From Vanity Fair: Republicans Proudly Declare They’re Against Making Contraception a Federal Right

As we discuss in class, aside from the small number of rights specifically stated in the First Amendment everything else is subject for debate. Since Dobbs v Jackson, this could also mean birth control.

- Click here for the article.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans rejected the Right to Contraception Act, a Democratic bill that would stop the federal government and states from passing laws limiting access to birth control. Speaking to The Washington Post, Senator Joni Ernst called the bill “fear-mongering,” and introduced one that does not protect access to the morning-after pill. Senator John Cornyn claimed Democrats are holding a “phony vote because contraception to my knowledge is not illegal. It’s not unavailable. To suggest that it’s somehow in jeopardy should be embarrassing, but it’s hard to embarrass some people around here.”

Of course, what people like Cornyn don’t note is that that’s the exact argument Republicans used to make about abortion, before the federal right to the medical procedure was summarily scrapped. Referring to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s 2022 declaration that the court “should reconsider” some of its past decisions, including the one protecting access to contraception, Senator Mazie Hirono told ABC News: “Whenever a Supreme Court justice, especially in the MAGA far right, says he wants to revisit a case, you can bet that he’s looking to overturn.” In a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned: “A few years ago it was Roe. A few years from now it could be something else. We are kidding ourselves if we think the hard right is done with their attacks on reproductive rights.”

Last month, Donald Trump was asked in an interview, “Do you support any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception?” And rather than saying a simple “no,” he responded: “We’re looking at that, and I’m gonna have a policy on that very shortly, and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting. And it’s another issue that’s very interesting, but you will find it, I think, very smart; I think it’s a smart decision. But we’ll be releasing it very soon.”

From the Texas Tribune: Can Texas Republicans hold America’s reddest large urban county?

Tarrant County - Fort Worth - is the only large county in Texas not dominated by Democrats.

The author tries to find out why. Demographics seems to have a lot to do with it.

- Click here for the article.

Among the state’s five biggest counties, Tarrant is the only one that hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate in the past decade. The 2016 presidential election heightened Tarrant’s status as an outlier. Even as the rest of the state’s big-city territories moved deeper into the Democratic column, Tarrant steadfastly emerged as America’s most conservative large urban county.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office this week, won the county by an 8.6-point margin. It was the narrowest win for a GOP presidential nominee in decades in Tarrant. But among the country's 20 largest counties, Tarrant was only one of two that swung Trump's way in November — and it had the wider margin.

Across Tarrant County, Democratic pockets are fewer and less powerful than their Republican counterparts. All four of the state senate districts that fall in Tarrant County are represented by Republicans. The GOP also holds eight of the county’s 11 state House seats. Four of the five county commissioner court seats are held by Republicans.
Residents, elected officials and experts here point to a nuanced union of demographic, cultural and political forces to explain why.

. . . Tarrant’s minority population, which tends to lean Democratic, hasn’t caught up to the state’s other big urban counties. At the same time, many Tarrant voters have a storied history of preferring practical governance to partisanship, according to officials and political observers. They say that helps support the moderate faction of the GOP, especially in Fort Worth, the nation's 16th-largest city.

Then there’s the county’s development pattern. A lot of Tarrant remains rural. And, unlike Harris, Dallas and Travis counties, many of Tarrant’s affluent suburbs and conservative bedroom communities lie within its borders, not outside them. That’s helped give rise to the NE Tarrant Tea Party, a passionate and organized group that simultaneously supports far-right local candidates and serves as a powerful base for statewide Republicans.

From Vox: The single most important fact about American politics

I can't recommend this highly enough. It'll be a part of my look at political participation and political parties for some time. It tries to get to the root of party polarization in the US. These are observations based on a recent study by the Pew Research Center - click here for the study.

- Click here for the article.

Perhaps the single most important fact about American politics is this: the people who participate are more ideological and more partisan, as well as angrier and more fearful, than those who don't.

Here is one of the factors the author sees as especially problematic. It's not just that the parties are divided ideologically, they hate and fear each other:

From the Pew Research Center: 5 facts about the Supreme Court

Mostly facts about the public's attitude about the Supreme Court.

