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AMY CHOZICK, ALEXANDER BURNS, and JONATHAN MARTIN write at the NY Times: Democrats could hardly believe their good fortune last month when it became clear that Hillary Clinton was headed to a general election showdown with Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump carried so much baggage and had insulted so many voting blocs that some Clinton supporters began to imagine a landslide. But early optimism that this would be an easy race is evaporating. In the corridors of Congress, on airplane shuttles between New York and Washington, at donor gatherings and on conference calls, anxiety is spreading through the Democratic Party...

If you had a decent history teacher in high school, you were taught that European democracies are slightly different from those in the Americas, both north and south. Democracies in this Western Hemisphere tend to be ethnic stews governed, with varying degrees of faithfulness, by constitutions and compacts. European democracies are built around nationalities — tribes of same-language peoples. A President Donald Trump and his “great again” appeals would push us closer toward the European model than we already are, his critics contend. If they’re right, a heightened season of racial tension could be in our Southern future. Some of...

For the first time in this long election campaign, Republican Donald Trump has pulled ahead of Democrat Hillary Clinton in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. Mrs Clinton's double-digit lead, which she has held over the past several months, has vanished - and with it, apparently, Democrats' dreams of a transformational 2016 victory that would leave Republicans wandering the wilderness for a generation. What happened? A closer look at those poll numbers offers some clarity....

emocrats hoped this presidential election would be a cakewalk. In their eyes, the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, spent most of the spring alienating big chunks of the electorate, beginning with women. Meanwhile, the presumptive Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, has run a careful, well-funded, well-honed campaign. What could go wrong? And yet, in a spate of reputable surveys Trump has suddenly erased the advantage Clinton had held all year. The average of major polls compiled by the website RealClearPolitics shows the two candidates tied with 43 percent each. In at least three polls, Trump has even pulled ahead by a...

If Sanders were somehow able to beat Clinton, he’d be the least vetted, most vulnerable major-party nominee in American history. So Bernie’s still at it, telling George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that he thinks it’s not impossible for him to get 70 percent of the vote in every remaining state. Impossible. If anyone’s likely to hit 70 anywhere, it’s Hillary Clinton in Puerto Rico. Maybe Sanders can do it in the Dakotas, but even that seems ludicrous, because those states have primaries, not caucuses, and he’s never won a primary by that kind of margin except in his home state. But...

A new national poll suggests that Bernie Sanders' continued presence in the Democratic primary has damaged front-runner Hillary Clinton by helping close the gap between the former secretary of state and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday shows that Clinton's lead over the billionaire businessman has shrunk to just three points, with the former first lady "weighed down by resistance from [a] significant chunk of Sanders supporters," as CNBC chief Washington correspondent John Harwood tweeted. Pollsters, too, have attributed Clinton's shrinking lead in part to resistance from Sanders supporters....

Donald Trump 's surge in the polls isn't just the result of the usual bump presidential candidates historically enjoy after they sew up the primary battles and earn the "presumptive nominee" title. And it's also not just the result of Hillary Clinton 's mistakes, even though she is making some serious campaign errors right now. What has been happening over the last few weeks is that Trump has changed his attack and messaging in a subtle but effective way, so subtle that many pundits may have missed it. But here are the three things Trump is doing very well right...

In an email sent out on Wednesday, Bernie 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver declared plans to push for a contested convention in Philadelphia in July. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 47% of Likely Democratic Voters believe the Democratic Party should be more like Clinton, but 39% say it should be more like Sanders. He campaigned in OR and California on Tuesday and his victory in West Virginia highlighted anew Clinton's struggles to win over white men and independents - weaknesses Trump wants to exploit in the fall campaign. The split on the left comes after months...

In a recent editorial for Fox News, Wayne Allyn Root tried to explain why Hillary Clinton is sinking faster than the Titanic. It’s still far too early to say whether the Carpathia will arrive in time to pluck Hillary’s supporters out of the frigid waters, but yet another set of early indicators shows that this race is shaping up to be anything but the blowout that Trump’s detractors have been predicting from day one. ABC News and the Washington Post have posted a new set of numbers which are firming up the trend indicated in previous results we saw from...

