tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/marco-rubio-4663/articlesMarco Rubio – The Conversation2023-03-30T23:23:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2026272023-03-30T23:23:06Z2023-03-30T23:23:06ZAs the US pushes to make daylight saving permanent, should Australia move in the same direction?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518118/original/file-20230329-20-n4ephn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C22%2C4947%2C2784&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sunday will mark the end of the Daylight Saving Time (DST) in eastern Australia, but there are many who would like to see it last longer or permanently.</p>
<p>Twice a year, New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and South Australia make this shift. Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory do not change times. In those states the issue has been hotly debated for years. But what would be the benefit of making time permanent, and is it feasible?</p>
<p>In the United States, the push to fix time has gathered pace, with a bipartisan bill <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/us/politics/daylight-savings-bill-marco-rubio.html">reintroduced</a> to the House this month. The Sunshine Protection Act is set to bring uniformity in fixing the time, starting from November 2023. If enacted, it means daylight saving would be permanent across the US.</p>
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<p>The bill passed the Senate in March 2022. It was received at the House, but Americans are split on whether they prefer permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time – the bill then expired and so had to be reintroduced.</p>
<p>The proponents argue the biannual ritual of switching time <a href="https://healthnews.com/news/forwarding-time-potentially-a-health-hazard-expert-suggests/">is a health hazard</a> leading to insomnia, decline in mental health, increased risk of hospitalisations and accidents. The solution, they argue, is to <a href="https://fortune.com/well/2023/03/06/daylight-saving-time-is-hurting-your-health/">restore</a> permanent, year-round standard time.</p>
<p>Would fixing time permanently have benefits in Australia?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-daylight-saving-time-is-unhealthy-a-neurologist-explains-175427">Why daylight saving time is unhealthy – a neurologist explains</a>
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<h2>Why the US is considering fixing permanent time</h2>
<p>One of the US policy’s goals is to reduce energy consumption. However, according to the latest research, contrary to the policy’s intent,<a href="https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/93/4/1172/57919/Does-Daylight-Saving-Time-Save-Energy-Evidence">daylight saving caused</a> increased electricity demand in the US. Research has also found it <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=981688">does not conserve electricity in Australia</a>. </p>
<p>Overwhelmingly, recent research opposes the current situation of changing the clocks twice year. In particular, the loss of one hour of sleep in spring has been <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p622.full">linked</a> to an increase in heart attacks, strokes, road accidents and negative mood. </p>
<p>Moreover, with mobile phones available in offices and bedrooms, the shift to daylight saving was shown to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22369272/">result in a dramatic increase</a> in “cyberloafing”. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518119/original/file-20230329-16-pbsmx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Thanks to mobile phone use, research shows daylight saving has caused an increase in ‘cyberloafing’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>On the Monday following the switch, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-12532-013">employees sustain more workplace injuries</a> and injuries of greater severity, according an analysis of data from the US Department of Labor and Mine Safety and Health Administration between 1983-2006, although there is a decrease in injuries when employees are gaining one hour of sleep. </p>
<p>In a study of Australian suicide data from 1971 to 2001, researchers found <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1111/j.1479-8425.2007.00331.x">a rise in male suicide rates</a> in the weeks following the commencement of daylight saving, concluding the shifts could be destabilising for vulnerable people.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35622532/">health evidence</a> is, in fact, contrary to idea behind the current legislation and instead suggests a permanent switch to standard time may offer the maximum health and public safety benefits.</p>
<p>Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is strongly supporting the bill, <a href="https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/2022/11/03/6363f0ab46163fe7848b4571.html">told the Senate</a>:</p>
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<p>There’s some strong science behind it that is now showing and making people aware of the harm that clock-switching has. I know this is not the most important issue confronting America, but it’s one of those issues where there’s a lot of agreement. If we can get this passed, we don’t have to do this stupidity anymore. Pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come.</p>
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<h2>Australian legislation - move to uniformity</h2>
<p>Standard time legislation dates back to 1890s. That is when jurisdictions enacted uniform legislation related to standard Greenwich Mean Time. For example, Tasmania fixed the time of the <a href="https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/2003-12-01/act-1895-004">150th meridian of longitude east of Greenwich</a> and Western Australia <a href="https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/statutes.nsf/law_a772.html">declared the mean time of the 120th meridian</a> as the standard time. At that stage, the legislation was consistent. This continued until the daylight saving debate commenced. </p>
<p>Daylight saving was first considered at the Premiers’ Conference in May 1915. During the first and second world wars, national daylight time operated in Australia. Tasmania and Victoria introduced daylight saving in 1916. In Tasmania, the act was repealed by the <em>Daylight-Saving Repeal Act 1917</em> (Tas). In 1967, Tasmania again introduced daylight savings. </p>
<p>By 1990, <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-3292-2">the jurisdictions were changing the dates</a> on which to introduce daylight savings, and their positions were not uniform. </p>
<p>Liberal Senator Paul Calvert <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/calls-for-pm-to-set-daylight-saving-dates-20051113-ge18b2.html">described</a> the “maze of different times” as a “shackle on the economy, as well as causing interruptions to work and family balance”. </p>
<p>Then-prime minister John Howard <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/calls-for-pm-to-set-daylight-saving-dates-20051113-ge18b2.html">stated</a>: “I think it’s a great pity that we have this month when Tasmania and NSW and Victoria are on different time zones.” </p>
<p>Starting from September 1 2005, all jurisdictions adopted the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard. Following long deliberations, in April 2007 they agreed on a uniform start and end date. </p>
<p>Queensland, WA and the NT have fixed permanent time. </p>
<p>South Australia became an international anomaly by having 30 minutes difference, rather than full hour, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-12/business-backs-sa-time-zone-shift,-but-some-regions-worried/6385030">to achieve a compromise</a> between strong advocacy groups within the jurisdiction.</p>
<p>One of the arguments against fixing is geographical location. Tasmania has more drastic variation in sun activity compared to Northern Territory. The scientific solution would be to <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00944/full#B47">fix the time</a> but reassign the regions to the actual sun-clock based time zones.</p>
<p>Where does all this leave us? While daylight saving is not the most pressing problem facing Australia today, it may be that soon enough, the scientific evidence and practical convenience of fixing time might be preferred to biannual shifts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guzyal Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While many support the idea, the health evidence suggests that it might be more beneficial for us to stay on standard time.Guzyal Hill, Senior Lecturer, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508202021-02-26T13:27:19Z2021-02-26T13:27:19ZA less Trumpy version of Trumpism might be the future of the Republican Party<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385951/original/file-20210223-13-8mn2wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2968%2C2047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is Sen. Marco Rubio, espousing a polished populism, the future of the GOP?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-marco-rubio-speaks-before-the-arrival-of-u-s-president-news-photo/1283437043?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, but his populist ideas may continue to animate the Republican Party.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/one-nation-two-realities-9780190677176?cc=us&lang=en&">scholars of American beliefs and elections</a>, we can envision a less Trumpy version of Trumpism holding sway over the party in coming years. We call it “polished populism.”</p>
<p>Populism is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716216662639">folk-politics</a> based on the premise that ordinary citizens are wiser and more virtuous than supposedly corrupt and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/future-populism-2020s/604393/">self-serving elites</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/10/we-the-people-the-battle-to-define-populism">Populist rhetoric</a> is often expressed in cruder, coarser language than ordinary political speech – less like a politician on a stage and <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-most-populist-lines-from-trumps-speech-20170120-htmlstory.html">more like a guy in a bar</a>. </p>
<p>Trump, a prime practitioner of populist rhetoric, took this to an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRXESV3R74">extreme</a> with the shorthand of Twitter and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/insider/Trump-twitter-insults-list.html">insults</a> of the locker room.</p>
<p>Polished populists take a different approach, arguing for the <a href="https://www.amacad.org/news/populism-and-future-american-politics">same policies</a> that Trump did – <a href="https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/3/27/15037232/trump-populist-appeal-culture-economy">limiting immigration</a>, redistributing wealth toward the <a href="https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2020/article/populism-puzzle">working class</a> rather than just the poor, opposing the woke policies of <a href="http://yris.yira.org/comments/2666">social justice movements</a>, promoting “America First” foreign and <a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/populism_and_the_economics_of_globalization.pdf">trade policies</a> – but without his overtly antagonistic language. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/bulwark-never-trump-republicans-biden/617025/">Some Republicans</a> are now <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/the-never-trumpers-next-move/609064/">arguing for a rejection of populism and a return to traditional conservatism</a>. Those <a href="https://www.nhbr.com/traditional-republican-values/">long-standing GOP priorities</a> include limited government, strong national defense of American interests abroad, religious values and, perhaps most importantly, ordinary political personalities.</p>
<p>For two reasons – the GOP’s <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-swing-states/">narrow electoral defeat in 2020</a> and the <a href="https://www.axios.com/republican-party-demographics-threat-trump-racism-1524a8a1-c2f1-4183-896f-107420e2d50a.html">changing demographics of the Republican Party</a> – we believe that populist policies, if not rhetoric, will continue to be a dominant theme of the Republican Party.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="President Trump at a massive rally just before the election." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">President Donald Trump smiles after speaking during an election rally on Nov. 3, 2020, in Grand Rapids, Mich.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-smiles-after-speaking-during-a-rally-news-photo/1229431380?adppopup=true">Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Populism versus traditional conservatism</h2>
<p>The contemporary <a href="https://www.wpr.org/how-reagan-helped-usher-new-conservatism-american-politics">conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan</a> in the 1980s and <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020430.html">George W. Bush in the 2000s</a> has several facets and factions, but it can be summed up in the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/A-Citizens-Guide-to-American-Ideology-Conservatism-and-Liberalism-in-Contemporary/Marietta/p/book/9780415899000">phrase</a>, “You keep what you earn, it’s a dangerous world, and God is good.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.routledge.com/A-Citizens-Guide-to-American-Ideology-Conservatism-and-Liberalism-in-Contemporary/Marietta/p/book/9780415899000">economic, national defense and social conservatives</a> of previous decades tended to agree that human nature is untrustworthy and society is fragile, so the U.S. needs to defend against external enemies and internal decline. </p>
<p>Populist conservatism accepts those views but adds something different: the interests and perceptions of “ordinary” people against “elites.” <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-populism-and-why-does-it-have-a-bad-reputation-109874">So populism</a> rejects the notion of a natural aristocracy of wealth and education, replacing it with the idea that people it considers elites, including career politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics, have been promoting their own interests at the expense of regular folk.</p>
<h2>The identity divide</h2>
<p>The recent rise of populism in America has been driven in part by a clear economic reality: <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality">The expansion of wealth over the last 40 years</a> has gone almost entirely to the upper reaches of society. At the same time, <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/">the middle has stagnated or declined economically</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-erupts-when-people-feel-disconnected-and-disrespected-151423">populist interpretation</a> is that elites benefited from the globalization and technological advancements they encouraged, while the advantages of those trends bypassed ordinary working people. Calls for trade protections and national borders appeal to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12319">Americans who feel left behind</a>.</p>
<p>Populism also has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-political-divide-on-both-sides-of-atlantic-populists-v-cosmopolitans-59876">cultural aspect</a>: rejection of the perceived <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103116305509">condescension</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/education-prejudice.html">smugness</a> of the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-highly-educated-elites-are-stuck-in-a-nightmare-of-their-own-making/2020/11/13/bcde3c98-25d7-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html">highly educated elite</a>.”</p>
<p>In that sense, populism is driven by identity (who someone believes they are like, and perhaps more importantly, who they are not like). For populists, the like-minded are ordinary folk – middle income, middle-brow educations at public high schools and state universities, often middle-of-the-country – and the dissimilar are the products of expensive educations and urban lifestyles.</p>
<p>While traditional conservatism <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/opinion/politics/never-trump-republican-party.html?">has not vanished from the GOP</a>, populist perceptions dominate the new <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-rapidly-becoming-blue-collar-party-here-s-what-means-n1258468">working-class foundations</a> of the party. And those reflect the <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/527863-the-diploma-divide-in-american-politics">emerging divide in education</a>. </p>
