Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The best overnight analysis I’ve read is by Stephen Clermont, a pollster with Change Research in Washington. I’ve known Stephen since he worked with Harrison Hickman on polls for Governor Jim Hunt in the 1990s. We recently worked together on a poll of rural voters in North Carolina. Here’s his take on Tuesday: Last night…
Much alike, both talking in circles, voices flat, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries landed in a fight but not with a Republican – holding rallies Bernie Saunders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez set out to break Washington insiders’ iron grip on the Democratic Party. Fingers crossed Republicans – not Republican voters but the Republicans who go to…
Years rolled by, presidents tried to unite us – often fell short. But at least tried. Trump doesn’t try. A practical New Yorker he understands division tightens his grip on MAGA. So he uses division as a tool. And it works. But division sows seeds: People stop seeing their opponents as fellow Americans. They see…
The New York City mayor’s race is a preview of the 2028 Democratic presidential race: an aging, center-left establishment figure scarred by past battles, challenged by a fresh but unproven champion of young, more-left progressives. That could mean a civil war in 2028, like what led to Donald Trump in 2016. Or a new leader…
The shutdown’s rolling along – voice dry, flat, tedious, Chuck Shumer lays the blame on Trump. Defending himself, hitting back, Trump’s heaping scorn on Schumer. Over at the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem’s been spending taxpayers’ money airing TV ads praising Trump. Using the internet the Department of Agriculture’s spending taxpayers’ money to lay…
Reagan ran against Ford, then ran against Jimmy Carter, Jesse Helms ran against Jim Hunt: Those were tough hard-fought battles where each side hammered the other but, tough as they were, back in those days no one called his opponent a ‘scumbag.’ Because, if he did, shaking their heads people would vote against him for…
A reader sent these “random thoughts on a rainy day.” I thought they’re worth sharing: Watching the homes on Hatteras Island collapse into an angry Atlantic is sad. But the scene is also a microcosm of today’s paradoxical conflict between the responsibilities of individual citizens and their government. These are private homes whose owners and…
John F. Kennedy is one of Republicans’ favorite Democrats. And John McCain is one of Democrats’ favorite Republicans. That’s what we found when we asked Democratic and Republican voters in a rural North Carolina poll to name a politician in the other party they like or respect. Two things stood out: It helps to be…
Tariffs are controversial – people disagree over whether they do good or harm. I don’t know who’s right or wrong. But the way Trump saw it Canada was sapping our economy, so after he was reelected he put tariffs on Canada to fix the problem. An odd thing happened. Canada ran a TV ad in…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…
A reassuring lesson from our trip to Germany and Czechia is that dictators, despots and tyrants…