Articles

Last week we wrote that this special election contest between Democratic U.S. Rep. Ed Markey and Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez had gotten more interesting, but was not yet truly competitive. We may have spoken too soon. Yet another poll has come out showing the race in single digits. The OnMessage, Inc. (R) survey for the Gomez campaign (May 5-7 of 800 likely voters) gave Markey a t…

Democrats have had a rough few days in South Dakota. Although U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, son of retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, has not made a statement, the conventional wisdom is that he will not run for his father’s seat. And today, former U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin wrote in a post on her Facebook page that she would not be a candidate. Herseth Sandlin was a favorite of m…

Republican Mark Sanford’s victory Tuesday in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District tells us only one thing about the 2014 midterm elections—that Democrats still need to capture 17 seats to win back the House majority they lost in 2010. Nothing more, nothing less. Had Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch won the special election, all it would have demonstrated was that even in such an overwhe…

For the past few months, the special election to fill the remainder of former Democratic Sen. John Kerry’s term has plodded along. It was as if the book on the race had already been written. U.S. Rep. Ed Markey would beat U.S. Rep. Steve Lynch for the Democratic nomination. He would then go on to defeat any of the trio of virtually unknown Republicans seeking the GOP nod in the June 25 special…

Yes, South Carolina's 1st District is gerrymandered to be eleven points more Republican than the national average, and Mark Sanford was more at ease on the campaign trail than novice Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch. But Sanford's lopsided 54 percent to 45 percent win after national Democrats spent over $1.5 million in unanswered advertising highlights the main dilemma Democrats face in 2014:…

Here’s a prediction: If not on Tuesday night, then certainly by Wednesday and maybe even through Thursday or beyond, one party will be crowing that its victory in the special election for now-Sen. Tim Scott’s former seat in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District is a sign that it is doing great and will have a successful 2014 midterm election. The other party will be downplaying the national…

With all the talk of the importance of the Latino vote to the future of the Republican party, it’s easy to ignore the fact that there are blue states outside of the Southwest that may be bigger and better targets for the GOP in 2016. Pennsylvania represents the biggest promise--and biggest chunk of electoral votes--for Republicans in 2016. It has a Hispanic population of just under 6 percent…

When it comes to political advertising on television, the news is that it’s no longer so much about news. Cable programming is giving advertisers ways to target sought-after voters through entertainment, providing a cost-efficient, primetime complement to broadcast’s undisputed dominance earlier in the day—sort of a campaign ad buyer’s feng shui

President Obama carried the 18-to-29-year-old voting bloc by 34 points in 2008 and by 23 points last year. But a new national survey of millennial voters conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests this emerging generation might not be as locked into the Democratic camp as conventional wisdom suggests, and that young voters exhibit some of the same stark partisan divides as older Americ…