<p>The base of the Republican Party has shifted from more wealthy and educated Americans to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/education-gap-explains-american-politics/575113/">voters without college degrees</a>. In the 1990s, whites who did not attend college tended to back Democrat Bill Clinton, but in 2016 they <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/">supported Republican Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton</a> by 39 percentage points. In 2020, it was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html">roughly the same</a> for Trump over Biden. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In 2002, President George W. Bush spoke about the ideals represented in his ‘compassionate conservatism’ to representatives from local community groups in Cleveland, Ohio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-george-w-bush-delivers-a-speech-to-about-3-000-news-photo/51684553?adppopup=true">Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The 2020 outcome and the GOP future</h2>
<p>We believe the Republican Party will be slow to move away from this new identity.</p>
<p>Even after a pandemic, a recession, an impeachment, four years of anti-immigration sentiment and the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump still received <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-popular-vote-record-barack-obama-us-presidential-election-donald-trump/">more votes than any presidential candidate in history not named Joe Biden</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/biden-popular-vote-margin-7-million/index.html">Biden’s overall victory was by a margin of 7 million votes</a>. But his victory in the Electoral College relied on a total of <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/did-biden-win-little-or-lot-answer-yes-n1251845">45,000 votes in three states</a>. This was similar to Trump’s narrow 2016 Electoral College margin of 77,000 votes, also in three states. A strong Republican candidate, a foreign policy problem for the incumbent Democrat or a small piece of luck could shift the presidency back to the other party.</p>
<p>Support for Republicans even <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-increases-share-black-hispanic-vote-1544698">grew somewhat among traditionally Democratic African American and Hispanic voters</a>, despite the GOP’s anti-Black Lives Matter and anti-immigrant rhetoric. </p>
<p>Clearly, Trumpism was <a href="https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/notes-on-the-state-of-the-2020-election/">not repudiated by voters in the way that Democrats had hoped</a>. It is entirely possible that if the pandemic had not occurred – which was a major source of the decline in his support – Donald Trump <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-covid-19-led-to-donald-trumps-defeat-150110">would still be in the White House</a>. </p>
<p>The GOP could conclude that its loss was only due to an outside event and not a fundamental rejection of policy. That would give the party little incentive to change course, aside from changing the face on the poster.</p>
<p>Over the next four years we believe the GOP will solidify the transition to a populist base, though not without resistance from traditional conservatives. </p>
<p>Republican victory in a future presidential election would likely require an alliance between traditional and populist conservatives, with both groups turning out to vote. The question is which one will lead the coalition. </p>
<p>The competition for the 2024 Republican nomination will likely also be a contest between these two party bases and ideologies, with the emerging winner defining the post-Trump GOP.</p>
<h2>The 2024 standard bearers</h2>
<p>The Republican contenders for the 2024 nomination and the new leadership of the GOP include a broad range of populists versus traditional conservatives. </p>
<p>Perhaps a leading indicator of the move toward polished populism is the shift in the rhetoric employed by <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio">Marco Rubio</a>. </p>
<p>The senator from Florida was once a traditional conservative, but has shifted toward populism after his trouncing by Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Recently he argued that “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/525585-rubio-gop-must-rebrand-as-party-of-multiethnic-multiracial-working-class-voters%20https:/thehill.com/homenews/news/525585-rubio-gop-must-rebrand-as-party-of-multiethnic-multiracial-working-class-voters">the future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition</a>,” defined as “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/525585-rubio-gop-must-rebrand-as-party-of-multiethnic-multiracial-working-class-voters">normal, everyday people who don’t want to live in a city where there is no police department, where people rampage through the streets every time they are upset about something</a>.”</p>
<p>The opposing trend toward rejecting Trumpist populism is exemplified by the shift in the <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/magazine-nikki-haleys-choice/">arguments made</a> by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nikki-haley-americans-woke-left-biden-president">Nikki Haley</a>. Haley, the U.N. ambassador under the Trump administration and former South Carolina governor, has <a href="https://6abc.com/nikki-haley-trump-interview-politico-us-capitol-riots/10333025/">rejected Trump’s leadership</a>, now arguing that “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/538573-haley-breaks-with-trump-we-shouldnt-have-followed-him">we shouldn’t have followed him</a>.”</p>
<p>These two Republicans and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/531796-five-gop-contenders-other-than-trump-for-2024">several others</a> see a potential president in the mirror. Which one <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/531796-five-gop-contenders-other-than-trump-for-2024">mirrors the current GOP</a> will depend on the realignment or retrenchment between the populists and the traditionalists.</p>
<p>Polished populism – Trump’s policies without his personality – may be the future of the GOP’s identity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump’s ticket to the White House was a coarse version of populism. Will his successors in the GOP be different – or simply present a more polished version of his antagonistic rhetoric?Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellDavid C. Barker, Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1119472019-02-18T13:16:32Z2019-02-18T13:16:32ZTrump may seek more punishment of Cuba<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259405/original/file-20190217-56232-1g3m074.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If Cuban exiles can sue businesses operating in Cuba, it could affect flights to the country, like this JetBlue landing in Havana.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Cuba-U-S-/085608a155c04bf5b52d6f19a246548c/12/0">AP/Desmond Boylan</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump may soon do a huge favor for Cuba’s wealthy, upper-class exiles, many of whom are now U.S. citizens living in Miami.</p>
<p>Some of them <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article213916384.html">still dream</a> of recouping their lost fortunes in Cuba, and Trump may try to make that possible.</p>
<p>Much of that wealthy upper class went into exile in Miami in the 1960s, when the Cuban revolution turned to socialism and Fidel Castro’s government <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Revolution">nationalized their businesses and confiscated</a> their property.</p>
<p>More than 20 years ago, Congress passed a sanctions law that included a provision to help these Cuban exiles who are now U.S. citizens. The <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article224646995.html">provision would allow them to sue in U.S. courts</a> companies that operate using property that the exiles lost in the 1959 revolution. </p>
<p>The lawsuit provision, known as Title III, was <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19991214_RL30386_714aa7ff79cec8fc7f29926c448f6d1bc1d6bef2.pdf">put on hold because it triggered immense opposition</a> from U.S. allies, whose companies operating in Cuba would become targets of litigation in U.S. courts. </p>
<p>If Trump activates the provision, it could reignite that opposition, complicating already rocky relations with Mexico, Canada, the European Union – and obviously Cuba – at a time when the U.S. needs <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/02/04/world/europe/ap-eu-venezuela-political-crisis.html">their help</a> to deal with the crisis in Venezuela.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/wleogra.cfm">scholar of U.S. relations with Latin America</a>, especially Cuba, I’ve closely followed the Trump administration’s growing antagonism toward Havana. But activating Title III would represent a quantum leap in hostility.</p>
<h2>Triggering new sanctions</h2>
<p>The people who stand to benefit from activating this law are Cuba’s pre-revolutionary rich – what was once <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/castro-cuban-exiles-america/">Cuba’s “One Percent.”</a></p>
<p>They arrived in the U.S. expecting Washington to quickly overthrow Fidel Castro and restore their power, property and privilege. Instead, the revolutionary government survived and by the <a href="https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/1139/1/S0900391_en.pdf">1990s was attracting foreign direct investment</a> from Canada, Europe and Latin America.</p>
<p>In 1996, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., sponsored the <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/documents/libertad.pdf">Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act</a>. It passed after anti-Cuba sentiment in the U.S. was galvanized when the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9602/cuba_shootdown/25/">Cuban Air Force shot down two civilian planes piloted by Cuban-Americans</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=723&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259406/original/file-20190217-56220-1ka7vl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cuban women who fled their country in an Immigration Service room in Jacksonville, Fla., while arrangements are made to grant them political asylum in the U.S., Jan. 1, 1959.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-FL-USA-APHS460141-Cuba-Revolution-C-/cfa63ac7d7ac445d95673fabb8324785/12/0">AP</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba/us-considering-allowing-lawsuits-over-cuba-confiscated-properties-idUSKCN1PA30I">Title III</a> of the law specifically targeted foreign investors in Cuba.</p>
<p>It gave naturalized Cuban Americans permission to <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/6023">sue in U.S. federal court anyone “trafficking” in (that is, using or profiting from) property</a> the exiles lost in the 1959 revolution, when they were Cuban citizens. </p>
<p>Normally, U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over property owned by non-citizens that is nationalized by a foreign government. For U.S. courts to sit in judgment of another government’s actions towards its own citizens would be a challenge to that government’s sovereignty.</p>
<p>Since virtually all property in pre-revolutionary Cuba was privately held, the foreign companies operating there, including many that also do business in the U.S., fear <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-cuba-economy/investors-in-cuba-wary-of-impact-from-u-s-threats-venezuela-crisis-idUSKCN1PW2UJ">being accused of profiting</a> from confiscated property and getting caught up in Title III lawsuits.</p>
<p>Consequently, U.S. allies bitterly opposed the law as illegal U.S. interference in their commerce with Cuba. </p>
<p>The European Union <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB931464187753635502">filed a complaint</a> against the U.S. with the World Trade Organization in 1996 and adopted a statute prohibiting EU members and their companies from complying with Title III. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/13/world/canada-and-mexico-join-to-oppose-us-law-on-cuba.html">Mexico, Canada</a> and the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1996/3171/contents/made">United Kingdom</a> passed similar legislation.</p>
<p>In response, President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/21/world/europeans-drop-lawsuit-contesting-cuba-trade-act.html">Bill Clinton suspended</a> Title III of the act for six months, which the law allowed. The suspension has to be renewed every six months. Since then, every president, Democrat and Republican, has renewed the suspension. Donald Trump has already renewed it three times.</p>
<p>But recently, there have been indications that the longtime practice of suspending Title III’s provisions may end soon.</p>
<p>In November 2018, National Security Adviser John <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article220976370.html">Bolton threatened to activate Title III</a>, saying, “This time, we’ll give it a very serious review.” In January, Secretary of State Mike <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/trump-weighs-dramatic-tightening-of-us-embargo-on-cuba/2019/01/17/4f8e3da0-1a8f-11e9-b8e6-567190c2fd08_story.html?utm_term=.5d3741640c7a">Pompeo announced</a> a short 45-day suspension while the administration studied the issue. </p>
<p>The president has until the end of February to notify Congress if he decides to extend the suspension. Otherwise, Title III takes effect automatically.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/259411/original/file-20190217-56212-10rq0o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., at a Miami event in 2017 where President Trump announced the revised policy against Cuba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Cuba/02e2bcf00f64494795fdf45389daf850/27/0">AP/Lynne Sladky</a></span>
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<h2>Politics in command</h2>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/the-mystery-of-the-havana-syndrome">The New Yorker</a> magazine, Trump gave White House staff paltry guidance on Cuba policy at the beginning of his administration. </p>
<p>“Make Rubio happy,” he told them. </p>
<p>Sen. <a href="https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/cuba-es/article224693495.html">Marco Rubio</a>, R-Fla., and Rep. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba/us-considering-allowing-lawsuits-over-cuba-confiscated-properties-idUSKCN1PA30I">Mario Díaz-Balart</a>, R-Fla, are <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article224646995.html">the principal advocates for Title III</a>. They are Cuban-Americans who represent the oldest, most conservative and wealthiest segment of the Miami Cuban community. From their mansions in Miami, that elite still wields disproportionate influence over U.S. policy through these legislators.</p>
<p>Most Cuban-Americans will gain nothing from Title III. It exempts private residences from compensation. So, if an exile’s main asset was their home, they are out of luck. </p>
<p>The provision also <a href="http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2019/01/more-on-title-iii.html">exempts businesses worth less than US$50,000 in 1959 </a> – $433,000 today, adjusted for inflation. The exiled owners of thousands of <a href="https://havanatimes.org/?p=74021">small mom-and-pop shops nationalized in 1968</a> are out of luck, too.</p>
<p>Still, a 1996 <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44822">State Department analysis</a> estimated that Title III could flood U.S. federal courts with as many as 200,000 lawsuits, creating a legal morass that would take years to sort out. </p>
<p>In the meantime, most U.S. firms and some foreign ones would likely <a href="https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2019-02-07/investors-in-cuba-wary-of-impact-from-us-threats-venezuela-crisis">hesitate to enter</a> into commercial relations with Cuba for fear of becoming litigation targets in the United States. That’s a major purpose of Title III – to stymie Cuba’s economic development. </p>
<p>Cuban American families have already voiced claims for the <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article213916384.html">port of Havana</a> and <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/cuba/us-might-allow-lawsuits-over-us-properties-nationalized-in-cuba-20190117/">José Martí International Airport</a>, putting cruise ship companies and airlines on notice that they could face potential legal jeopardy over their use of these properties. </p>
<p>If these companies pull out of the Cuban market, Americans would still have a right to travel to Cuba, but no way to get there. </p>
<p>If Title III reduces foreign investment in Cuba, it will damage Cuba’s already <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy/cuba-lowers-economic-growth-forecast-as-trade-continues-to-drop-idUSKCN1N90JO">fragile economy</a>, which in turn would hurt the standard of living of ordinary Cubans. </p>
<p>In retaliation, Havana might well stop buying agricultural goods from U.S. farmers. That’s a market of over <a href="https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/cuba">$250 million</a> annually that American farmers can ill afford to lose when exports are down due to Trump’s <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/06/farm-crisis-trump-trade-policies-1147987">trade wars</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/donald-trump-says-cuban-voters-love-him-but-hes-wrong-9146019">Trump believes</a> he won Florida in 2016 because of the Cuban-American vote, and he thinks Rubio can deliver it again in 2020. </p>
