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...In the survey of over 8,000 swing and “persuadable” voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa provided to Secrets this morning, 63% said that they approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis. Just 21% disapproved. And they appear to support his gradual shift from focusing on fighting the virus to also reopening the economy, as well as a reliance more on businesses than Washington to lead the way. “Swing voters are concerned about the impact of the coronavirus and generally approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis. Moreover, they are more concerned with health risks than the economy —...

Associate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Friday she fears the high court may lack a justice going forward who would serve as a swing-vote on cases, speaking hours after President Trump's second nominee Brett Kavanaugh secured enough votes to be confirmed. Kagan said at a conference for women at Princeton University that over the past three decades, starting with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and continuing with Justice Anthony Kennedy, that there was a figure on the bench "who found the center or people couldn't predict in that sort of way." “It’s not so clear, that I think going forward,...

The latest Harvard/Harris Poll, though, reveals that swing voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the Democrats’ plan to end all immigration enforcement across the U.S. Nearly 3-in-4 swing voters, about 73 percent, of swing voters said they do not want ICE to be disbanded. Less than 30 percent of swing voters said they support the abolishment of ICE. Likewise, Americans in general oppose the Democrats’ plan to abolish ICE. Nearly 70 percent of Americans polled in the Harvard/Harris Poll said they do not support ending ICE and thus all immigration enforcement. Abolishing ICE, as Breitbart News reported, would have allowed more...

Antonio Caracciolo is a member of the Teamsters local 282 in New York. He supports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and tells Steve Inskeep why.

There’s a new push by Bernie Sanders supporters to try to lure Rand Paul supporters into the #FeeltheBern fold. Julie Borowski was the first to notice a meme circulating around the web, and put it up on her Facebook page. First off, it’s doubtful Borowski is even considering Sanders as a potential candidate because of her videos on economic freedom and past criticism of Sanders. But it’s not surprising at all to see Sanders supporters go after Paul ones based on the stances listed in the meme. After all, Paul supporters have targeted Sanders supporters over certain issues before turning...

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ted Wade hasn't cared about politics enough to cast a vote in a U.S. presidential election for almost a quarter of a century, back when he supported Ross Perot's independent candidacy in 1992. But Republican Donald Trump's 2016 White House bid has motivated Wade to get involved and he plans to support the real estate mogul in Nevada's nominating caucus next month. Trump is a "non-politician" who can fix the "chaos" in Washington, he says. About one in 10 Americans who plan to cast a vote this election will do so for the first time in...

About 20 percent of likely Democratic voters say they would buck the party and vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in a general election, according to a new poll. The willingness of some Democrats to change sides could be a major problem for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton this fall. The new figures were released by Mercury Analytics, a research company with clients that include MSNBC and Fox News, as the result of an online poll and dial-test of Trump's first campaign ad. A smaller number of Republicans say they’d vote for Clinton - about 14 percent. Ron Howard, the...

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice N. Patrick Crooks died Monday at the court in Madison. Crooks, 77, had announced last week he would not seek re-election at the end of his term next year. He was in his 39th year as a Wisconsin jurist, with nearly 20 as a member of the state's high court. Crooks did not appear in person for oral arguments before the court on Friday, though he listened on Wisconsin Eye and participated in votes, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack said then. He did come to work on Monday for an administrative hearing, but excused himself before the...

In Tuesday’s election, New York City was firmly Obama country with the Democratic candidate sweeping the city with huge margins of victory. But that was not the case in all parts of the city. While Barack Obama won 88 percent of the votes in the Bronx, 85 percent of Manhattan, 79 percent of Brooklyn and 74 percent of Queens, Staten Island went for John McCain, giving the Republican senator 52 percent of the borough’s vote, according to unofficial returns tabulated by The Associated Press. Those results again underscored the distinctive position that Staten Island has had in the fabric of...

Yes, it's buyer's remorse and it will probably be one of the deciding factors in the race this year. Gallup: Eighty-six percent of voters who say they voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are backing Obama again this year, a smaller proportion than 92% of 2008 John McCain voters who are supporting 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Nine percent of 2008 Obama voters have switched to supporting Romney this year, while 5% of McCain voters have switched to Obama. The results are based on July 23-29 Gallup Daily tracking with more than 2,000 registered voters who reported voting in the...

