Free Republic

With a cloture vote on the Senate’s immigration reform bill expected next week, countless commentators have expressed the view that if Republicans don’t sign on for reform, the party is doomed at the presidential level for a generation. This is the first in a two-part series explaining why this conventional wisdom is incorrect. Signing on to a comprehensive immigration package is probably part of one way for Republicans to form a winning coalition at the presidential level, but it isn’t the only way (for more, I’ve written a book about this, as well as countless articles here at RCP). Today...

The dust may still be settling on the 2012 election, but there is good reason for conservatives to find optimism for the future. Recently, I found such hope reviewing the full exit poll data from our recent election. The bottom line on the presidential race was this: Mitt Romney lost the election because voters liked him less than Barack Obama. Despite claims otherwise, the election was not a referendum on Obama’s record or even red state values versus blue state values. Obama and the Democrats have claimed a “mandate,” but the data shows voters actually oppose President Obama’s programs like...

NEW YORK (WLS) - A coalition of women and nonwhites helped re-elect President Obama to a second term Tuesday night. Obama has always performed better with women than with men, and with nonwhites than with whites. But on Tuesday night, those numbers were so much in his favor that they built Obama a powerful firewall against a dropoff in support from white men and independent voters. Nonwhite voters turned out to vote in higher numbers than ever. They made up 21 percent of all voters. In 1996, they were just 10 percent. That new bloc was evident in Florida, the...

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning. Dan Merkle, director of elections for ABC News, and a member of the consortium that runs the exit poll, confirmed the shift Wednesday. The aim, he said, “is to still deliver a quality product in the most important states,” in the face of mounting survey costs. Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a...