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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

The Changing Landscape of Political Parties

The surprising outcome of the 2016 election and talk about Democrat hopes of flipping the House and/or Senate in 2018 have a lot of people speculating about political party alignment. Will Donald Trump drive Republican voters away from the Grand Old Party? Are we looking at 2018 or 2020 to be a “wave” election for Democrats?

A recent study by Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Political Science asked these questions and more about the current state of affairs. What he found suggests some points that confound the prevailing wisdom.

Bartels maintains that there have been no mass defections from either Republicans or Democrats. His research found that the splits within each party break out in contrasting ways. Democrats are, of course, more united in their belief in an active government, but somewhat surprisingly they find themselves less united when it comes to cultural issues. Republicans tend to have the opposite leanings, being more united in their view on cultural issues but more at odds with one another when it comes to the role government should play in peoples’ lives.

Hence the failure to repeal ObamaCare and budgets that keep the Democrat pace on deficits.

More here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maryland has a law on the books that says that ALL of our state's electoral college votes will go to the candidate that wins the NATIONAL popular vote. It was passed by Maryland legislators when G.W. Bush won the election, but not the popular vote. Our state (democrat) law makers have taken away our right to even vote for the president. Even if our state had majority voted for Trump, our state would have given the electoral college votes to Hillary. Corrupt states will pass corrupt laws. Maryland is one of them.

Anonymous said...

I agree. There are alot of republicans in MD and our vote should count