<p>I think Trump is miscalculating. </p>
<p>The remnants of Cuba’s pre-revolutionary “One Percent” no longer represent the Cuban-American community as a whole. By decisive majorities, <a href="https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2018-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf">Cuban-Americans support</a> free travel between the U.S. and Cuba, broader commercial ties and President Obama’s decision to normalize relations. Every year, they send <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/opinion/cuba-castro-united-states.html">$3 billion</a> to family on the island, and hundreds of thousands of them travel there to visit.</p>
<p>Those Cuban-American voters may not want to inflict more economic pain on ordinary Cubans, including their friends and family. Come 2020, they may punish a president who does.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William M. LeoGrande does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cuban exiles in the US may soon be able to sue companies that use property seized from them in the Cuban revolution. If Trump moves to allow that, it could slow economic development in Cuba.William M. LeoGrande, Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/922722018-03-15T00:26:03Z2018-03-15T00:26:03ZArticulate US teenagers could finally force action on gun control<p>On Wednesday in the US, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/us/school-walkout.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">thousands of students left their classrooms</a> in a national day of action <a href="https://www.actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/enough-national-school-walkout">designed to force political change on gun crime</a>. Following the recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, this walkout is part of an extraordinary national movement. Young people across the US are doing what countless others have tried and failed to do: using grassroots strategies to take on the powerful gun lobby.</p>
<p>The US has an epidemic of gun crime. Mass shootings <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence">occur every day</a>, and school shootings have become so common that over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/02/20/how-mass-school-shootings-affect-the-education-of-students-who-survive/?utm_term=.6382da2f25e8">170 schools and some 150,000 students have been affected by school-based gun violence since 1999</a>. </p>
<p>Beyond the psychological trauma such attacks inflict, these shootings have a <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0162373715590683">profound effect on academic success rates</a>.</p>
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<p>And yet, in spite of <a href="http://time.com/5167216/americans-gun-control-support-poll-2018/">the overwhelming majority of Americans who want tighter gun control laws</a>, very little is done to stem the presence of guns in schools, or the ability of Americans to access high-powered weaponry with relative ease.</p>
<h2>Policy inertia and the NRA</h2>
<p>The main reason for this inertia is the extraordinary influence of the <a href="https://home.nra.org/">National Rifle Association</a> (NRA). Since it turned to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-big-tobacco-gifted-campaigns-of-misdirection-and-misinformation-to-the-gun-lobby-45108">more aggressive lobbying strategy in the 1970s</a>, the NRA has helped <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/nra-guns-second-amendment-106856">redefine the meaning of the 2nd Amendment</a>, bestowed a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/wayne-lapierres-trumpian-base-strategy/553964/">divine blessing on guns</a>, and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/nra-political-money-clout/index.html">bent half of Congress to its will</a>.</p>
<p>The NRA succeeds because it has created powerful (<a href="http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tfcl11&div=7&id=&page=">and mostly false or distorted</a>) narratives to support gun use. It deploys familiar tropes to distract from tragedies. When gun-related tragedy hits, NRA-backed politicians call for “thoughts and prayers”. </p>
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<p>The reality of US gun deaths is set against such pro-gun arguments, and each tragedy widens the stark divide between those <a href="http://www.nrafff.com">who associate guns with freedom</a>, and those who see them as <a href="http://time.com/5198721/capitol-gun-death-protest-shoes/">devices for terror</a>. So, when others call for legislative action, as they did following the massacre at Sandy Hook and other mass shootings, the gun lobby scolds them for <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/274461-norquist-accuses-obama-of-politicizing-sandy-hook-school-shooting">“politicising tragedy”</a>.</p>
<p>But murdered kids are political. Sandy Hook exposed the US to the <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/news-photo-gallery/sandy-hook-victims-names-list-photos-bios-1#id0">faces of erstwhile happy kindergarteners</a>, their lives snuffed out by a disturbed young man with easy access to guns. It’s an all-too-familiar story for Americans and, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-death-rates-the-us-is-in-a-different-world.html">by international comparison, a unique one at that</a>.</p>
<p>Yet the resulting push for change soon turned to despair: <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-pitts-20150903-story.html">many came to believe</a> that if 26 deaths at an elementary school can’t bring Congress to act, nothing can.</p>
<h2>Gun laws and the possibility of change</h2>
<p>The last last major piece of gun control legislation to pass Congress was the <a href="http://legisworks.org/GPO/STATUTE-108-Pg1796.pdf">federal assault weapons ban</a> in 1994. It was specifically designed to reduce the incidence of mass shootings, and targeted the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/">enhanced killing power of assault rifles</a>. But, under <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapons-ban-work/">sustained attack from the gun lobby</a>, the ban expired under its “sunset clause”.</p>
<p>Since then, the one major piece of gun legislation in the US, in spite of the national rise in mass and school shootings, has been an <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-119/pdf/STATUTE-119-Pg2095.pdf">act designed to protect gun manufacturers in 2005</a>.</p>
<p>Now, for the first time in decades, there is a real possibility that some gun controls might be implemented. The NRA, as well as numerous politicians associated with it, are facing significant pressure to act. </p>
<p>Recent news footage showed <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/375835-rubios-approval-rating-near-all-time-low-in-florida-poll">Senator Marco Rubio</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AtOU0dDXv8">NRA’s Dana Loesh</a> publicly sparring with students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, to a chorus of boos and jeers. Millions witnessed their discomfort.</p>
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<p>This has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43298384">already led to some action by states</a>. Florida is looking to pass age restrictions and waiting periods for gun purchases, and Oregon has imposed gun prohibitions on domestic abusers and those with restraining orders. </p>
<p>Even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/us/politics/trump-gun-control.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">President Donald Trump</a>, who has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-41479161/what-s-donald-trump-said-about-guns-and-gun-control">been keen to show off his pro-gun credentials in the past</a>, has recognised the public outcry. He has called for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/us/politics/trump-bump-stocks.html">regulation of bump-stocks</a> and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/27/politics/guns-donald-trump-sarah-sanders-age-limit/index.html">age restrictions</a> (though he is wavering on both).</p>
<h2>The high school advocates</h2>
<p>The reason gun control looks possible right now is largely due to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/us/florida-shooting-parkland-students.html">the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas</a>. Beyond the pressure they have been applying directly to the NRA and politicians, the students have been busy using advocating on <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/2/26/17054408/parkland-shooting-activist-teens-gun-control">social media</a>, writing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/opinion/florida-guns-training-trump.html">op-eds</a>, <a href="http://time.com/5169357/gun-control-rally-walkouts-us-capitol/">organising rallies and walkouts</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47C-s0FMXlI">making media appearances</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/23/us-companies-nra-best-western-wyndham">and pressuring companies to drop support for the NRA or pro-gun politicians</a>.</p>
<p>As a result of these efforts, the students are presenting important, emotionally powerful counter-narratives to those of the gun lobby. They are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2018/02/23/4807913.htm">offering examples of successful gun control</a> and pointing out that guns in schools are the problem, not the solution. They are also forming a coalition in opposition to the well-organised <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/does-the-nra-really-have-more-than-45-million-members/2013/02/07/06047c10-7164-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_blog.html?utm_term=.9c3ba8b65385">2-4 million members</a> of the NRA and affiliated organisations.</p>
<p>Whether these efforts are successful or not will depend largely on whether they are sustained. This is why the gun lobby calls for “hopes and prayers” and to not “politicise tragedy”. These are stalling tactics: if the NRA can wait it out, while at the same time applying pressure to its political allies, nothing gets done.</p>
<p>However, the gun lobby has not faced a political force like this before. While it is inevitable that media attention will eventually wane, the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas and around the country have access to tools — such as social media — that circumvent traditional outlets. They also have the ability to draw the national spotlight back, especially via their use of rallies and walkouts.</p>
<p>These tactics reinvigorate the Democratic base and ratchet up the pressure on the Republicans, already jittery following a string of shock <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/pa-election-results-paul-ryan-tries-to-calm-gop-after-conor-lamb-win.html">political losses</a>.</p>
<p>If the passion and dedication they have shown so far is sustained, especially as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/politics/parkland-gun-control-politics-midterms.html">congressional midterm elections approach</a>, the young people of the US might just be able do what no one has done in decades, and force action on gun control.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been update to correct the statement that the federal assault weapons ban followed the Columbine school shooting.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Rennie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Student activists are presenting important, emotionally powerful counter-narratives to those of the gun lobby. Their success will depend on whether they can sustain these efforts.George Rennie, Lecturer in American Politics and Lobbying Strategies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/629492016-07-28T01:36:18Z2016-07-28T01:36:18ZCandidates control their own social media. What message are they sending?<p>We live in the age of social media. Indeed, many of us likely saw something about the Republican and Democratic conventions on Facebook, Twitter or even Instagram over the last few weeks. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/18/candidates-differ-in-their-use-of-social-media-to-connect-with-the-public/">Pew Research Center study</a> finds that the public is getting more of their news this election cycle from social media than ever before. </p>
<p>This finding makes sense since <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/internet-use/latest-stats/">87 percent</a> of the American public is on the internet today. Over <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/">70 percent</a> of those internet users are on Facebook. Although only about 20 percent of them are on Twitter, journalists and political commentators are heavy users. So, Twitter impacts much of the news and information the public sees. </p>
<p>In light of these enormous changes in the way Americans get their news, it seems reasonable to ask: What is the public getting from the campaigns on social media? </p>
<p>Ideally, presidential campaigns provide the electorate the opportunity to reflect on the issues that face the country. The best campaigns for our democracy are ones where the candidates offer clear, detailed policy positions. The public can then evaluate and choose which candidate they think will best serve their interests as president. </p>
<p>As we shift out of the primaries and conventions into the general election, our project, <a href="http://illuminating.ischool.syr.edu/#/platforms/1,2/dates/2016-07-20,2016-07-27/candidates/5,10/types/8&9,5&6">Illuminating 2016</a>, analyzed social media messages from Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to see how they used Twitter and Facebook during two phases of the campaign season. </p>
<p>The first stage ran from October 2015 through January 2016, when the candidates began to introduce themselves and their positions to the public. We call this the surfacing stage. </p>
<p>We also looked at the primaries stage from February through June 2016, when each state’s Republican and Democratic parties held caucuses or primaries to pick which one from the many candidates running should be the eventual nominee.</p>
<h2>How we did the analysis</h2>
<p>We use <a href="http://illuminating.ischool.syr.edu/blog/view/Using-machine-learning-to-understand-real-time-presidential-candidate-social-media-messages">computational approaches</a> to analyze the text of the messages. Analysis activities include creating a set of categories to describe the social media messages, having two or more people read a sample of the messages and tagging them with those categories, and then using computer software that identifies patterns and features in messages that share the same category. The software then generates algorithms or a set of rules that specify what features to look for in messages to assign them to the proper category. </p>
<p>People agree about 70 percent of the time when they categorize samples of the candidates’ social media messages. Our algorithms, by comparison, are more accurate than people. They are correct between 75 and 85 percent of the time (<a href="http://illuminating.ischool.syr.edu/data-and-models">depending on the category</a>). </p>
<p>The benefit of algorithms is that we can efficiently categorize all of the candidates’ messages rather than using samples, and the algorithm is consistent and less likely to be influenced by subjective perceptions that humans naturally bring to communication analysis. </p>
<p>Our analysis suggests that the public is not getting from the candidates what they need to make a good judgment of who should be president.</p>
<h2>Republicans less likely to talk issues online</h2>
<p>There are stark differences in the ways Clinton and Trump used social media to strategically construct their vision for the country. </p>
<p>Clinton often produced almost three times as many messages as Trump about the issues, such as education, the economy and women’s issues.</p>
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<p>Indeed, the main candidates for the Democratic Party were more likely to post messages on policy and issue matters than the most popular candidates for the Republican Party. This is true if they are posting messages that articulate their own policy positions or attack others’ policy positions.</p>
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<p>The style of Trump’s posts on the issues is distinct when compared with Clinton. Where she routinely provided reasons, facts and statistics in support of her positions, Trump offered broad generalizations or generic claims with little evidence to back them up.</p>
<p>Take for example, these posts from Clinton on Twitter:</p>
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<p>By comparison, Trump’s positions were declared rather than reasoned. Additionally, he often retweeted messages from supporters instead of articulating his personal stance on issues:</p>
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<h2>Trump is not consistently negative</h2>
