After yesterday's excitement over the Ames straw poll, let's take a look at the history and consequences. With Tim Pawlenty's withdrawal today, it seems Ames does indeed matter, at least for negative consequences, and Michele Bachmann's appearances on Sunday morning shows also hints at...

Support for gay marriage continues to rise in a new Pew Center for the People and the Press poll, completed 2/22-3/1/2011. The latest poll shows support at 45% and opposition at 46%, the narrowest margin in the history of Pew polling on the issue. Some polls by other...

Today's GDP numbers provide little comfort to Democrats hoping a robust "recovery summer" will aid them in November. GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.4%...

Today the polling world was rocked by claims that polls by Research2000 for DailyKos are substantially flawed:

We do not know exactly how the weekly R2K results were created, but we are confident they could not accurately describe random polls

Coming on the heels of recent arguments...

A bit of a parochial post but with a national figure at its center and reflecting the national midterm forces.

David Obey announced his retirement...

March unemployment rates for the states are out today. Some down slightly, some up or steady. Here is the lede from the BLS report:
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Generic Ballot time. Mark has a piece at National Journal today that will soon be linked to here in his Monday post. Meanwhile here is a...

I've been pointing out the similarities between the circumstances of Presidents Obama and Reagan for a while now. See an earlier post on this here....

President Obama made 15 recess appointments over the weekend, the first of his presidency. The White House announced the appointments and made their case based on...

Today's unemployment rate was announced as 9.7%. But some articles mention a "true" unemployment rate of 16.8%. How can both numbers coexist, and which is...

The national unemployment rate held steady in February at 9.7%, stubbornly down from the high of 10.1% in October and stubbornly refusing to decline from January's...

The Texas GOP primary for governor is a lesson in both message success and message failure. Gov. Rick Perry was badly behind a year...

We liveblogged these last night. Compulsion makes me post the final versions with 100% of precincts reported. Do note that it is common for the final...

I've been struck for some time by the similarity of circumstance between Presidents Reagan and Obama. Both replaced deeply unpopular predecessors. Both enjoyed significant gains for...