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Are you among the 58 percent of Republicans who plan to send the president a message of opposition come Nov. 4? I certainly am. This recent Gallup poll reminds me of the comment currently circling my Facebook thanks to Emmy-award winning comedic actor/ political commentator, Dennis Miller: “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him.” I didn’t either (the second time around). In fact, we can see the writing on the wall this time around as the next election nears. The stats from this 2014 Gallup poll resembles the poll taken just before we witnessed the last huge gains for...

Whether it's Cruz/Carson or Carson/Cruz, the Democrat ticket will have reason to worry. An Hispanic&Black ticket is the GOP's best hope to beat Hillary, or who ever is the nominee. This ticket will have the left leaning media in a state of panic. They can't bash a minority ticket. And what will Debbie Wasserman do? Accuse Ted and Ben of wife beating? If Hillary is the nominee and she is up against Cruz/Carson, will be interesting to see how she tries to tear down the first "Black/Hispanic Ticket".

So I've been catching up on all the latest accumulation of Washington wisdom — or, at least, all the wisdom that I can accumulate in a Twitter feed — and now I totally get why no one other than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or the reincarnated Pat Buchanan can possibly win the Republican nomination in 2016. (Actually, Pat's alive and well — it's just that he's on the McLaughlin Group. My bad.) You see, the party's base voters — the ones who turn out to vote in primaries and caucuses — are too completely off the rails to nominate...

What may have happened is this: Over the summer Democrats used their money advantage to savage Republican opponents. When spending got equalized in September, Republicans’ numbers rose. So Republicans retain big leads to pick up three open seats in states carried by Mitt Romney —West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota. Republican nominees have moved ahead of three Democratic incumbents in Romney states (Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana) and in two target states carried by President Obama (Colorado and Iowa).Only in North Carolina, which Romney narrowly carried, has the Republican not yet overtaken the incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan — and her...

The Iowa, Colorado, Kansas and North Carolina Senate races, to name four, are getting plenty of attention. But keep an eye on Michigan where in a blue state GOP candidate Terri Lynn Land is in a statistical tie with Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). RealClearPolitics has the race as a tossup, with the last two public polls showing Peters with a 2 or 3 point lead. Charlie Cook also shows the race to be a tossup.

Part of Mitt Romney's success in securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 bore out of the fact that he benefited from the spoils of a divided faction on the right. If Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were ever able to consolidate the sum of their supporters around one of them, Romney's path to victory could have faced great peril. This calculation is weighing heavy on the minds of social conservatives as they look for a horse to ride in 2016. With an adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz telling National Journal Monday the Texas freshman is "90 percent" likely to...

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is not only trailing in the polls — with her Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy, taking a slim 48-45 lead — but a majority of voters in the Pelican State now say they disapprove of the job she is doing in Congress, according to a new report from Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm. Fifty-two percent of voters now say they disapprove of her job performance. Only 42 percent say they approve. From the PPP report: "Neither candidate is very popular with voters. Thirty-seven percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Cassidy to 41...

In the straw poll at the annual Values Voters Summit for right-wing Republicans, Democrats actually did well. In fact, some Democrats did better than some of the leading… Wait, what? Yup. You heard me right. Vice President Joe Biden, Gov. Chris Christie, and 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton finished in a three-way tie. Behind them? New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin. The GOP has such awful candidates that even their own most ardent supporters aren’t believers in half of their candidates including Chris Christie who is in the midst of an extended PR campaign stumping...

Sen. Rand Paul's best window for winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination increasingly looks like it has passed. A lot can happen over the next 18 months, but the renewed focus on foreign policy -- and more specifically, the Islamic State -- has reminded the Republican Party where its true views on international affairs lie. And it is decidedly not with non-interventionists like Paul (R-Ky.). A new poll from CNN/Opinion Research is the best we've seen to date bearing out this point. The poll asks Americans to identify themselves as either hawks or doves -- hawks being someone "who believes...

Dems freaking out. Remember Joni Ernst? She’s the pig-castrating, conservative candidate for Senate out of Iowa who took the internet by storm earlier this year with her campaign video claiming she’ll “make big spenders squeal” when she gets to Washington. Since she kicked off her campaign, Ernst has been seen as a long-shot to take the seat that had been held for 30 years by Democrat Tom Harkin, but a recent poll shows that her Dem opponent Bruce Braley is now running defense. Via the Des Moines Register: Ernst leads 44 percent to 38 percent in a race that has...