<p>Political pundits and campaign watchers have declared Trump to be profoundly negative. The New York Times even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0">documented</a> all of the people he has insulted on Twitter. Some have predicted this might be one of the <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/05/23/why-2016-will-be-the-most-negative-campaign-in-history/">most negative campaigns in history</a>. </p>
<p>But when you look in aggregate rather than anecdotally at each candidate’s individual social media posts, you get a different picture. </p>
<p>During the surfacing stage, when the candidates need to introduce themselves to the public, Trump advocates for himself more frequently than does Clinton on Twitter, and he attacks more, but not disproportionately so. The same pattern holds for Facebook.</p>
<p>When you look at the primaries, though, a noteworthy change occurs. Clinton attacks more than Trump on Twitter, especially during February, March and April, when she attacks at nearly twice the rate. It’s not until May that Trump goes on the attack – primarily against Clinton. This coincides with Trump becoming the presumptive nominee for the Republicans when his rivals ends their campaigns. Once he starts to attack Clinton, he stays on the attack in June.</p>
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<p>When you look at the substance of the attacks, there are noteworthy distinctions. When Trump goes on the attack, his attacks are often personal. In February, for example, when the voting begins, Trump primarily attacks Bush, but Rubio and Cruz are not spared. </p>
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<p>By contrast, Clinton’s attacks in February and March are more subtle. She doesn’t name Sanders explicitly in her attacks but instead calls out weaknesses with issues he is advocating. By April, she begins actively attacking Trump, where she does get more blunt in her critiques, but does not turn to consistent pejorative labeling. </p>
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<h2>The voters need better</h2>
<p>With the public increasingly turning to social media to get their news about the campaign, the candidates, especially Trump, fail to give them the breadth and depth of policy positions to make meaningful judgments about who is the best candidate to lead the country. Nevertheless, while Trump provides only thin policy claims, he is not constantly on the attack, unlike the public perception of his Twitter stream. Indeed, Clinton tends to be more negative than Trump on social media.</p>
<p>Negativity is not necessarily toxic to democracy, though. The style of the attack matters. When candidates attack their opponents on the issues, it helps the electorate potentially gain a different perspective on the policy solutions or stances of candidates. They should spend time critiquing the positions of their opponents, as that helps our elected officials be accountable for their past legislation and their future plans. But, when candidates belittle or demean their opponents solely on issue or character, that alone is not enough for the electorate to make a good judgment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Stromer-Galley receives funding from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism to support this research. She is currently a Fellow at the Tow Center.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrícia Rossini receives funding from Capes Foundation, Ministry of Education, Brazil. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jerry Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scholars studied every tweet sent and Facebook post made by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump since before the primaries. Here’s what they learned about issues and negativity.Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Professor of Information Studies, Syracuse UniversityJerry Robinson, Ph.D. Candidate - Information Science, Syracuse UniversityPatrícia Rossini, Derby Fellow, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/557362016-03-17T10:10:39Z2016-03-17T10:10:39ZRepublicans once knew better than to get bogged down in civil war<p>The 2016 election has made fools of many of us who assured our friends and colleagues that Donald Trump wouldn’t so much as win a straw poll, let alone hold a commanding lead in the Republican nomination battle. But it’s the ongoing Republican civil war that’s now the real break with the past. </p>
<p>This year’s nomination battle has been more poisonous than any in recent memory. While Donald Trump has led the pack with his lurid, personal attacks, even some of the “establishment” candidates have joined in in response.</p>
<p>After a series of humiliating losses, Florida Senator Marco Rubio went for the jugular, mocking Trump’s hand size and fake tan, even suggesting that the New York tycoon might have wet himself at a recent debate. This was a spectacular breach of the GOP’s long-held “11th Commandment” – “thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican”. It <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-crushes-rubio-but-fails-to-shut-down-the-race-56252">did Rubio no good</a>, and nor did it cow Trump, who continues to roil the party with his incendiary campaign.</p>
<p>But in fairness to Rubio, he was hardly alone among his fellow candidates.</p>
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<p>Even as the Republicans are running against Hillary Clinton, their bête noire of two-and-a-half decades, they’re reserving their harshest words for each other – a mistake they’ve largely avoided making since the 1960s. </p>
<p>It’s one thing for someone like Trump to attack his opponents at will, but Rubio, who is of the Republican establishment and therefore a supposed protector of the party’s 11th Commandment, had to play by a different set of rules. It’s interesting that <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-view-from-ohio-kasichs-win-and-whats-next-56193">John Kasich</a>, the one establishment candidate left, has studiously observed his party’s once-sacred rule. </p>
<h2>Circling the wagons</h2>
<p>The birth of the Republicans’ 11th Commandment is often inaccurately attributed to Ronald Reagan, who is said to have used the expression in his successful run for the California governorship in 1966. </p>
<p>The aphorism was in fact coined in 1965 by the California State Republican Party chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, who was desperate to keep the Golden State’s Republicans from splintering between hard-line conservatives who backed Reagan and moderates who backed his opponent. Parkinson implored Republicans to follow a simple rule: “Henceforth, if any Republican has a grievance against another, that grievance is not to be bared publicly.”</p>
<p>He had good reason to be worried. In 1965, the Republican party was in its third decade in the political wilderness, having failed to stop Franklin Roosevelt’s enduring <a href="http://millercenter.org/president/biography/fdroosevelt-the-american-franchise">New Deal coalition</a>. The two terms that Dwight Eisenhower served in the White House were a product of the World War II general’s unique personal appeal rather than any endorsement of the Republican banner. During these 30 years, the GOP became known as the party of internal division – even though its various factions and leaders actually differed little on policy.</p>
<p>As it goes with many bad habits, it took hitting rock bottom to kick the party into doing something about it. For the Republicans, that came with the 1964 presidential election. </p>
<h2>From rock bottom to Ronald Reagan</h2>
<p>As it became clear that hardline conservative Barry Goldwater, one of only six Republican senators to vote against that year’s landmark Civil Rights Act, was on route to winning the GOP nomination, the party elites scrambled to stop him. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115336/original/image-20160316-30227-1n5c4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Barry Goldwater.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABarry_Goldwater_photo1962.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Ultimately, the Republican establishment’s efforts proved as futile in 1964 as its <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2016-03-14/how-to-steal-a-nomination-from-donald-trump">efforts to stop Trump</a> are proving now. Goldwater was nominated, many leading Republicans refused to endorse him, and he went down in a landslide defeat at the hands of Lyndon B. Johnson, who went on to pass transformative liberal legislation in areas such as healthcare, education, and immigration. </p>
<p>The hangover from 1964 proved so heavy that leading Republicans quickly resolved to make the GOP a “big tent” party, one that projected unity to the public while simultaneously training its rhetorical fire on the increasingly divided Democrats.</p>
<p>Parkinson’s 11th Commandment became an article of faith for Republicans, none more so than for Reagan, the party’s single most significant and admired figure since the latter third of the 20th century. During this era, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Republican party dominated the presidency and clawed its way into the majority in both houses of Congress. </p>
<h2>Signs of strain</h2>
<p>But in recent years, as the US’s political culture has become increasingly fractious, the 11th Commandment has come under strain. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-carolinas-republican-primary-is-such-a-dirty-brawl-54135">2000 South Carolina primary</a>, in which John McCain was smeared as having had an illegitimate black child, was an early sign that the party’s internal civility was collapsing. While the crowded 2008 field never quite sank to those depths, its early debates over illegal immigration were <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/05/16/gop-candidates-go-for-jugular-in-feisty-primary-debate.html">spiky to say the least</a>. </p>
<p>The 2012 nomination fight was nastier still, as Newt Gingrich in particular skewered Mitt Romney for his past activities at Bain Capital. The attacks softened Romney up and made it easy for the Obama campaign to define the Republican nominee as an out-of-touch billionaire – even Gingrich <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/newt-i-crossed-the-line-071336">conceded he perhaps went too far</a>.</p>
<p>On top of all this, the Tea Party wave that swept the 2010 midterm elections (and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/02/florida-election-results-_2_n_765881.html">carried Rubio into the senate</a>) opened fissures in the congressional GOP that have far outlasted the movement’s peak. The hardcore of conservative representatives elected in the last few cycles have already forced the resignation of one House Speaker.</p>
<p>With Rubio gone, the talk of a chaotic convention followed by a 1964-style Republican wipeout is <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-crushes-rubio-but-fails-to-shut-down-the-race-56252">surging again</a>. And while Republicans remain in good shape at the local level, if the Democratic party wins the presidency again, the GOP will have only held the keys to the White House for eight out of a possible 28 years. That fear seems to be galvanising the party into action – but it may be too little, too late.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark McLay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In times of trouble, the Republicans have held together by refusing to attack each other. That’s all gone out of the window.Mark McLay, Lecturer in History, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/561932016-03-16T03:47:47Z2016-03-16T03:47:47ZThe view from Ohio: Kasich’s win and what’s next<p>After Tuesday’s voting, the outcome of the Democratic presidential primary appears settled. Thanks to decisive wins in Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, Hillary Clinton can breathe easier. </p>
<p>For Republicans, however, the path forward has suddenly become less clear.</p>
<p>With Marco Rubio out and John Kasich carrying his – and my – home state of Ohio, we may need to wait until July to meet to the ultimate Republican nominee.</p>
<h2>Kasich’s hope: a contested convention</h2>
<p>Kasich’s Ohio victory makes a contested Republican convention more likely. </p>
<p>Since he carried Florida, Trump still has a chance to win a delegate majority necessary to secure the party’s nomination, but his path for doing so has become far narrower.</p>
<p>By contrast, Kasich’s hope rests entirely on a deadlocked convention. With his current delegate count, even a late surge in the polls in the remaining states would make it <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/delegate-math-what-happens-if-trump-wins-ohio-and-florida-loses-both-or-splits/article/2585127">mathematically impossible</a> for Kasich to win an outright delegate majority.</p>
<p>The Ohio victory highlights Kasich’s potential popularity in pivotal battleground states. It may help boost his appeal to delegates at the Cleveland convention in July. Still, it’s important not to exaggerate the magnitude of his winning margin. Even though he ended in first place in Ohio, Kasich has still won fewer than half of the total Republican primary vote here.</p>
<p>His first-place finish looks even less impressive in light of Kasich’s current standing among Ohio voters. Most <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/polls/cnn-24022">preelection polls</a> put the governor’s approval among Republican voters in the state somewhere between 70 and 80 percent. Yet, despite their approval, only about half of these voters ultimately ended up backing Kasich at the polls. </p>
<p>If the governor can count on the votes of only half of the folks from his home state who approve of his performance in office, the extent of his national appeal is far from clear.</p>
<h2>Strategic voting on the right?</h2>
<p>As Kasich’s standing in Ohio polls improved in recent weeks, little of his newfound support appears to have come from Trump enthusiasts. Trump’s support <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-ohio-republican-presidential-primary">hardly budged</a> since early February. His vote share in Ohio appears to be largely in line with his trajectory over the past month. Concerted campaigning in Ohio by Republican heavyweights such as Mitt Romney and growing controversy over <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-35801214">violence</a> at Trump’s Chicago rally did little to change his course.</p>
<p>While some of Kasich’s recent bump may be attributed to him winning over undecided voters, much of it seems to have come from previous supporters of Rubio and Cruz. Just days before Ohio’s primary, Rubio personally <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/marco-rubio-ohio-strategic-voting-220666">urged</a> his Ohio supporters to back Kasich, noting that the governor was the only person with a decent shot of edging Trump in the state.</p>
<p>Cruz never conveyed the same message to his supporters. But similar strategic logic may have encouraged at least some of them to back Kasich as well, since the governor’s victory has created new roadblocks for a Trump nomination and helps keep Cruz’s candidacy alive.</p>
<h2>Rethinking primaries and polarization</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most important lesson from Ohio’s vote on Tuesday is what it tells us about the relationship between party primaries and political polarization.</p>
<p>Among political commentators, the idea that primaries are driving the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans both in <a href="http://voteview.com/political_polarization_2014.htm">Congress</a> and in <a href="https://bshor.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/shor-and-mccarty-2011-final-apsr.pdf">state legislatures</a> has become well-worn <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/whats-the-answer-to-political-polarization/470163/">conventional wisdom</a>. </p>
<p>Few districts are competitive in the general election, perhaps in part thanks to <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2710831">gerrymandering</a> but probably mostly due to natural <a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejowei/florida.pdf">“political geography”</a> that results in most Democrats living in big urban areas and most Republicans living outside them. This means that many elections are increasingly being decided in the primary rather than general election, creating an incentive for candidates to appeal to their base by adopting extreme policies.</p>
<p>Ohio provides a useful case in point. The last round of redistricting produced a map with many <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2015/06/gerrymandering_has_tilted_poli.html">safe seats</a>. Since the Republican majority took control in 2010, the state legislature has adopted a number of conservative policies, including many that appear to be <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2456809">out of step</a> with the preferences of a majority of voters. For example, lawmakers recently cut funding to Planned Parenthood, even though polls showed that most voters <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/08/ohio_voters_oppose_iran_deal_b.html">opposed the move</a>.</p>
<p>Tuesday’s vote should raise doubts about the extent to which partisan primaries force candidates remain ideologically pure – at least in Ohio. </p>