On Wednesday afternoon, Fox News released a new national poll showing Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton, 45 to 42 percent, a 10-point swing since the previous Fox survey a month ago. The poll sparked a discussion on social media, which included the usual caveats: It’s just one poll (true); Trump is almost certainly not leading Clinton by three points (also true: the pollster.com average has her up three points); professional Democrats enjoy freaking out (undeniably true); and we still have months of campaigning (sadly true). Trump got a bump for essentially wrapping up the Republican nomination; Clinton, meanwhile, is still...

Cruz refuses to call his campaign dead. He said in the interview that he might resurrect his campaign if he sees a path towards victory. However, Cruz’s campaign has left enough supporters into position of power among the Republican delegates. These supporters can have a substantial impact even if Trump is the sole nominee left. Read more

Donald Trump didn't just outlast a long list of Republican challengers to be the last man standing for the presidential nomination. He won by remaking the Republican Primary electorate itself. About 25.7 million people have voted in the 2016 Republican primaries and caucuses so far. That's about seven million more votes than were cast in the entire 2012 GOP presidential primary - and there are likely still well over two million votes yet to be cast in nine states this year, including in the nation's most populous state, California.

We, the undersigned, will never vote for Donald Trump. We stand united to defend basic, common decency and Constitutional principles. And we will do our part to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination and ensure that he never becomes Commander-in-Chief. Never means never. 36,829 people have signed their name to this pledge. We need to stand together and send a clear message that we reject Trump. Add your name now.

Nebraska is the next stop on the campaign trail for the GOP candidates. The Nebraska Republican primary will take place May 10 with 36 delegates at stake. The delegates are awarded in winner-take-all fashion with the candidate with the most votes statewide winning all 36 delegates. There have been no early polls taken in Nebraska but this will likely change in the coming days. PredictWise aggregates the betting markets to project primary winners. They give Donald Trump a 71 percent chance of winning the state while Ted Cruz has just a 29 percent chance of pulling off the upset.

Donald Trump may be a runaway train. He has blasted through his 50 percent “ceiling,” outperforming his polls and winning a clear majority in the last six states to cast ballots. All that success occurred in the Northeast, however, so here’s the question: Is Trump wrapping up this nomination, or is he just really strong in the Northeast? We’ll get some answers in Indiana on Tuesday. It’s a culturally conservative state where many political observers (including yours truly) thought Ted Cruz had a good shot at coalescing the anti-Trump vote. Indiana is also, in terms of demographics, slightly below average...

Belief that Donald Trump is the likely Republican presidential nominee has soared to its highest level ever and matches perceptions that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic standard-bearer in the fall.

If you donÂ’t know by now why Indiana is important, you must have missed this post and a good 8,000 similar explainers elsewhere in political media. Long story short, IndianaÂ’s one of the few states left on the map where either Cruz or Trump might plausibly do well. With 57 delegates at stake, a win or loss for Trump there could be the difference between him reaching 1,237 delegates on the first ballot and falling a few dozen short. ItÂ’s essentially a must-win for Cruz to force a contested convention. But heÂ’s not winning, at least according to three private...

Via Red State, not a huge deal but worth flagging in case there’s another poll this weekend showing his numbers dipping a bit in New York on the eve of the primary. That would suggest a trend, and that would be a big deal given what’s at stake. To be clear: Trump’s going to romp in NY on Tuesday night, winning by 25 points or better, and will pick up something like 75 delegates even in a worst-case scenario. But since his path to 1,237 is so difficult, it matters a lot whether he ends up with 75 in New...

Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward, challenging U.S. Senator Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), leads the five-term Washington insider for the first time in a poll. Her lead stands at nine percent. Ward was the choice of 45 percent of the registered Arizona voters polled, while McCain only garnered 36 percent. 1,271 of the more than 1,400 voters polled say they intend to vote in the 2016 primary election. Approximately one fifth remained undecided at this early stage of the race. Independent polling company Gravis Marketing conducted the August 15 poll. It surveyed 844 Republican primary voters and 427 Democratic.

With two weeks to go until Marylanders vote in their Republican primary, Donald Trump has a small lead over both Ted Cruz and John Kasich, who are currently splitting the non-Trump vote evenly, according to a new Washington Free Beacon poll. The poll of 600 likely Republican voters found Trump earning 33 percent of the vote, with single-digit leads over Cruz and Kasich, who earned 26 and 25 percent of the vote, respectively. The poll indicates that Trump’s lead in the state is shrinking, but it may not matter unless one of his rivals can consolidate voters unwilling to support...