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POLITICS
Where Trump’s Conspiracy Theory About Who Shot Ashli Babbitt Came From
This article marks the debut of a new column excavating the origins of public figures’ factually dubious comments. We explain what their claims are referring to, the evidence (or lack thereof) behind them and where they sprang from…
Changing How Primaries Work Probably Won’t Make Politics Less Divisive
Republican candidates around the country are trying to win over former President Donald Trump’s supporters before the 2022 midterm elections, so it’s no surprise that many are choosing to go all in on the false claim that the 2020…
How Long Can Texas Democrats Hold Out?
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Back in May, Texas House Democrats gained national attention for walking out of the state Capitol and preventing the legislature from having enough members to pass a…
The Senate Primary Races We’re Watching So Far
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): We’re still more than a year away from the 2022 midterm election, but that doesn’t mean…
Presidents Used To Be The Faces Of Their Political Parties. Is That No Longer The Case?
In our polarized political era, presidents have increasingly become the faces of their parties, operating as symbols of what their parties value — and what the opposing party rejects. Recent Republican presidents have doubled…
CPAC Emphasized Republicans’ Obsession With 2020
Donald Trump is still the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. But you probably already knew that. The medley of conservative voters, politicians, activists and political commentators that descended on Dallas this past…
First It Was Sex Ed. Now It’s Critical Race Theory.
In the 1960s and 70s, conservatives were waging a war against what they considered an existential threat infiltrating America’s public schools. Pamphlets were circulated by the John Birch Society, a right-wing extremist group,…
Why The Gender Gap May Have Shrunk In The 2020 Election
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. It’s been said that women are from Venus and men are from Mars. Broadly speaking, that’s a laughable bit of pop psychology, but there’s a measure of truth to it when it…
Whether Republicans Get Vaccinated Has A Lot To Do With If They Watch Fox News … Or OANN
It’s no secret that Republicans really distrust the media. In fact, that distrust is increasingly an important part of their political identity. For a long time, understanding where Republicans primarily got their news was…
New Laws Let Americans With Disabilities Vote Online. They’ve Also Resurrected The Debate About…
Since the dawn of the internet, someone has inevitably raised this question every election cycle: Why can’t we vote online? (The question was particularly apt in 2020, when states had to grapple with how to run an election during a…