Free Republic

The effects of Donald Trump’s presidency on the American economy are widely debated, but there’s at least one field of production whose boom is indisputably a result of his election: the conservative voter ethnography industry. Since Trump’s rise, article after article has tracked down Trump voters in some small town in a formerly Democratic state. The pieces vary in tone — some are journalistically objective, others are more personal — but they all seem to end with the author silently shaking their head, confounded by the unbreachable irrationality of these voters. Monica Potts’s recent opinion piece in the New York...

WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - A strong U.S. economy could help President Donald Trump win re-election next year unless there is a surge in voter turnout, economic research firm Moody’s Analytics said on Tuesday. Across American universities and on Wall Street, researchers are honing computer models designed to predict the winner in the November 2020 election in which the Republican Trump will face a Democratic candidate still to be determined. What makes Moody’s Analytics stand out is its focus on local economic conditions, which have drawn attention this year as a U.S.-China trade war has hit America’s industrial heartland even...

California, whose new leftist governor, Gavin Newsom, has big ambitions to be the counter-president for now, and eventually replace President Trump, has this one little problem that always comes of socialist rule:The locals are fleeing.  And now it turns out half the ones who haven't fled are thinking about it. Just over half of California’s registered vote have considered leaving the state, with soaring housing costs cited as the most common reason for wanting to move, according to a new poll. Young voters were especially likely to cite unaffordable housing as a reason for leaving, according to the latest latest UC...

This survey from Morning Consult comes out at a particularly apt time. We’ve just finished the “climate strike” where students and teachers walked out in protest of a lack of action by the government to combat global warming. There was a big meeting at the UN on the subject. A teenage girl has been scolding the leaders of the free world and the cable news networks have been eating it up. The 2020 Democratic hopefuls were up in arms because there wasn’t a separate debate dealing only with that subject.So is this what’s really on the minds of voters...

A first-draft plan for Arkansas roadway spending shows lane additions to the Greenwood bypass and Arkansas 22 between Charleston and Fort Smith, as well as potential Interstate 49 construction in the Fort Smith area. Dubbed the CAP-2 draft by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, the Connecting Arkansas Program-2 list is a “data driven” starting point work that will largely be contingent on the continuation of a half-percent sales tax next year, according to ARDOT spokesperson Danny Straessle. “The governor proposes to make it permanent,” Straessle said. “This is a list of about 20 years of work.” In a recent meeting,...

As the Democrat Left seeks to circumvent the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote Compact, in which states agree to assign their presidential electors to whomever receives the most votes nationally, even if the other candidate won their state, a federal appeals court has thrown even more shade at voters. As the Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday, a federal appeals court in Colorado ruled 2-1 that the then-secretary of state was wrong to remove and replace an elector who wanted to cast his ballot for GOP alternative John Kasich rather than Hillary Clinton, who won in Colorado. [...] You...

There is no longer any reason to regard the union movement in the United States as working to support the interests of its dues-paying members. Instead, it has become a fundraising adjunct to the Democrats, one using the force of coercion to confiscate a portion of members’ paychecks and send most of it to the party that is working to depress their wages by flooding the labor market with illegal immigrants. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO and therefore the top labor leader in the United States, is now all-in on protecting illegal immigrants. ... The Democrats need millions of...

Nobody in the state seems to like the job Utah's congressional delegation is doing in Washington, and they don't much care for Republicans and Democrats in Congress or the Utah Legislature, either. No Utah member of Congress cracked even a 45 percent approval rating in a UtahPolicy.com and Y2 Analytics poll released Friday. "I think voters are disgusted in general with Washington, D.C., and what's happening there and the lack of progress no matter who is in control," said LaVarr Webb, UtahPolicy.com publisher.

If approved, it would have imposed a levy of 16 cents per square foot of building improvements on properties within the district. On a 1,700-square-foot home, that would have amounted to another $272 of tax per year. A parcel tax is not based on the assessed value of a property, but is generally a flat fee based on square footage. It requires a two-thirds margin for approval. LAUSD desperately needed the tax to pass in order to cover the increase in costs associated with the latest teachers’ union contract. In January, LAUSD’s 34,000 teachers went on a 9-day strike, the...

Did a search and noting popped up so... The California Senate moved forward Thursday in its effort to keep President Trump off the primary ballot in 2020 unless he releases his tax returns. The state Senate approved a bill, 27-10, requiring candidates that on the presidential primary ballot to release at least five years’ worth of tax returns. This would include President Trump, who has refused to release his returns, citing that he is under audit. "We believe that President Trump, if he truly doesn’t have anything to hide, should step up and release his tax returns,” said Democratic state...