<p>Between the two of them, Kasich and Trump won more than 80 percent of the Republican vote, and yet both candidates have a history of supporting policies outside of the conservative mainstream.</p>
<p>Although Kasich has built a record of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-kasichs-rhetoric-versus-his-record-in-ohio-54872">social conservative</a> in Ohio, he was also <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/us/politics/state-level-brawls-over-medicaid-reflect-wider-war-in-gop.html">one of the few</a> Republican governors who expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Similarly, despite Trump’s bellicose anti-Muslim rhetoric and his controversial positions on immigration, his liberal record on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage have been much closer to what one would expect from a Democrat rather than a Republican. Trump has said that his positions are “<a href="https://www.thewrap.com/donald-trump-grilled-by-cnns-jake-tapper-on-gay-marriage-stance-video/">changing rapidly</a>” and moving to the right.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, this didn’t seem to matter much to Ohio Republicans. Indeed, when one <a href="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/03/09/reloh1ohio.pdf">recent Ohio poll</a> asked Republican voters which candidate they thought would do the best job handling social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, Trump came in second after Kasich. He beat out the much more conservative Cruz.</p>
<p>In short, Republicans who turned out in Tuesday’s Ohio primary appear to have tolerated political heresy to a much greater extent than expected. Of course, whether other elected officials interpret this week’s result as message about the virtues of political moderation remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vladimir Kogan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A brokered convention just got more likely for the Republicans.Vladimir Kogan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/559692016-03-14T20:27:37Z2016-03-14T20:27:37ZTrump smells victory as Republicans hurtle into the Ides of March<p>The Ides of March, or March 15, has long been associated with doom and destruction. In 44BC, confident populist Julius Caesar ignored a soothsayer’s warning and met his demise at the height of his adulation by an adoring public. It was also the day that Czar Nicholas II in 1917 <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/z8wjmp3">formally abdicated his throne</a>, and the day that Germany occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. And now it’s the turn of the Republican Party. </p>
<p>This year’s Ides of March could prove pivotal for the US presidential race, as the primaries roll into <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-march-15-will-be-make-or-break-for-the-presidential-candidates-56000">five big states</a>: Florida, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina and Missouri. With firebrand insurgent Donald Trump still denying all the Republicans’ attempts to stop him, the day’s massive delegate haul threatens to put him firmly on the path to the nomination. </p>
<p>Much will depend on what happens in Florida and Ohio, the home states of Florida Senator <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/magazine/the-end-of-marco-mentum.html?_r=0">Marco Rubio</a> and the Governor of Ohio, <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-kasichs-rhetoric-versus-his-record-in-ohio-54872">John Kasich</a>. Kasich has pledged to withdraw from the contest if he loses Ohio, while Rubio has himself said that whoever wins Florida “<a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/rubio-florida-winner-gop-nominee-220461">will be the nominee of the Republican Party</a>.” If he falls behind, he will be under enormous pressure to bow out.</p>
<p>This confronts Trump’s conservative rival, Ted Cruz, with a fiendish dilemma. He’s won a fair number of states, but to have a decent chance at winning the nomination, Cruz needs Kasich and especially Rubio to drop out. So Cruz wants them to do poorly. But if either or both lose their home state, it’s Trump, not Cruz, who’s most likely to grab their delegates – a hefty 99 in Florida and a chunky 66 in Ohio, all allocated on a winner-take-all basis. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if Rubio somehow rallies to win Florida, he’s very likely to stay in, as is Kasich if he wins Ohio. This puts Cruz and other anti-Trump forces in the awkward position of needing Rubio and Kasich both to trump Trump and to fall short.</p>
<p>The best outcome Cruz can hope for is for Rubio and Kasich to do just enough to win Florida and Ohio respectively, therefore denying Trump the winner-take-all delegates, but to do so badly elsewhere that they drop out anyway. Not impossible, but unlikely.</p>
<p>So where does that leave us? </p>
<h2>Splitting the difference</h2>
<p>Trump just needs to seize Ohio and Florida to put him in touching distance of the prize, but that’s a big task, especially in Ohio. Illinois and Missouri offer a combined total of 121 delegates. North Carolina’s 72 delegates are in play as well, but those are allocated on a proportional basis, so grabbing the gold isn’t quite as important there.</p>
<p>So if Trump picks up Florida, Ohio and does well in Illinois and/or Missouri, the fight for the Republican nomination could be all but over by Wednesday morning. But that outcome is far from pre-ordained.</p>
<p>Let’s say Trump loses either Ohio or (less likely) Florida, but not both. That puts his chance of clinching a majority of delegates before the convention in jeopardy, maybe Illinois and/or Missouri tipping the scale. But if he loses both Ohio and Florida, he’s extremely unlikely to win a majority of the delegates before the convention in July.</p>
<p>If that’s the case, anything could happen. If it is ultimately not possible to construct a winning coalition of delegates around any of the current four horsemen of the Republican Party’s political apocalypse, the party could even turn outwards, to anoint a different saviour. This would presumably be someone undamaged by the internecine warfare that would have brought the party to that impasse. That would now seem to rule out Mitt Romney, given his recent full-on personal attacks upon Donald Trump. Instead they are more likely to look to a unifier, though they would need to change the convention rules to do so.</p>
<p>They have called upon someone fresh in dire straits before. At the end of 2015, the party could find nobody to replace John Boehner when he suddenly stood down as speaker of the House of Representatives. Then they found someone who at first said he wasn’t interested, but later relented: Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012.</p>
<p>Is this a likely outcome? Not at all. While chatter around a possible Ryan candidacy suddenly spiked as March 15 loomed, a fundraising group formed to “draft” him recently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/11/committee-to-draft-paul-ryan-for-president-shuts-down/">shut down</a> after his aides disavowed its work. </p>
<p>It’s far more likely that Trump will emerge as the Republican nominee, followed by Cruz, then Kasich and Rubio. But if no one can garner a majority of delegates to win the first ballot at the convention, any number of scenarios could play out. </p>
<p>As the <a href="http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/maths_worksheets/gambling_and_elections.doc">betting markets</a> currently see things, by far the most electable against a Democratic opponent in the general election are John Kasich and Marco Rubio. Of these two, Kasich is rated by the markets as much more likely to win the nomination. If he scrapes a win in the Ohio primary and finally starts winning delegates, might he somehow emerge from the pack at a contested convention, perhaps with Rubio or even Cruz in tow as his running mate? We shall see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leighton Vaughan Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Could the Republicans’ biggest nightmare finally be about to come true?Leighton Vaughan Williams, Professor of Economics and Finance and Director, Betting Research Unit & Political Forecasting Unit, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/560002016-03-09T17:42:20Z2016-03-09T17:42:20ZWhy March 15 will be make-or-break for the presidential candidates<p>The strangest and most volatile presidential race in modern history got even more unpredictable on Tuesday night. </p>
<p>On the Republican side, Donald Trump overcame a relentless wave of establishment attacks to win <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-wins-mississippi-michigan-primaries/2016/03/08/ecb576d6-e539-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop_b">Mississippi, Michigan and Hawaii</a> by large margins. Trump’s only defeat of the night was by Ted Cruz in the Idaho caucuses. </p>
<p>On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders proved the polls and pundits wrong by narrowly edging out Hillary Clinton in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">Michigan</a>. Equally important, however, Clinton won a landslide victory over Sanders in Mississippi. </p>
<p>So what does it all say about the state of the 2016 presidential race? Here are the four most important takeaways from Tuesday’s vote:</p>
<h2>1. Trump’s momentum is becoming unstoppable</h2>
<p>Trump’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">victories on Tuesday night</a> were extremely impressive. He won Michigan by 12 percentage points, Mississippi by 11 points and Hawaii by 9. The only contest he lost – Idaho – was one in which he had no campaign organization and made no effort to win. </p>
<p>As a result, Trump has nearly a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results">100-delegate lead</a> over his rivals. </p>
<p>Just a few days ago, Trump seemed to be losing steam, particularly after his opponents aired a series of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/04/anti-trump-group-expands-attack-into-illinois/">television attack ads</a> in key states. The attacks focused on Trump’s business record, such as the fraud lawsuits that surround <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/29/a-trio-of-truthful-attack-ads-about-trump-university/">Trump University</a> and the billionaire’s <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432518/donald-trumps-failures-his-excuses-resemble-obamas">four bankruptcies</a>. The 2012 GOP nominee <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html">Mitt Romney</a> piled on by calling Trump a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/03/mitt-romney-trump-is-a-phony-a-fraud-who-is-playing-the-american-public-for-suckers">phony and a fraud</a> who would likely <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/07/in-new-robocall-mitt-romney-says-donald-trump-would-lose-to-hillary-clinton/">lose to Hillary Clinton</a> in the general election. </p>
<p>But none of the attacks on Trump worked.</p>
<p>Trump’s crushing victories in Mississippi and Michigan were striking because they once again demonstrated his broad appeal to all segments and all regions of the Republican electorate. He won evangelicals, working-class voters and college graduates, just as he has in previous primaries. He also once again showed great geographical range, winning in the Deep South and in the heart of the industrial Midwest. By any conventional measure, Trump is a truly national candidate, at least among Republican voters.</p>
<p>Trump’s victories on Tuesday dealt a body blow to the campaigns of Marco Rubio and John Kasich. Rubio finished at or near the bottom in every race, and Kasich performed far worse than expected in Michigan, a Midwestern state he should have won. Consequently, Rubio’s campaign is on the verge of collapse and Kasich’s may not be far behind. </p>
<p>And although Ted Cruz’s victory in Idaho keeps his campaign viable, his victories have largely been confined to southern states and small caucus states. At this point, Cruz does not look like a national candidate. </p>
<p>The simple fact is the only candidate in the race who has broad support among all wings of the Republican Party is Donald Trump. </p>
<h2>2. Sanders proved pundits and pollsters wrong</h2>
<p>On the Democratic side, Sanders <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/michigan">barely won Michigan</a>, carrying the state over Clinton by a margin of 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent. </p>
<p>But despite the narrow margin, it was an extremely impressive victory for Sanders. Michigan is a big state with demographics that resemble the nation as a whole. By winning in Michigan, Sanders showed that he has much broader appeal in the Democratic party than many pundits, including me, believed. </p>
<p>Sanders’ win also represented one of the biggest comeback victories of the year. On the eve of the Michigan primary, Sanders trailed Clinton in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/09/polling-in-michigan-was-way-off-that-happens-more-than-we-recognize/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fix-clinton-735am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">state’s polls by 20 points</a>. But on election day, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/michigan">Sanders beat Clinton</a> by about 19,000 votes, a tremendous come-from-behind victory.</p>
<p>How did he do it? </p>
<p>The key to the Vermont senator’s success in Michigan was his focus on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/03/09/456e780e-e53a-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_democrats-1230am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">protectionist trade policies</a>. Heavily dependent on the auto industry and manufacturing, Michigan has been hit hard by job losses to foreign competition. </p>
<p>Michigan’s painful economic history made it ripe territory for the protectionist messages of Trump and Sanders. In rhetoric strikingly similar to that employed by Trump, Sanders focused his efforts in Michigan on angry and bitter <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">condemnations of international trade agreements</a>. His passionate defense of protectionist policies clearly resonated with Michigan voters. </p>
<p>The success of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/08/the-two-big-warning-signs-for-hillary-clinton-in-michigan/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fix-clinton-735am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">Sanders’ anti-trade message</a> will likely carry over into other Midwestern manufacturing states, like Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin. Michigan demonstrates there are many more states available for Sanders to win if he focuses on trade and jobs. </p>
<h2>3. Clinton still has a daunting delegate lead</h2>
<p>Without question, Sanders had a great showing in Michigan. And yet he still has little chance of winning the nomination.</p>
<p>How can that be?</p>
<p>The fundamental problem facing Sanders is the Democratic Party’s delegate awards process. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats have no “winner-take-all” states. The delegates from every Democratic primary and caucus are awarded on a proportional basis. Consequently, once a candidate races out to a big delegate lead, it is exceedingly difficult for others to catch up.</p>
<p>Tuesday night was a perfect example of why. Clinton won <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results">Mississippi</a>, a state of three million people, and Sanders won Michigan, a state of 10 million people. But Clinton came out of the night with more delegates because she won Mississippi by a far larger margin than Sanders won <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results">Michigan</a>. </p>
<p>Clinton now has over a 200-delegate lead among <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html">pledged delegates</a> – the delegates awarded through the nominating contests – and more than a 400-delegate lead among <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html">superdelegates</a> – Democratic elected officials and party powerbrokers. In all, Clinton has a delegate lead of <a href="http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/delegate-count-tracker">1,221 to 571</a> over Sanders. The first candidate to reach 2,383 delegates wins the nomination.</p>
<p>Even if Sanders wins a majority of Democratic voters from here on out, it is highly unlikely that he can overtake Clinton. The reason is the proportional delegate award system. To catch Clinton, he would need to win landslide victories in most of the remaining states. Indeed, he would need to win states like Ohio, llinois, New York and California by the same margin as Clinton won Mississippi on Tuesday night. That is the only way he can make up the difference in the delegate totals.</p>
<p>But close wins like Michigan won’t do it for him. </p>
<p>On Tuesday night, Sanders won 65 of Michigan’s delegates and Clinton won 58. No matter how many states Sanders wins between now and July, coming away with 7-delegate victory margins won’t be enough to deny Clinton the nomination. He needs to win by blowout margins to change the dynamics of the race and overcome the delegate math that is stacked against him. </p>