- Click here for the article.

A summary:

1 - Unfavorable opinions of the court reached a 30-year high after the end of last year’s momentous session.

2 - There is a wide partisan gap in views of the court.

3 - Partisans have starkly different views over how the justices should interpret the Constitution.

4 - In the wake of last session’s major decisions, views of the court’s ideology have shifted and become more politically polarized

5 - The justices of the court are a mystery for most Americans.

Apparently only 32% of Americans knew who Antonin Scalia was.

From the Washington Post: What a divided America actually hears when Obama speaks

More on partisan polarization in the American public. Similar things could likely be said about the current presidential candidates.

- Click here for the article.

As President Obama spoke of the country’s deepening sense of alienation and anger last month, a teacher in Michigan listened, her eyes fixed on the stone-faced Republicans in the House chamber who in her view represented the problem.

“Let’s get over the party lines and work together!” she tweeted during the president’s State of the Union address.

In Maryland, a retired lawyer was listening to the exact same words. He, too, was worried about the anger and division gripping the country, but as Obama spoke, his resentment toward the president only swelled.

"Hearing him complain about political rancor is frankly nauseating,” he wrote.

The two tweets flashed across the Internet within seconds of each other, each in their own way capturing the country’s mood and the challenge facing the president in his final months in office — not simply a partisan divide, but a deep mistrust that has become so entrenched that it seems to affect the very way Americans hear the president’s words and see each other.

Part of the problems seem to be that people who identify with the two parties know little about each other - or themselves it seems. Add this to our discussion of political ignorance.

From the Pew Research Center: Presidential job approval ratings from Ike to Obama

Because we could use a quick break from Scalia.

Aside from showing a concise picture of shifts in presidential approval, this also points you the increase in the difference between partisans in how they evaluate presidents.

- Click here for the article.



I find this odd. Obama has both the lowest highs and the highest lows of any president since Kennedy. This might be a result of polarized opinions of him.

Americans Evaluate the Balance between Security and Civil Liberties

Here's the poll the previous story referred to.

- Click here for it.

And here are a few of its graphs:

From EurekAlert: Survey finds majority who believe it is sometimes necessary for government to sacrifice freedoms

Its a perennial trade off - security v freedom. People are willing to give up lot's in the way of personal freedom in exchange for security - even if its just the illusion of security. There's little surprise in these findings. File this under a variety of things, including individual liberty, Bill of Rights, foreign policy, and public opinion.

- Click here for the article. 

A majority of Americans say it can be necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism, according to a new national survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Fifty-four percent of Americans say it can be necessary, 45 percent disagree. And about half of Americans think it is acceptable to allow warrantless government analysis of internet activities and communications--even of American citizens--in order to keep an eye out for suspicious activity, but about 3 in 10 are against this type of government investigation.

"In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris and California, we are seeing the public's concern about being personally affected by terrorism evolve. For instance, 20 percent of Americans are very concerned that they or a family member could be a victim of a terrorist attack, up from 10 percent in 2013," said Trevor Tompson, director of The AP-NORC Center. "The survey also found that respondents are just as concerned about attacks by Islamic extremists as they are about home-grown terrorists."

Here's something from the study that might be helpful for your paper. The candidates from each party have to respond to the opinions of the activists in their party, so this info helps us understand why Democratic and Republican candidates are taking different positions on the issue.

- Two-thirds of Republicans favor the analysis of internet activity and communication by the government without a warrant. Fifty-five percent of Democrats and only 40 percent of independents agree. 

- While Republicans and Democrats are equally anxious about the possibility of being personally affected by domestic terrorism, two-thirds of Republicans and half of Democrats are greatly or somewhat concerned about becoming a victim of Islamic extremism in the United States.

- Click here for more commentary on the poll.

From the Huffington Post: Do Americans Prefer a "Democracy" or a "Republic"?

2305 students should be ready for questions related to the terms "democracy" and "republic." Conveniently, this item popped up. It's a bit disappointing though, it just looks at whether self identified Democrats and Republicans prefer each term with little focus on what each term means. It turns out partisans like the term that sounds like their party's name.

It's worth a look anyway: Click here for it.