Fifty-three percent of voters believe political corruption is a crisis in the United States, while another 36% believe it is a significant problem but not a crisis. That's consistent with other ScottRasmussen.com polling data showing that 87% of voters nationwide believe corruption is widespread in the federal government. Solid majorities believe there is also corruption in state (70%) and local (57%) government. The belief that our nation has a political corruption crisis is shared by 53% of women, 52% of men, 51% of white voters, 55% of black and Hispanic voters, 54% of rural voters, 53% of suburban voters and...

- The young woman above is almost certainly one of the minority of Americans that believes owning a gun is immoral. A recent Rassmussen poll revealed that 20% of registered voters in the United States believe owning a gun is immoral. From jacksonville.com: Beyond specific issues, the attitudes being voiced by many progressive Democrats seem almost designed specifically to antagonize Midwestern voters. Twenty percent of all voters consider owning a gun immoral, and 20% believe it is immoral to call for limits on government. Eleven percent think eating meat and having children are also immoral. The specific Rassmussen poll...

With Milwaukee set to host the 2020 Democratic convention, the Democratic National Committee is counting in part on the region’s fast-growing Asian American and Pacific Islander population to help them win back the Midwest. “In certain states, the Asian-American vote is enough to help make that margin of victory,” Rep. Grace Meng, of New York, a DNC vice chair, said in a phone interview last week.

Congressional Democrats are committing a grave political blunder by continuing to push Russia conspiracy theories and insinuating that Attorney General William Barr is perpetrating a cover-up by complying with the law in his handling of the Mueller report. In addition to the special counsel probe, which produced no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice by the Trump campaign, there have been two congressional inquiries that also failed to find proof of malfeasance. Several polls conducted since the Mueller probe ended suggest that most Americans believe the President is innocent of wrongdoing and that the Democrats are merely playing politics....

Voters who identify as independents are rarely actually independent -- and the ones who are tend to not care about politics, according to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center. Independents are often seen as the best possibility for potential candidates to pick up votes outside their bases, but most independents actually "lean" toward one party or another, according to the analysis. Less than 10% of the population say they truly have no partisan lean...

The world's population is aging while many countries' birth rates fail to keep up. There are now more people over the age of 65 than there are under the age of five - a dispersion that's never occurred before, according to Deutsche Bank. The data point is part of a broader trend with widespread consequences for productivity, inflation, and global growth, economists say. Fund managers are taking notice of "secular stagnation" conditions often associated with persistent low inflation and low growth, and adjusting their allocations accordingly. The world's population isn't getting any younger. In fact, it's getting much, much older....

By comparison, notes WaPo, the worst number Obama pulled during his first term when people were asked if they definitely wouldn’t vote for him for reelection was 46 percent. Coincidentally, or not coincidentally, his opponent in 2012 went on to win 47 percent of the national vote.So maybe this is a data point worth paying attention to.Some of the usual excuses for grim polls don’t apply in this case either. “It’s just one poll!” Actually, it’s not. Two weeks ago a PBS/NPR poll found nearly the same number, 57 percent, vowing they wouldn’t vote for Trump again. “It’s fake...

A new survey found that just 7 percent of Americans don’t think that illegal immigration is a problem following a summer of immigration crises, caravans at our border, and images of migrants rushing Border Patrol agents in an attempt to storm the country. A wide-ranging Economist/YouGov survey analyzed the level of concern Americans have on the issue, finding that a fraction of respondents believe illegal immigration is “not a problem.”

Good news for the voters in California/country.We have signed a settlement agreement with the State of California and the County of Los Angeles under which they will begin the process of removing from their voter registration rolls as many as 1.5 million inactive registered names that may be invalid.These removals are required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a federal law requiring the removal of inactive registrations from the voter rolls after two general federal elections (encompassing from 2 to 4 years). Inactive voter registrations belong, for the most part, to voters who have moved to another county or state or...

Is there any point in writing to a congressperson? Are letters or calls they receive actually likely to affect their choices? Greg Beuke, former Congressional Intern at U.S. Senate (2004) Answered Dec 12 · Featured on Quora's Twitter · Upvoted by Carter Moore, Degree in Political Science, former Congressional aide and Federal employee and Kate Rothwell, writer with books published by Kensington, Ellora's Cave, Simon and Schuster, Carina, Samhain and o… As a former intern for a United States Senator, I can tell you exactly what happens when you write to a congressperson. One of my key intern duties was...