<h2>4. Circle March 15 on your calendar</h2>
<p>Everything now rests on the March 15 primaries of Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina. </p>
<p>Starting on March 15, many of the states on the GOP primary calendar become “winner-take-all,” which means whoever finishes in first takes all the state’s delegates. Up until now, all of the Republican contests have awarded delegates on a proportional basis. But that changes on March 15 with delegate-rich Florida and Ohio, both of which are winner-take-all states. </p>
<p>Winner-take-all states are crucial to Trump’s path to the nomination because so far he has been winning primaries with an average of about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/upshot/divided-they-fall-as-donald-trump-enjoys-another-big-night.html">35 to 40 percent</a> of the vote. In winner-take-all states, Trump will get 100 percent of the delegates even if he wins with only 35 percent of the vote. Thus, if Trump wins both Florida and Ohio, it will be <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/07/why-florida-and-ohio-are-the-only-states-that-matter-in-the-republican-presidential-race-in-3-charts/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_trail">extremely difficult for his opponents to stop him</a> from winning the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination before the Cleveland convention in mid-July.</p>
<p>On the Democratic side, Sanders has a real chance to win Ohio, Illinois and Missouri on March 15. But in light of her immense strength among minority voters, Clinton is highly likely to win North Carolina and Florida. </p>
<p>Therefore, in order to get back in the race, Sanders needs to win states by huge margins. If he wins blowout victories on March 15, particularly in states he is not expected to win, then all bets are off. If he doesn’t, any chance Sanders has of winning the nomination will be over. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that March 15 looms as a momentous date on the 2016 presidential race calendar.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56000/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony J. Gaughan is a registered independent. </span></em></p>Trump’s momentum is unchecked by establishment critics, Sanders surprises in Michigan and other key takeaways from the voting on March 8.Anthony J. Gaughan, Associate Professor of Law, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555522016-03-08T11:11:12Z2016-03-08T11:11:12ZWhere do the 2016 candidates stand on contraception?<p>Access to safe and effective birth control is part of health care for <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html">tens of millions of Americans</a>. The vast majority of Americans view birth control as “<a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/170789/new-record-highs-moral-acceptability.aspx">morally acceptable</a>,” and make sharp distinctions between approval for methods of preventing pregnancy, and methods of terminating it. </p>
<p>Despite this, access to birth control has become politicized. Employee health care plans can be exempt from covering it. Organizations that provide affordable access are under threat. And while Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton support access to contraception, the top three candidates from the Republican Party favor policies that could severely restrict access to contraception.</p>
<h2>What the Democratic candidates think about reproductive health</h2>
<p>A <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/07/23/gops-favorability-rating-takes-a-negative-turn/">2015 Pew Poll</a> indicates that the positions Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton take on birth control and family planning <a href="http://www.people-press.org/question-search/?qid=1866900&pid=51&ccid=51#top">track more closely with public opinion</a> than do the positions articulated by Republican candidates, and by a wide margin.</p>
<p>Both <a href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/womens-rights-and-opportunity/">Hillary Clinton</a> and <a href="https://berniesanders.com/why-bernie-is-best-on-womens-issues/">Bernie Sanders</a> have strong records in support of access to contraception. In fact, their positions on these issues are nearly identical. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Both have stated that they view birth control as a right, and as essential health care. </p></li>
<li><p>Both see birth control and access to family planning information as keys to achieving gender equality. </p></li>
<li><p>Both of their campaigns focus on access to birth control via increased funding for Planned Parenthood, expansion of the Affordable Care Act and their early and sustained support for family planning initiatives like “<a href="http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Feature.showFeature&featureID=976">Prevention First</a>.”</p></li>
<li><p>Clinton and Sanders have both decried the Supreme Court’s ruling in <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/">Hobby Lobby</a>, which enables employers to refuse to cover birth control in their employee health plans. </p></li>
<li><p>Both favor bills that would make it illegal for pharmacists to refuse to provide access to emergency contraception.</p></li>
<li><p>Both support global family planning initiatives through international partnerships.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Though their positions are stunningly similar, Planned Parenthood opted to endorse Hillary Clinton, <a href="http://plannedparenthoodaction.org/blog/how-do-hillary-clinton-and-bernie-sanders-compare-womens-health/">citing</a> her record of sponsoring bills that expand access in the United States and abroad, and her early and vocal support of the organization. </p>
<h2>Trump’s positions aren’t clear</h2>
<p>Donald Trump is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results">the front-runner</a> for the Republican nomination. Though he has proclaimed that he “cherishes women” and “will protect them,” he has also been widely criticized for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/18-real-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-women_us_55d356a8e4b07addcb442023">misogynist statements and behaviors</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s anti-woman rhetoric may rightfully concern those who advocate for women’s rights. However, it is not clear that Trump’s personal opinions about the value and worth of women translate into any coherent policy regarding birth control and family planning.</p>
<p>In fact, it is impossible to know Donald Trump’s position on contraception. His <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/">campaign website</a> does not have an “Issues” tab for birth control. It does not have a “Position” tab for anything related to contraception, family planning or reproductive health. Trump’s campaign website also lacks a search function. </p>
<p>Recently, Trump stated that he is pro-life and would defund “those parts” of Planned Parenthood that perform abortion (in fact <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/05/429641062/fact-check-how-does-planned-parenthood-spend-that-government-money">no federal funding currently goes to to elective abortion</a> at Planned Parenthood). However, he has acknowledged that Planned Parenthood provides <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/02/donald-trumps-incredibly-bizarre-relationship-with-planned-parenthood/">valuable medical help and reproductive care to women who need it</a>, especially in terms of cancer screening.</p>
<p>Though <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/02/politics/donald-trump-planned-parenthood-good-work/index.html">leaders of Planned Parenthood</a> do not believe he would be a friend to their organization, it is unclear that, as president, he would act aggressively to end the organization’s existence. </p>
<p>Trump has also stated, repeatedly, that as president he would repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with an unspecified plan that will be “terrific,” and “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/22/here-are-76-of-donald-trumps-many-campaign-promises/">much much better</a>.” His newly announced <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/02/politics/donald-trump-health-care-plan/">seven point plan</a> would rely on market forces across state lines to spur competition among health care providers and insurance companies with an eye to increasing access. </p>
<p>Reducing funding to Planned Parenthood (even if not defunding it completely) and replacing the ACA both have the potential to gravely disrupt access to birth control for millions of women. However, it is absolutely unclear what a Trump presidency would mean for access to contraception. </p>
<h2>Cruz and Rubio</h2>
<p>Trump’s lack of clarity on the issue is disturbing. And it stands in contrast to the rather clear stances held by the the other two Republican candidates still viable in the presidential race: <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/issues/life-marriage-and-family/">Ted Cruz</a> and <a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues/protecting-life-at-every-stage/">Marco Rubio</a>. </p>
<p>Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have both said in several forums that <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-birth-control-dont-rubber-shortage-america/story?id=35501705">that they do not support a ban on contraceptives</a>. But the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/13/marco-rubio-contraception-blunt-amendment_n_1423640.html">policies that they do support</a>, if enacted, would place significant barriers around access to them. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Both <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLnBsXp1Ce8&feature=youtu.be&t=1m5s">Cruz</a> and <a href="https://marcorubio.com/sidebar-featured/marco-rubio-health-care-obamacare-repeal-replace/">Rubio</a> are in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act. The ACA <a href="http://www.hrsa.gov/womensguidelines/">has greatly expanded access to birth control for Americans</a>, <a href="http://kff.org/private-insurance/report/coverage-of-contraceptive-services-a-review-of-health-insurance-plans-in-five-states/">even as implementation varies</a>. </p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2014/01/28/ted-cruz-liberty-university-file-amicus-briefs-in-hobby-lobby-case/">Cruz</a> and <a href="http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=b1dcda9f-9132-485c-bf73-c8f90d1b3907">Rubio</a> also champion the Hobby Lobby decision, which allows employers to refuse to cover contraception in the health plans they offer to employees. </p></li>
<li><p>Cruz has said that on “day one” of his presidency, he will order his attorney general to “investigate Planned Parenthood,” which he describes as a “<a href="http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/02/24/ted-cruz-faces-texas-voters-live-kelly-file-face-face-event">national criminal enterprise</a>,” and which he and <a href="https://marcorubio.com/news/marco-planned-parenthood-is-a-human-rights-issue/">Rubio</a> both favor defunding entirely. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>They have both supported “personhood” amendments to state constitutions as well as the federal constitution. <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/personhood-movement-where-it-comes-and-what-it-means-future-choice">These amendments</a> variously state that <a href="http://correctrecord.org/the-gop-on-choice/">life begins at fertilization</a>, or conception, and in <a href="http://grtl.org/?q=node/331">some cases</a> define the fertilized egg as a person. </p>
<p>Such language could have the effect of banning the intrauterine device (IUD) due to the <a href="http://www.acog.org/Search?Keyword=are+IUDs+abortifacients">false belief</a> that it causes abortion, rather than provides contraception – because IUDs in some instances prevent fertilized eggs from implanting. This is troubling because IUDs are the most <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/UnintendedPregnancy/PDF/Contraceptive_methods_508.pdf">effective long-term, reversible form of birth control on the market</a>. These “<a href="http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/10/23/upcoming-gop-debate-touch-radical-personhood-laws/">Personhood Amendments</a>” could also limit access to emergency contraception via the Plan B pill.</p>
<p>If access to birth control via state-funded health care, private insurance and Planned Parenthood are dramatically constrained by policies made during a Cruz or Rubio presidency, laws banning contraception would not be necessary. </p>
<p>By creating <a href="http://kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/medicaid-and-family-planning-background-and-implications-of-the-aca/">insurmountable burdens on access</a>, Americans could find themselves living with a <em>de facto</em> ban on access to contraception.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Renee Cramer receives funding from the National Science Foundation, for her work on access to midwifery care.</span></em></p>Democratic candidates support access to contraception, while candidates from the Republican Party favor policies that could severely restrict access to contraception.Renee Cramer, Professor of Law, Politics and Society, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555502016-03-07T11:03:59Z2016-03-07T11:03:59ZHard data: is Trump or Cruz more electable?<p>And so, Super Tuesday as well as Saturday’s caucuses and primaries are behind us. If the rest of the primary season holds to this trend, it appears the battle for the presidency will be between <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html">Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton</a>. Each leads in both state wins and delegate counts. Clinton has won 12 of 19 contests, garnering 1,121 of the 2,383 needed delegates. Trump has also won 12 of 19 states and 382 of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.</p>
<p>A common argument made by candidates is that they – and not their opponents – are electable. Examples of this rhetoric can be seen in both political parties. Bernie Sanders, expecting a Trump victory on the Republican side, has stated that <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/24/bernie-sanders-i-can-beat-trump-clinton-cant/">Hillary Clinton cannot defeat Trump in the general election</a>. On the Republican side, Marco Rubio has clearly stated the he is the “<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/02/02/rubio-i-am-the-best-chance-for-our-party-to-beat-hillary-clinton/">best chance</a>” to beat Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>However, how valid are these claims of exclusive electability?</p>
<h2>Why most headlines about electability are misleading</h2>
<p>Many pundits and political experts rely on national head-to-head polls to arrive at a conclusion about electability. If we rely only on such polls, then we get some interesting conclusions. </p>
<p>The following table provides estimated national support for each match-up as of March 3, 2016:</p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ifmoH/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="600"></iframe>
<p>What conclusions could you draw from this table? First, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders wins in all match-ups. Second, Trump loses in all match-ups. Third, the outcome of the Cruz versus Clinton election is unclear, as the estimates are both within the margin of error for the estimates.</p>
<p>If we rely on these polls, then we also need to ignore a few things. First, the general election of November 8 is many months away. The true level of uncertainty nine months away from election day is much greater than any reported “margin of error.”</p>
<p>Second, these polls ignore the value of the vice president. Were Cruz to win the nomination and select Rubio as his running mate, he would have a different probability of winning the election than would be reported in such polls. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/27552323">Conventional wisdom </a>suggests that the vice president has a negligible positive effect on the presidential race, but Cruz may select Rubio as his running mate simply to remove him from competition.</p>
<p>Finally, the U.S. presidential election is not decided based on the nationwide popular vote. It is really a collection of 51 separate elections aggregated and weighted through <a href="http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html">the Electoral College</a>. </p>
<p>In other words, national estimates, though enlightening about the mood of the country as a whole, are mostly irrelevant in regard to the result of a national election. What’s more important is how these head-to-head match-ups play out in the battleground states. </p>
<p>In a recently <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2015.1034389#.Vtd53oo258F">published paper</a>, we introduced a multilevel model that combined state- and national-level polls into a single estimate for each individual state. The model appears to be effective, as it successfully predicted 50 of the 51 elections held in the states, plus D.C., in each of the last three presidential elections. </p>