While many Americans would be hard-pressed to identify any meaningful conceptual differences between these terms, it is interesting to see whether there is a partisan pattern that influences preferences on this question. As Professor Adam Brown wrote in 2011: "Let's face it: For some, this is just a matter of partisan cheerleading. Some (not all) Republicans want to call this a republic just because that sounds like 'Republican,' and some (not all) Democrats want to call this a democracy just because that sounds like 'Democrat.'" Is this the case? Do Republicans really prefer the term "republic" and do Democrats really prefer the term "democracy"?

It turns out - narrowly - they do. More importantly, the author links to sources that go a bit further into the definitions, and pros and cons, of each. I'm highlighting them here:

- Are We a Democracy or a Republic?
- A Constitutional Republic, Not a Democracy.
- Are We a Democracy?
- Democracy.
- Republicanism.

From Atlantic Cities: America's Most Sprawling Cities Are Also the Most Republican

Something to add to our material on ideology, partisanship and political behavior:

- Click here for the article.

With the help of my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, I compared Smart Growth America's new rankings of sprawling and compact development to voting patterns, as well as other significant economic and demographic variables.Their Sprawl Index takes into account four key factors: density, mix of uses, presence of "activity centers," and accessibility of street network. A higher ranking on the Sprawl Index means a metro is more compact and less sprawling. Positive correlations identify a relationship to more compact development, while negative ones suggest a connection to greater sprawl. As usual, I note that our analysis points only to associations among variables and does not indicate causality.

The connection between sprawl and conservatism comes through loud and clear in our analysis of more than 200 of America's metro areas. Our correlations suggest that sprawled America is Red America, while Blue America takes on a much more compact geography. The Sprawl Index was negatively associated with the share of voters in a metro who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 (with a correlation of -.44); and it was positively associated with the percentage who voted for Barack Obama (.43). These were among the strongest correlations in our analysis.

This is in line with other research that connects sprawl or density and political affiliation. Researchers have identified a tipping point of roughly 800 people per square mile where counties shift from Red to Blue, as I noted in the weeks following Barack Obama's reelection. Princeton historian Kevin Kruse similarly explained this spatial link between a spread-out landscape and Republican political positions to the New Republic. “There are certain things in which the physical nature of a city, the fact the people are piled on top of each other, requires some notion of the public good,” he said. “Conservative ideology works beautifully in the suburbs, because it makes sense spatially.”

From the Monkey Cage: Why don’t Americans trust the government? Because the other party is in power.

A couple researchers argue that people's opinions about government is conditioned by who is in charge.

- Click here for the article.

People who identify with one political party really do not like it when members of the other party are in charge. And its not driven by ideology, but by party identification:

That polarization in the electorate is not ideological makes sense because 60 years of research suggests that most Americans do not think about politics ideologically. Instead, we uncover increasingly and deeply sour feelings that partisans now have about the other political party. A consequence of these negative feelings is vanishingly low trust in government when their party is out of power. As a result, public consensus rarely if ever develops on issues, and public opinion fails to nudge policymakers toward compromise.

The use of "feeling thermometers" measure the low opinion each party has of the other:

In November 2011, Jason Reifler had a survey in the field in which he posed a question that survey researchers have been asking for decades. He asked people to place the Republican Party and the Democratic Party on a feeling thermometer that runs from 0 (really hate the group) to 100 (really love the group).

The average score Republicans gave the Democratic Party was just 18 degrees, and the average score Democrats gave the Republican Party was the same, 18 degrees. When Jimmy Carter was president, those average scores for the other party tended to be in the mid-40s. Even as recently as Bill Clinton’s presidency, they were always at least solidly in the upper 30s. To understand the depth of the recent upturn in negative feelings, we should recall that the late Clinton-era readings were taken even as one party was impeaching the president of the other party.

This means that people are more likely to trust the government when they control the presidency:





The authors conclude that this sends signals to elected representatives that they can bear down on ideological positions and not compromise on public policy issues. Thia of course makes government less effective, which leads to lower levels of trust - and so on and so on.

