Hello everyone! You may have noticed that it’s been a while since My latest newsletter. This is because I have been on leave for three months – and I will be on leave for most of the next three – but I wanted to check with some reflections and programming notes.
Since some of you have asked: yes, the inclination continues. The newsletter will accelerate as I come back to work, and it goes without saying that there is much to cover. It is not an ordinary moment in American political history.
Here are some themes in my mind so far:
The public’s reaction to the second term of Trump
From usual investigations to employment approval to deeper questions concerning executive power, attitudes with regard to President Trump will probably be the subject of the year.
To this end, my colleagues have already started collecting surveys on his approval rating (We will add graphics with the average of the survey in the coming weeks).
Already, Mr. Trump was wasted his post-electoral honeymoon. Its approval rating is back less than 50%, with a little more Americans disapproving than the approval of its performance. This places her position more or less where she was before the elections.
There are good reasons to think that his notes will continue to slip. One of the best basic rules in American policy is that public opinion tends to move on the orientation of the change of policy. Some political scientists call this “thermostatic public opinion”, in which the public appears to be alternating to cool things when the government begins to run too hot. Few presidents have led the government as hot as Mr. Trump, and there are not many reasons to think that he will refuse something alone.
The 2024 elections and a new era
The election of 2024 can resemble old news, but it will have repercussions for the years to come. We have clearly entered a new era of politics, as I written in DecemberAnd there will be no way to understand where things go without giving meaning to the enormous changes in the last decade.
Over the next month, we will finally obtain the latest important bits of data on the 2024 elections. More importantly, we will have a full report of those who voted, on the basis of the voter recording files. We will also have most of the riding results (my colleagues have published a detailed card of these results).
With the Times / Siena survey, it will be enough to offer our best answers on major outstanding questions, such as the role of participation, how demographic groups have changed and why surveys have modestly underestimated Mr. Trump. We will do our best to analyze the most surprising changes in the election, young men and Hispanic voters with the Tiktok effect and the new Silicon valley.
Democrats
Mr. Trump did not win The 2024 elections by a large margin, but the Democrats nevertheless underwent an extraordinary defeat.
After all, Mr. Trump – A criminal who lost and then sought to reverse his previous elections – was not a popular candidate. The exit survey find This only 46% had a favorable vision of him, against 53% which had an unfavorable vision. To be frank: he won because voters thought that the Democrats were even worse.
Involvement, as we wrote Before the electionsis that the Democrats may have lost in a landslide if they had faced a more typical republican. With the exception of abortion and democracy (the own republican Goals), the Democrats have completely lost the election on essentially all other questions. Democrats have not faced a challenge like this since 1980.
The debates on the future of the Democrats have already started. There are a few old angles, like the call For an “abundance” policy co-written by my colleague on the side of opinion, Ezra Klein. But most of the discussions were just a recurring debate between moderates and party progressives. This time, it is difficult to see how the two sides can say that they have the answers to the major problems with which the party is faced.
Democrats are also faced with a more immediate challenge: how to respond to Mr. Trump, who will probably be more to shape the future of the Democrats than everything they do themselves.
It will be a big subject this year. The next Democratic primary campaign is not as far as it may seem today; The race for the New York Democrat mayor is already in progress.
The upcoming elections calendar
This is what it looks like: the special elections, the elections of the governors of Virginia and New Jersey in November and the rise in the middle of next year.
I am not sure that it will be the year or two of the most suspensive elections. We have already seen it enough during the first eight years of the Trump era – including the First special elections From his current mandate – being confident that the Democrats will behave quite well. We have also seen enough to know that Democrats can do it quite well in this kind of competition without necessarily translating it better in a presidential election.
We will talk more about it in the Tuesday bulletin, timed at the Supreme Court of Wisconsin race And the special Congress elections in Florida.
In the end: Democrats can face serious questions about their identity and their message, but that will probably not prevent them from winning big victories in the coming years.