<p>What does the model have to say about the six possible face-to-face matchups? Did Super Tuesday help the Republicans or the Democrats in the race to the White House?</p>
<h2>Cruz versus Clinton or Sanders</h2>
<p>According to the national match-ups: Cruz wins neither of these matches outright. He is handily beaten by Sanders by more than 14 percent and is within the margin of error against Clinton. </p>
<p>Following our multilevel model: the expected number of electoral votes won by Cruz against Clinton is only 256. As this is 14 shy of the 270 needed to win the election, the probability that Cruz wins in a contest against Clinton is less than 50 percent. </p>
<p>Against Sanders, Cruz does even more poorly. He only receives 197, falling 73 electoral votes short of a majority and the presidency.</p>
<p>It is interesting that in a match-up against Cruz, Sanders wins all of the states Clinton does, plus three others: Florida, Missouri and North Carolina. In the map below, the dark red states are won by Cruz in both match-ups. The dark blue states are won by both Clinton and Sanders. The light blue states are won only by Sanders.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114519/original/image-20160309-13726-1pkm0c3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electoral map of Cruz (red) versus Clinton (dark blue) and versus Sanders (all blues)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ole J. Forsberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The difference in the two contests goes beyond the electoral maps. The states considered battlegrounds change, as well. </p>
<p>If we define battleground states as those where the probability of the Republican candidate winning is between 25 percent and 75 percent, the Cruz-Clinton contest has four battleground states: Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Virginia. The Cruz-Sanders match-up has two of those four states safely in the Sanders column, with Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and North Carolina being the battleground states.</p>
<h2>Rubio versus Clinton or Sanders</h2>
<p>The multilevel model suggests Rubio could win the race, but only if his opponent is Clinton. In that match-up, Rubio receives an expected 318 electoral votes to Clinton’s 220. In a Rubio-Sanders race, Rubio receives an expected 247 votes, with Sanders receiving the remaining 291.</p>
<p>Again, Sanders wins all of the same states Clinton does, and adds a few of his own. Here, those Sanders-only states are Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada and Virginia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113799/original/image-20160303-9490-11aqgk2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electoral map of Rubio (red) versus Clinton (dark blue) and versus Sanders (all blues).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ole J. Forsberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also, as with the Cruz contests, Sanders takes most of the Clinton battleground states and makes them safely Democratic. The battleground states in the Rubio-Clinton race are the usual Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus the typically blue states of Maine and Oregon. With Sanders the battleground states are just Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri and Nevada. Maine and Oregon return to the safely Democratic column.</p>
<h2>Trump versus Clinton or Sanders</h2>
<p>Without question, Donald Trump is the current Republican front-runner. He has been such essentially since entering the race in 2015. This is despite the best efforts of the Republican leadership to dethrone him. In the Wake of Super Tuesday, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html">Trump led the field with 319 delegates</a>. Cruz, his closest rival, has only 226 delegates. Rubio, who may be the Republicans’ best chance to win the White House, has 110.</p>
<p>So, how does Trump do in head-to-head match-ups for the general election? According to the model, the expected number of electoral votes won by Trump against Clinton is 236, which is 34 fewer than the 270 needed to win the election. Against Sanders, Trump only receives 203. </p>
<p>As in the other match-ups, Sanders does better than Clinton, with Sanders taking all Clinton states <em>plus</em> Missouri and North Carolina. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113800/original/image-20160303-12178-17e8h4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electoral map of Trump (red) versus Clinton (dark blue) and versus Sanders (all blues).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ole J. Forsberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Additionally, the rule that Sanders makes the Clinton battleground states safer for Democrats holds here, as well. With Sanders, only Missouri and Arizona are battleground states.</p>
<h2>But … the election isn’t today</h2>
<p>A few conclusions can be drawn from these maps. First, as usual, the large majority of states are either safely Republican or safely Democratic. Those states that are not, the battleground states, depend on the particular match-up. </p>
<p>Second, paying attention only to the national polls suggests that a Cruz-Clinton contest would most likely end in a Cruz presidency. Paying attention at the state level, this conclusion is not supported. The most likely outcome would be a Clinton win. In fact, the only path to a Republican White House is Rubio versus Clinton.</p>
<p>On the Democratic side, it appears as though Super Tuesday made Clinton inevitable once again. On the Republican side, a knockout blow was not delivered, but Trump became more likely to win the nomination. If the actual presidential election is between Trump and Clinton, and if nothing else happens on the political scene, Clinton will most likely receive 304 electoral votes, 34 more than she needs to win. This is 28 fewer than Obama won in 2012. The difference is Florida.</p>
<p>Finally, all of these estimates, like political polls, are based on some rather untenable assumptions. Namely, they assume either that the election is today or that there will not be a significant political event between now and election day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Using a new model that considers state-by-state polling, statisticians from Oklahoma State look at who would win the presidential election if it were held today.Mark Payton, Head of the Department of Statistics, Oklahoma State UniversityOle J. Forsberg, Visiting Assistant Professor of Statistics, Oklahoma State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/556752016-03-03T11:19:38Z2016-03-03T11:19:38ZShould wealthier students get subsidized college education?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113593/original/image-20160302-25891-1e2tqpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Should college be free for all?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/editor/1252393940/in/photolist-2UER5Y-8Kg5gC-epeWK6-6qQpsy-rKn3Y-epeYDv-5Dy8en-epf3w4-eqbdhE-eqbgj1-epf1vk-epeQsx-g7c5rR-fhvYG-2PJJS7-eqbcjA-5fHXC-73tDHU-eqbh8b-ju1QXw-epf3Ni-8Fozko-eqbe7E-eqb9yN-epeVV4-2PEhia-73pDov-epeQYH-epeSSR-epf1Qr-epeZoV-hfQ3Bw-epf2cD-eqbaym-epeUDn-eqbeo5-dUEdM7-epeTfF-8CVxjb-66zgNY-5uGfrA-fiB1MX-4rKaxc-7vYcoz-5ZkjCD-baEjSv-8CSswk-66zgtA-dQoaUW-7Acf9f">Bart Everson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last summer, as the presidential campaign was just getting rolling in earnest, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton <a href="http://theconversation.com/clintons-debt-free-college-comes-with-a-price-tag-46378" title=") "[New College Compact](https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/08/10/college-compact/ "">announced</a>,“ a proposal designed to provide relief for the rapidly rising sticker price of college. </p>
<p>Subsequently, Senator Bernie Sanders took Secretary Clinton’s proposal for debt-free college and doubled down on the idea by proposing to <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/">eliminate college tuition entirely</a> in public universities and community colleges.</p>
<p>From my perspective, as a researcher of college access and finance over the last two decades, the reality is that free college makes little sense in today’s political and economic environment.</p>
<h2>Rising costs, Clinton’s plans</h2>
<p>Data from the <a href="http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing">Trends in Student Pricing</a> report show that in the decade 2005-06 to 2015-16, the average sticker (nondiscounted) price at public, four-year universities rose 40 percent in real dollars, that is, after discounting for inflation. </p>
<p>Prices at private four-year universities rose slightly less rapidly, 26 percent, but still greatly in excess of inflation. At community colleges they rose 29 percent.</p>
<p>The centerpiece of Clinton’s program is to invest US$350 billion over 10 years to help control the growth of college prices. As she states on her campaign website:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Students should never have to borrow to pay for tuition, books, and fees to attend a four-year public college in their state under the New College Compact. The additional support they receive will reduce all costs, including living expenses, by thousands of dollars. Students at community college will receive free tuition. Students will have to do their part by contributing their earnings from working 10 hours a week.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, in return for a modest amount of work, students would not have to borrow at all to pay the educational costs of attending a four-year public college (though they still may need to borrow for room and board). And students attending community colleges would not pay any tuition at all. </p>
<p>This amount would represent a doubling of the current federal investment in<a href="https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/grants-scholarships/pell"> Pell Grants</a>, by far the largest federal scholarship program for students from low- and moderate-income families.</p>
<p>Clinton’s plan would also provide grants directly to states to encourage them to slow the growth rate of prices in public colleges and universities.</p>
<h2>Sanders, Rubio, Cruz, Trump</h2>
<p>Senator Bernie Sanders took Secretary Clinton’s proposal for debt-free college even further by proposing to <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/">eliminate college tuition entirely</a> in public universities and community colleges.</p>
<p>At a cost of $75 billion per year, or more than twice that of Clinton’s plan, Sanders’ proposal is targeted at young voters who are strapped to pay for college, or pay back the student loans they had taken out for college. </p>
<p>How are they going to pay for their free college plans? Both candidates have suggested similar strategies, Clinton by limiting tax credits and deductions for high-income Americans, and <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/">Sanders</a> by imposing a tax on "Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago.” </p>
<p>In comparison to their Democratic counterparts, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have focused little on higher education.</p>
<p>Senator Marco Rubio is the only one of the GOP front-runners to talk about it in any detail. He <a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/marco-rubio-position-higher-education-policy-college/">does not propose</a> any new federal investment in financial aid to help students cope with the growth of college prices. He focuses instead on encouraging innovation as a mechanism to bring prices down, by encouraging new providers in the higher education market and alternative delivery mechanisms that are perceived to be more efficient. </p>
<p>Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump – whose Super Tuesday performance has propelled him far ahead of his rivals – have been largely silent with respect to how they would lessen the burden of paying for college.</p>
<h2>Who needs free college?</h2>
<p>While the idea of free college has gained much traction in the media, the reality is that free college makes little sense in today’s political and economic environment. </p>
<p>All of the data point to the fact that <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/843.full">college is still a good investment</a> on average, even with prices as high as they are. </p>
<p>While it is equally true that many students, especially those from poorer families, are <a href="https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/is-college-unaffordable">discouraged</a> from attending college by the high price, the reality is that net college prices – or what students actually pay after subtracting the scholarships they receive from the sticker prices – are <a href="http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing">rising less quickly</a> than are sticker prices. </p>
<p>For example, average net prices in four-year private universities increased only 1.3 percent over the last decade in real dollars, while prices at community colleges actually decreased. Only in public four-year universities have net prices tracked closer to sticker prices, largely because of the large state disinvestment in public higher education during the recession.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113600/original/image-20160302-25866-jmgnib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Do all students need free education?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fleshmanpix/8260830860/in/photolist-dzYVdh-64rPAo-5zd2cK-5AxiFe-5sfurc-so7APc-dkk864-7DxQw-nqez7k-bFmfvK-aMJ5rV-nqeh3n-5zjWKK-2zrBdL-aYmH8V-5sfuwD-nqerS3-qNMtEP-dzTr1T-dzTrwr-5zd2CH-dzTrFD-nqerCW-9qyfMw-dzTrz6-2zrBRN-apemzB-nJvgTP-dzYV8b-anbmFG-dzYVaG-b3Hzjc-dzYV3E-9weSom-avi2XE-8y32yB-nEFdJE-nGqVTr-nGqW7x-5zEzJi-dzTqqt-dzYURW-nqerDC-nGHRKX-bUH7WQ-nqerqS-nqezKK-5zjpeR-dzYVfu-nJvgTt">Michael Fleshman</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing">Another reality</a> is that students from upper-income families are attending college in record numbers and having little difficulty in paying for it. </p>
<p>So the question is: how can the expenditure of funds be better targeted?</p>
<p>In Clinton’s case, her $35 billion per year would better be spent, in my view, by doubling expenditures in the Pell Grant program, keeping the money focused on students from the bottom half of the income distribution. </p>
<p>Rather than giving subsidies to wealthier students who have demonstrated the ability and willingness to pay for college, current Pell recipients – whose grants are capped at $5,775 this year – could receive a Pell Grant in excess of $11,000. </p>
<p>If the same logic was applied to what Sanders proposes to spend, these same students could see their grants rise to almost $15,000.</p>
<h2>Giving money where it is needed</h2>
<p>The fact is broad subsidies end up benefiting many students who do not need the support of public funds to attend college. </p>
<p>So, an even better use of the additional funds proposed by the two Democratic candidates would be to split the money between increasing Pell Grants and providing more academic and social support to poorer and first-generation students both before and while they are enrolled in college. </p>
<p>For example, the <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/index.html">federal TRIO programs</a> provide exactly this kind of assistance by offering academic support, mentoring and study skills services to first-generation students. The approximately $1 billion currently budgeted for these programs by the federal government, however, allows them to serve only about 10 percent of eligible students annually.</p>
<p>Expanding such programs, along with increasing targeted Pell Grant aid, would likely have a much broader impact on increasing the proportion of Americans attending college and earning degrees.</p>
<p>Whoever goes on to capture the White House in November can best tackle the problem of rising college prices by focusing any additional spending on students who truly need more support from the federal government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald E. Heller has received funding for his research on college access and finance in the past from federal agencies and private foundations.</span></em></p>Presidential candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have proposed a debt-free or a free college education. Is this feasible? Should wealthier students get such subsidies?Donald E. Heller, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, University of San FranciscoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554732016-03-03T11:19:16Z2016-03-03T11:19:16ZPresidential candidates offer sharp differences on the future of renewable energy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113601/original/image-20160302-25905-zwugqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Ivanpah Concentrating Solar Electric Generating System, built on public land in California's Mojave Desert.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/7552532@N07/15898828220/in/photolist-qdVDHW-qe4YW6-qtcVm9-qvingi-ciht19-dF2Rqk-qvifyv-qvt81t-qdVBoy-j5wBi2-pyHhzt-dF2RCn-qDK4HU-qe2mfB-qdUt3s-qdVmny-rwsem3-qPU5um-r7k6gt-r7kaVt-qQ2vbn-oKgKRe-qaFR3Z-qaFQZc-qPU5wL-r7kaRF-nm6NQQ-o3Q5cT-gip4J1-nm6P3y-nnQ22x-nm4vBX-rWyepQ-pVHpBY-nkM8T4-kY3Fct-nm6NfS-5sfXLS-kWoVFT-mE3d8F-pz4V7R-oVANbj-pDc6Uq-iZSrMt-pRv278-oUDwPY-pz3YP3-A11mkk-AiW1Vd-AUAEyY">ATOMIC Hot Links/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are in the middle of a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/news/global-energy-transition-underway-iea">long-term global transition</a> away from fossil fuels and toward more efficient, renewable-based energy systems. This shift will deliver many benefits, including jobs, reduced air pollution, lower greenhouse gas emissions and less exposure to the volatility and risks of extracting, storing and transporting fossil fuels. It also will offer individuals, households and communities <a href="http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/energy-democracy-community-led-solutions-three-case-studie/">more local control</a> over their energy systems. </p>