Mitt Romney’s campaign will hold 24 “Strengthening The Middle Class” events today and Friday in 13 swing states, which include Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida, and Colorado. Local business owners and politicians will headline the events that will emphasize how Romney’s economic policies will make conditions better for the middle class. In Florida on Thursday night, Sen. Marco Rubio will headline an event in Orlando. .

TalkingPointsMemo today is trumpeting a new McClatchy/Marist poll showing Obama edging Romney on both the economy and foreign policy. The nationwide poll of registered voters shows Obama ahead 2-points, 46-44, on being better able to handle the economy and 6-points, 47-41, on being better able to handle foreign policy. Overall, the poll shows Obama ahead of Romney 48-46. Of course, the poll's sample undercounts GOP voters. Republicans make up 29% of the poll universe, a number far below their share of the electorate in recent elections. The overall sample is D +7, which would mirror the 2008 electorate. There is...

The new wisdom is that Catholics vote just like everybody else. That purported wisdom isn’t wise. The Catholic vote differs in four decisive ways from the Protestant, Jewish, and secular votes. (1) The Catholic vote is concentrated mainly in the largest states in the Electoral College: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey. (2) A larger proportion of Catholics than of any other religious group except Jews votes regularly, every election. In some jurisdictions (Chicago, Boston) Catholic voters have been known to vote at a rate of 104 percent or more when necessary, some of them...

Scott Walker beat the spread. Sometime politics is like betting on football. It's not just about whether your team wins. It's about whether you beat the spread. The rough calculation going into Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin was that if Governor Scott Walker won by less than five percentage points, the race would not have any clear national-level implications, but if he won by five points or more, it would. The final result, 53.2% to 46.3%, is a margin of 6.9 percentage points. He beat the spread... --snip-- But we are finally reaching the Thatcher Line: the point at which...

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats learned at least one big lesson in the November elections: What the independent voter gives, the independent voter can also take away. But now, the same temperamental bloc that threw House Democrats out of power appear to be in a giving mood again - at least as far as Obama is concerned. That unpredictable, cranky group of voters who helped carry the president into office two years ago before turning against him in dramatic fashion, may be turning back in Obama’s direction even more quickly. A series of national polls released over the last...

DFL congressman Jim Oberstar, accustomed to winning with 65% or more of the vote in Minnesota's 8th Congressional District, finds himself running even with Republican challenger Chip Cravaack, heading into the final weekend of the campaign, a new SurveyUSA poll conducted for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis shows. Today, it's 47% Oberstar, 46% Cravaack, a result within the survey's theoretical margin of sampling error.

The Democrats' final push to woo undecided voters appears to have fizzled, potentially putting dozens of competitive House races beyond reach and undermining the party's chances in at least four toss-up Senate seats, according to party strategists and officials. Independents, a crucial swing bloc, seem to be breaking sharply for Republicans in the final days of the campaign. One nonpartisan prognosticator, Stuart Rothenberg, said Friday he thought the Republicans could pick up as many as 70 House seats—something no party has achieved since 1948. The Republicans need 39 seats to take the majority. Fading Democratic support among independents is also...

Politico’s new poll reinforces the fact that momentum remains strong with fired-up Republicans, mainly because of fired-up independents.  The numbers look daunting for Democrats with just one week to go before Election Day, and in many places, past the time many have already voted.  And it’s not as though the Democrats didn’t have warnings that their massive expansion of government wouldn’t have dire consequences: Expressing deep dissatisfaction with President Obama’s policies and performance, independents have increasingly sided with conservatives in the belief that government grew too large, too fast under Obama—and that it can no longer be trusted. In the...

Op-ed: As elections loom, US president losing support of once - sympathetic voters In the last elections campaigns, it was possible to point to a political gender-based gap. While men tended to vote Republican, women tended to vote Democrat. Yet the recent polls show that the female vote is also shifting to the Right. Some 52% of women still support the Democrats, yet this marks a sharp drop in the face of the masculine zeal to topple the Left, and Obama knows it. Hence, his West Coast trip is dedicated to meetings with women and efforts to boost two female...

Swing Vote: Newly Dead Now Oppose Obama By Stephen Miller As a Chicago pol, President Barack Obama must be familiar with rumors that the cemeteries vote. If so, he’d probably be worried to find out that in this campaign year, he’s even lost the dead. In death notices from around the nation, the recently deceased are reaching back to canvass the living. “In lieu of flowers, Hal has requested that donations be made to your local animal shelter or to any candidate running against Barack Obama in 2012,” reads the death notice of Harold Groves, a retired Air Force fighter...