Seth Masket

On Tuesday, the Colorado Republican Party’s executive committee voted to cancel the presidential preference poll that would have been held at its 2016 presidential caucus. In effect, Colorado has just dropped out of the Republican presidential nomination process. To be clear, there will still be a Republican caucus in the state, sometime in late winter. […]

This week has seen one of the inevitable freakouts about Hillary Clinton’s campaign. After all, her polling numbers are dropping (to right around the levels they were at the last time she ran for president), and her main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, is drawing record crowds at his rallies. Perhaps, suggests Chris […]

Some journalists and activists have been quick to blame the Republican Party for the recent rise of Donald Trump in politics. Richard Zombeck calls him “the perfect spokesman for the GOP.” Simon Maloy claims that Trump has continued to draw attention precisely because (at least until very recently) no prominent Republicans have had the courage […]

Tracy O/Flickr There’s increasing concern that our political parties are flying apart, with party leaders unable to control ideological fringe groups and eccentric billionaires who want to see their own brand of candidate nominated. Perhaps, the thinking goes, if we want our parties to behave more responsibly, we need to give them greater formal power […]

It’s no secret Bernie Sanders is doing well. He’s giving speeches, over-filling venues, and raising money all across the country. More importantly, he’s gaining rather strikingly in the polls among Democrats in New Hampshire and Iowa. Yes, he’s still behind Hillary Clinton, but he’s narrowed that gap significantly in the last few months. Is this […]

Yesterday brought a few interesting wrinkles to our typically smooth partisan divide. Important developments on two issues — marijuana and vaccinations — brought out a libertarian streak among both liberals and conservatives, shaking up the parties a bit. On the marijuana issue, yesterday brought us a real first: a major party presidential candidate conducting a […]

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission saw a pretty familiar divide. The Court’s four liberals were joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, and were opposed by the four conservatives. It was the same configuration from last week’s epic Obergefell case that recognized same-sex marriage rights. But […]

Over at Slate, Reihan Salam raises concerns that Jeb Bush can’t win the presidency and urged him to drop out of the race. According to Salam, “a scorched-earth Bush campaign will make it impossible for any Republican to win in 2016.” That is, Bush is in a decent position to win the nomination, but what […]

Yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein noted that Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign may be having significant problems, then added that he never really understood why Republicans hold this family in such high esteem. As I noted last week, Republicans tend to win when they run Bushes and tend to lose when they don’t, but do we have any […]

Via Twitter, Dave Weigel makes a good point: I remain confused as to why people assume 2016 will be a Bush-Clinton race. He links to a recent poll showing Rand Paul with 11 percent and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio tied at 10. No, such early polling numbers aren’t very good predictors of how the […]