DES MOINES — Republican Joni Ernst leads Democrat Bruce Braley by 6 percentage points in Iowa’s open-seat U.S. Senate race, a new Iowa Poll published Saturday night reveals....

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won the Value Voters Summit presidential straw poll on Saturday. The crowd burst onto applause on Saturday, as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins announced that Cruz won 25 percent of votes at the annual Washington conference. The victory is a big victory to the Republican firebrand and Tea Party icon, coming just a day after he drew standing ovations with a religious and emotional speech that blasted ObamaCare, congressional Democrats and called for Republicans to take over the White House in 2016. Cruz also won the straw poll in 2013. Coming in second was...

Think the Senate will be decided on Election Day, Nov. 4? There are all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't, unless in the next seven weeks one side or the other — probably the Republicans — starts opening up a clear lead in enough races to give them a clear majority. If neither side does, control of the Senate could remain up in the air — for a while. At the very least, political watchers are going to be in for a longer night than usual because one of the key races that is likely to determine control, Sen. Mark...

Denver Post: “A new poll by Quinnipiac University has Republican Cory Gardner ahead of Democrat Mark Udall by a striking 8 percentage points in their race for U.S. Senate — the challenger’s largest lead to-date among public polls. The survey of more than 1,200 likely Colorado voters favored Gardner 48 to 40 percent to the incumbent Udall, with independent, or unaffiliated, candidate Steve Shogan taking home 8 percent.” [A new Gallup survey released this morning finds Republicans are now viewed just as favorably as Democrats, rebounding from their low of 28 percent during last fall’s government shutdown. Respondents held equal...

It’s early, of course, and this is not scientific, but I thought it would be interesting and fun to see what you are thinking at this point in the process. You will only be allowed to vote once. Please note that there are two polls, one asking for your choice and another about your politics. Voting will close at noon on Thursday, and I will reveal the results then. All votes are anonymous, even to me. (POLL-AT-LINK)

Everybody knows there is no real leader in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But ask voters an open-ended question — Whom do you want to be the nominee? — and the range of answers can be breathtaking. That's what I did in an unplanned and totally unscientific way on my Twitter feed Tuesday afternoon. On Monday evening I posted a piece about Mike Huckabee's preparations for another run for the nomination in 2016. Twitter reaction to Huckabee was almost entirely negative: Nobody, or at least nobody reading my tweets on a Tuesday afternoon, seemed to like the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: A quick look at the calendar reminds us that today is just seven weeks away from this year’s midterm elections, when voters across the country will be deciding ballot issues and choosing state and local officeholders and members of Congress. With control of the U.S. Senate up for grabs, I headed to Iowa this past weekend, the site of one of the closest contests in the nation. If you love college football, the place to be in Iowa this past weekend was Iowa City, the home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, as they hosted the Iowa...

Hillary Clinton is heading to Iowa as the politician that most Democrats would choose as their 2016 presidential nominee. According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 53% of all registered Democrats contacted in Iowa said they would support Hillary Clinton if the 2016 caucuses were held today. That number far outpaces the 15% that would opt for Vice President Joe Biden, 7% who would choose Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 5% who would pick Sen. Bernie Sanders. Clinton will be visiting Iowa for the first time in six years on Sunday when she headlines the last Harkin Steak Fry. Biden, likewise, will...

Jeb Bush, Florida’s former governor, is still deciding whether to jump into the 2016 race. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continues to endure an investigation into whether his administration abused its power by intentionally creating traffic jams. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is struggling to convince conservatives that he is not a foreign policy isolationist while Islamic terrorists run rampant through Iraq and Syria and execute Americans journalists. A dozen or more prominent Republicans have been testing the national political waters for more than a year trying to decide whether to make a bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination....

Is the political indictment of Gov. Rick Perry already backfiring on Democrat governor hopeful Wendy Davis? Gov. Perry’s official courthouse portrait immediately became the Mugshot Seen ‘Round the World. Instead of becoming a liability, it became a badge of honor. It will probably be on campaign T-shirts, mugs and shot glasses (the Rick Perry “MugShot” is irresistible) before long. Perry followed that visit up with a trip for ice cream, sealing the win on what the Democrats hoped would be a terrible day for him and the beginning of the end of the Perry era. The case itself is already...