In 1977, Jimmy Carter made an improbable journey from Georgia peanut grower to Democratic president in part by playing on his humble roots and receiving support from America’s farmers. Yet this bedrock voting constituency abandoned a fellow farmer to back Ronald Reagan four years later, after Carter punished Moscow for invading Afghanistan by cutting off […]
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Poll of the week The electorate in 2020 is likely to be similar to 2016’s. This should worry people in both parties — for different reasons, of course. Our poll of the week is not technically one poll, but an in-depth study that looks at the changing demographics […]
Television shows are writing the 25th Amendment into their ripped-from-the-headlines storylines. Pundits debate the possibilities of the removal and succession of the president if he is incapacitated. Even former FBI Director James Comey has weighed in on whether Donald Trump is “medically unfit to be president.” (He doesn’t think so.) In the unlikely — but […]
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Here’s my plan, if it works for everyone: The overarching question will be “Is James Comey’s book/publicity tour helping or hurting the case against President Trump?” You can interpret “the case” however you want, but I mostly […]
Is Scott Pruitt plated in gold or spattered in mud? In a week where President Trump’s lawyer got raided by the FBI, Trump’s top homeland security adviser resigned, the president agreed to join an international response to an act of chemical warfare believed to have been conducted by the Syrian government, and news broke that […]