search query: michigan

The unpopularity of the two presumptive nominees this November has left many voters looking for alternatives. Currently, the alternative candidate receiving the most support is former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, the recently chosen nominee of the Libertarian Party. Recent polls show Johnson receiving double-digit numbers in three-way mock elections with Clinton and Trump. Johnson believes that he has a good chance of winning over a large swath of the electorate. “I’m trying to appeal to t

By sheer statistical coincidence, the percentage of Americans who self-identify as independents (approximately 40 percent) is nearly identical to the percentage of Americans who self-identify as moderates. This coincidence has nurtured a common misunderstanding: that independents are mostly moderates who want members of both parties to move toward the center. But a growing body of literature studying the precise political attitudes of the public – and especially moderates and independents – is

For two decades, the Commission on Presidential Debates has excluded every candidate from the general election presidential and vice-presidential debates but two: the nominees of the Republican and Democratic Parties. They do so by using a rule excluding every candidate who fails to poll at at least 15% support in five polls chosen by them (which often only ask about the two major party nominees). Recently, the group Level the Playing Field joined with the Green and Libertarian Parties to challe

Our updated blog on the more than 600,000 votes cast for withdrawn candidates includes a spreadsheet where we show the total votes earned by all the Republican and Democratic candidates for president. Given that many states held lower turnout caucuses and how some of those states (such as the Democratic caucuses in Iowa) don't report popular vote totals, it's not a truly fair way to measure relative strength of candidates, but it's still instructive about where things stand. Comparing Democrats

All in all, my political predictions in February and March are holding fairly true, but what no one could have predicted was the blowout wins Sanders has had in the last 5 contests in the Mountain West and West Coast. Pollsters hadn't even conducted any polls in Washington, expecting it to be Clinton territory since mid-2015. But Washington could set a trend -- the long-expected (at least in my mind) political implosion of Hillary Clinton. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, Sanders ca

The answer to the question in the title is “yes.” For all but about two weeks of the past four years, she has been the inevitable 2016 Democratic nominee. For about a week after the Iowa caucuses, and three days after the Michigan primary, she was evitable, but these were outlying moments. The Hillary train has long been headed to the White House, and the bumps on the way haven’t really done that much to stop her.With a clean sweep of five states that contain about 20% of the country’s populatio

argues that “he Democratic Party has a very clear track record of sabotaging rebels." In a recent interview with Katie Herzog from Grist, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein Stein is referring to the fact that even though Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is upsetting the contest by winning states like Michigan, Hillary Clinton will likely be the nominee. "The party does this fake go-left thing by allowing genuine reformers to be seen and heard, but they never allow t

If anything can be said about the current presidential primary season, it's been dramatic -- from Trump swaying the GOP electorate with blustering rhetoric to the tight contest between Sanders and Clinton on the Democratic side. And a recent survey shows that all the excitement has driven voters to the polls in numbers rarely seen in a primary race. The Pew Research Center confirms that both Democrats and Republicans are seeing higher than usual turnout during this primary season. The Democrats

Reality Check:  Democrats Have a Super-Delegate Problem Reality Check:  Democrats Have a Super-Delegate ProblemBen Swann The Democratic Party has a problem: superdelegates. A system the party created to protect itself from the wrong kind of Democratic nominee.But those superdelegates could actually destroy the Democratic Party going into this year’s presidential election. This is a Reality Check you won’t see anywhere else. “Well, look, I won one of the contests and lost another close one. I

March 9th update: Donald Trump finished first in the Michigan primary, where candidates' percentages closely tracked the Monmouth poll -- Trump earning 37% of the Republican primary vote, Ted Cruz 25%, John Kasich 24% and a fading Marco Rubio with 9%. Yet, consistent with Monmouth's head-to-head polling, a CBS News exit survey showed that Cruz would have edged Trump head-to-head. (Trump leads Rubio, and there was no query about Trump vs. Kasich). ABC news exit polls had similar findings, and fou