Parties, Legislatures, Courts

CQ on presidential success (see Hershey, p. 337)

Limits on White House staff mean that in-party national committees take up the slack.

The Not-So-Deep State

Law, Order, and the Courts

A Consequential Crime Wave:


"The Judicialization of Politics" (Schier 110)

Nixon 1968 (at 19:25)







The State Courts and Judicial Elections

Dark Money

Harry Enten at CNN:

In another major pre-midterm election, the left has won again -- this time in a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Although the elections are officially nonpartisan, that's really in name only. Liberal candidate Rebecca Dallet won by 12 percentage points over conservative Michael Screnock, who was backed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker. It was the first time Democrats won an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 1995.

This Wisconsin result is merely the latest sign that it's not 2016 anymore and Democrats have momentum heading into the congressional midterms this fall.

One of the most interesting trends in the previous special elections in 2017 and 2018 is how the results correlated with the 2016 and 2012 presidential results. What we might expect is that the more recent election (2016) would be more predictive of the race to race correlation than the one before it (2012). That is, the areas that President Donald Trump did worse in relative to Mitt Romney would continue to trend that way, while Democrats would continue to lose ground in the areas where Trump did better than Romney.