Partisan differences in priorities on public matters

The Pew Research Center reports on the public's priorities, and includes a table contrasting what Democratic and Republican identifiers see as most important. It reinforces the key differences in the ideological viewpoints of each party's identifiers. Democrats are concerned with the environment, the poor and education. Republicans with the military, the deficit and moral breakdown:



Here are the overall numbers. The economy and terrorism dominate.

Red States, Blue States and abortion restrictions

To continue a theme from yesterday. Red states are more likely to place restrictions on abortions than blue states.

For proof:



Source: Thirteen charts that explain how Roe v. Wade changed abortion rights.

Red States, Blue States and Obamacare

For our discussion of state political culture and federalism:

This is probably not too surprising but people in blue states are enrolling in the ACA more than those in red states. Blue states are more likely to run their own exchanges and/or assist people in enrolling in the national program. States like Texas have attempted to make it very difficult to do so.

So you get results like this:




A similar breakdown exists regarding the expansion of Medicaid, which is encouraged, but not required. Each state can determine for itself whether it wants to expand the number of its citizens who can obtain health care. Blue states have tended to go for it, red states have generally not:

And another red/blue image

This gives us a good idea about how counties with various population densities vote. Notice that the most populous counties vote Democrat. I was not able to find the date of this data, but Harris, Dallas and Bexar counties in Texas all went blue in 2012 - which fits the general mold.

I have past posts linking to stories pointing out that areas with high density - cities - tend to be more Democrat/liberal than suburban and rural areas. Perhaps communitarian and egalitarian values become important when people live on top of each other. Individualism matters more when one has lots of space surrounding them.

Its an idea.

Which are the red states and which are the blue states?

A couple maps from a physics professor at the University of Michigan.

This shows which states voted Democrat (Blue) and Republican (Red) in 2012:


Here are the states adjusted by population:


And for good measure, here are the red and blue counties, as of the 2012 election:


And the counties also adjusted by size:


For background on the whole red/blue distinction, click here.

From the Gallup Poll: Liberal Self-Identification Edges Up to New High in 2013

A big surprise, and possibly a reaction to the increased attention to inequality in the US.

The figures are based on combined data from 13 separate Gallup polls, including interviews with more than 18,000 Americans, conducted in 2013.

When Gallup began asking about ideological identification in all its polls in 1992, an average 17% of Americans said they were liberal. That dipped to 16% in 1995 and 1996, but has gradually increased, exceeding 20% each year since 2005.

The rise in liberal identification has been accompanied by a decline in moderate identification. At 34% in 2013, it is the lowest Gallup has measured, and down nine points since 1992. Moderates had been the largest ideological group throughout the 1990s, and competed with conservatives for the top spot during the 2000s. Since 2009, conservatives have consistently been the largest U.S. ideological group.

The percentage of conservatives has always far exceeded the percentage of liberals, by as much as 22 points in 1996. With more Americans identifying as liberals in recent years, and conservative identification holding steady, the conservative advantage of 15 points ties the 2007 and 2008 gaps as the smallest.

Congress is increasingly polarized

This builds off the power below about partisan polarization in approval of Obama. Congress is similarly polarized. This graph shows how the ideological differences between the parties have risen and fallen since the late 1800s. Note that the House is more polarized than the Senate.



Two commentators point out that our system is designed for compromise, and this is unlikely to occur given the polarized environment - which is unlikely to change any time soon. Even following the upcoming election, each party will have the ability to negate what the other attempts to do. More evidence for those who like to argue that Congress is broken.

Obama's Polarized Ratings

The Gallup Poll reports that Obama's approval ratings are among the most polarized ratings - based on partisanship - yet measured.



Clinton has emerged, at least in hindsight, as one of the least polarizing presidents.

From the Gallup POll: Support for Third U.S. Party Dips, but Is Still Majority View

Despite what we've discovered in class, thee is still strong support for third parties in the U.S:

Fifty-two percent of Americans believe the Republican and Democratic parties do such a poor job of representing the people that a third party is needed. Forty percent believe they do an adequate job. The percentage calling for a third party is down from August, when it tied its high of 58%.
Interestingly, this number includes a majority of Republicans and Tea Party supporters. Is an independent Tea Party bid out of the question?