<p>The next U.S. president will have a significant impact on how the United States positions itself for this transition. </p>
<p>Renewable energy is growing rapidly, and is triggering far-reaching <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/earth-and-environmental-science/environmental-policy-economics-and-law/smart-grid-revolution-electric-power-struggles">social and institutional changes</a> in how energy is used and managed in the electric grid, in buildings and in transportation. Two types of policies will determine how quickly the United States shifts from fossil fuels to renewable-based energy systems: first, measures that support energy efficiency and renewable energy, and second, measures that reduce support for and reliance on fossil fuels. </p>
<p>There is a sharp divergence between the current Republican and Democratic presidential candidates’ positions on how to manage the dramatic changes that are taking place in our energy system and prepare for the future.</p>
<h2>The Republican candidates</h2>
<p>Most of the leading Republican candidates deny that a link exists between fossil fuel energy use and climate change; strongly support fossil fuels; and oppose providing incentives for renewable energy deployment. </p>
<p>Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that he <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/09/24/donald-trump-i-dont-believe-in-climate-change/">does not believe in climate change</a>, which he calls <a href="http://www.lcv.org/assets/docs/presidential-candidates-on.pdf">a hoax</a>. Trump has made few substantive comments about energy policy beyond asserting that wind turbines <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426591/donald-trump-new-hampshire-primary-ballot-rubio-bush">kill lots of birds</a>. He sued unsuccessfully to <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/16/news/donald-trump-golf-course-scotland-wind-farm/">block construction</a> of offshore wind turbines near one of his golf resorts in Scotland, arguing the turbines were ugly and would ruin the view and reduce tourism. </p>
<p>Senator Ted Cruz has called climate change a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fact-check-ted-cruzs-claims-about-climate-change-science/">“pseudo-scientific theory</a>.” Cruz advocates strongly for an <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/issues/jobs-and-opportunity/">“all-of-the-above” energy strategy</a>, is calling for an <a href="http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/elections/cruz-says-end-all-energy-subsidies/article_0ca6a302-9d66-5e92-a18a-a6c0f0aee7c7.html">end to all energy subsidies</a>, and criticizes the Obama administration for <a href="http://www.lcv.org/assets/docs/presidential-candidates-on-renewable.pdf">waging a “war”</a> on coal, oil and natural gas. Although he represents Texas, the state with the most wind generation capacity in the country, Cruz does not directly acknowledge opportunities offered by a rapidly accelerating transition toward more renewable based energy systems. </p>
<p>Senator Marco Rubio has <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/may/14/has-marco-rubio-backtracked-climate-change/">said</a> that he believes that climate change is occurring, but not that it is caused by human activity. Rubio released a <a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/energy-policy-proposals/">detailed energy plan</a> that focuses on achieving energy independence and reducing U.S. reliance on Middle East oil by promoting energy efficiency and domestic fossil fuel production. Rubio wants to deregulate oil and gas drilling; reduce federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for oil and gas; open up new areas for offshore oil and gas drilling; and expedite natural gas exports. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113603/original/image-20160302-25891-1wt16zs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">College students design prototype wind turbines in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Collegiate Wind Competition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/departmentofenergy/24939292636/in/album-72157664379857612/">Department of Energy/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both Cruz and Rubio have <a href="http://www.lcv.org/assets/docs/presidential-candidates-on-renewable.pdf">voted against</a> extending production tax credits for wind energy generation, providing support for rooftop solar installations, and setting a national goal of generating 25 percent of U.S. electricity from renewable fuels by 2025.</p>
<p>In contrast to other Republican candidates, John Kasich has <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/225073-kasich-touts-climate-belief-but-wont-apologize-for-coal">said</a> that he believes climate change is happening and is concerned about it. But Kasich, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/us/politics/john-kasich-balances-his-blue-collar-roots-and-ties-to-wall-street.html">whose grandfather was a coal miner</a>, does not support curbing use of fossil fuel, although he has promoted carbon capture and storage as a way to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants. </p>
<p>His energy <a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/john-kasich-assets/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kasich-Plan-Fact-Sheet-Energy.pdf">plan</a> calls low-cost, reliable energy “the backbone of America’s economy” and supports “more energy production from a broad base of sources,” including fossil fuels, nuclear power and renewables, along with energy efficiency and conservation. His specific energy proposals, however, focus on fossil fuels. Kasich pledges to increase oil and gas production on federal lands, approve the Keystone XL pipeline, scrap the Clean Power Plan to limit carbon emissions from power plants and end an existing ban on U.S. oil exports.</p>
<p>Kasich has sent mixed signals on renewable energy incentives. As governor of Ohio, he <a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/john-kasich-assets/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kasich-Plan-Fact-Sheet-Energy.pdf">signed a bill</a> in 2014 that placed a two-year freeze on the state’s mandate for utilities to generate an increasing share of their power from renewable sources. Critics argued that the renewable energy standard was driving up energy prices and making the state less competitive. Recently, however, Kasich has <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2016/01/kasich_to_ohio_lawmakers_dont.html">warned</a> Ohio lawmakers not to gut the renewable energy requirements, and pointed out that if the legislature cannot come up with an acceptable compromise version, the original standards will be restored in 2017. </p>
<h2>The Democratic candidates</h2>
<p>Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders contend that it is urgent for the United States to accelerate its transition away from fossil fuels to clean, sustainable energy. Both candidates say that doing so will create new jobs and help mitigate the impacts of global climate change. </p>
<p>Clinton has set <a href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/07/26/renewable-power-vision/">two broad goals</a> for expanding renewable energy. First, she has pledged to install 50 million solar panels by the end of her first term, which would represent roughly a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/28/is-hillary-clintons-ambitious-solar-energy-goal-for-the-us-workable">seven-fold increase</a>. However, solar energy is already growing rapidly – the U.S. solar market <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-is-so-hot-right-now-check-out-the-latest-numbers/">grew by 17 percent in 2015</a> – so it is possible that this increase might happen even if Clinton’s plan were not enacted. Second, Clinton pledges that within 10 years of her taking office, the United States will generate enough renewable energy to power every home in the country. </p>
<p>Clinton emphasizes the importance of bringing the benefits of energy efficiency and renewable energy to <a href="http://www.lcv.org/assets/docs/presidential-candidates-on-renewable.pdf">low-income communities</a>, and she also has released a <a href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/11/30/clinton-infrastructure-plan-builds-tomorrows-economy-today/">plan to modernize North American infrastructure</a> that includes investments in hydropower and modernization of the electric grid. In her campaign launch speech, Clinton pledged to <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/hillary-would-charge-new-fees-for-fossil-fuel-extraction">increase fees and royalties on fossil fuel production</a> and use the revenues to help support a clean energy transition. She also supports production tax credits for wind and solar power. </p>
<p>Among all of the major candidates, Bernie Sanders has proposed the most urgent and specific <a href="https://berniesanders.com/people-before-polluters/accelerate-a-just-transition-away-from-fossil-fuels/">policies</a> for shifting rapidly toward 100 percent reliance on renewable fuels, taxing carbon and <a href="http://leave-it-in-the-ground.org/">leaving fossil fuels in the ground</a>. Sanders has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/23/politics/bernie-sanders-pope-climate-change-income-inequality/">referenced statements by Pope Francis</a> to support his argument that moving away from fossil fuels toward renewables is a moral imperative to protect the planet. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113607/original/image-20160302-25872-9ej23n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Researcher at the Joint Bioenergy Institute, a partnership between federal laboratories, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the University of California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/berkeleylab/2825702325/in/album-72157606891739175/">Roy Kaltschmidt, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Senate, Sanders has introduced <a href="http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-energy-policy/">multiple bills</a> designed to expand access to renewable energy, including the Low-Income Solar Act, the Residential Energy Savings Act and the Green Jobs Act. Sanders has also proposed legislation to <a href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-merkley-leahy-introduce-bill-to-ban-new-drilling-on-public-land">ban all new fossil fuel production leases</a> on public lands, and supports production tax credits for wind and solar power. </p>
<p>The U.S. fossil fuel industry is very politically powerful, and fossil fuels still provide <a href="https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/css_2014_energy.pdf">just over 80 percent</a> of total U.S. energy consumption. Thus, it is not surprising that few candidates are willing to take positions that are directly opposed to fossil fuels. </p>
<p>Both Clinton and Sanders advocate stricter regulation of fracking, but Sanders has also proposed a series of specific <a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/6-things-bernie-sanders-would-do-to-crack-down-on-fracking-even-if-congress-doesnt-go-along/">actions to limit fracking</a>. Clinton and Sanders also have expressed frustration with their political colleagues who deny the link between fossil fuel combustion and climate change. </p>
<h2>New energy thinking</h2>
<p>As we move toward more efficient, renewable energy systems, we need to acknowledge that the process of transition is disruptive and uncertain. Research on other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.04.009">energy system transitions</a> suggests that as entrenched actors who profit from the current fossil fuel regime feel increasingly threatened by ongoing changes, we can expect resistance to strengthen before it begins to weaken. </p>
<p>The renewable energy transition is changing fundamentally how we produce, use and distribute energy. This means that we have to <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/earth-and-environmental-science/environmental-policy-economics-and-law/smart-grid-revolution-electric-power-struggles">reevaluate and reframe</a> long-held cultural and institutional assumptions about energy planning. Advances in rooftop solar, distributed renewables, energy storage and electric vehicles have opened up new possibilities for decentralized and distributed energy system management. </p>
<p>As utilities, regulators, renewable energy developers, communities and customers gain experience with new technologies, policies and practices, it is becoming easier for them to let go of long-held assumptions about limitations of alternative energy compared to fossil fuels. </p>
<p>In the presidential race, the Democratic candidates are openly embracing the positive potential of America’s inevitable transition to renewable energy systems, while the Republican candidates are resisting change and holding tightly to conventional assumptions of the fossil fuel era.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennie C. Stephens receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. She is affiliated with Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the Council for Energy Research and Education Leaders, and Renewable Energy Vermont Education Fund. </span></em></p>The U.S. energy system is gradually transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Will the next president speed up America’s shift to renewable energy or step on the brakes?Jennie C. Stephens, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy, University of VermontLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/556132016-03-03T11:18:46Z2016-03-03T11:18:46ZDoes it matter who wins the election when it comes to the Middle East?<p>Elections, the perennial wisdom tells us, are generally not decided by foreign policy issues.</p>
<p>But who’s to say that 2016 will not buck the trend, as it has in so many other ways?</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://theconversation.com/paris-the-war-with-is-enters-a-new-stage-50709">potentially</a> only one Paris-style terrorist attack or a brazenly aggressive act by Russian President Putin from changing the mood and focus of the American electorate.</p>
<p>Indeed, Republican voters <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/barack-obama/economy-or-terrorism-which-issue-most-important-voters-n495091">already consider</a> terrorism their primary concern. And the never-ending, slow <a href="http://cbs6albany.com/news/connect-to-congress/benghazi-committee-receives-new-documents-as-more-clinton-emails-are-released">drip release</a> of Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi emails is certain to return the spotlight to foreign policy. </p>
<p>So let’s take a look at how the candidates stack up in the most contentious region in the world: the Middle East. </p>
<h2>Whom to compare – and why</h2>
<p>Let’s look at the three major Republicans left in the race. </p>
<p>Donald Trump has actually said very little about <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions">foreign policy</a>, especially about <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-foreign-policy-gaffes-2016-213345">the Middle East</a>. </p>
<p>In fact there are essentially few discernible differences between Trump’s position on the region and those of his main rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. </p>
<p>While Trump says little, Cruz’s position is one-dimensional. He would rely on brute force. Cruz has said he wants to “carpet bomb” the Islamic militants and find out whether “<a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-ted-cruz-carpet-bomb-20151215-htmlstory.html">sand can glow in the dark.</a>” But there isn’t much beyond that. Still, it is more than Trump has offered which is to “<a href="http://www.vice.com/read/donald-trump-says-hell-behead-isis-and-steal-their-oil-in-his-first-campaign-video-vgtrn">behead” the Islamic State, or ISIS, and steal their oil</a>. </p>
<p>Rubio’s position is the most fleshed-out, probably because he has the most foreign policy expertise and has spent time working on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Not surprisingly, therefore, he also offers the most comprehensive plan for dealing with ISIS, the central focus of his <a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/isis-plan-policy-proposal-defeat/">plans</a> for the Middle East if elected. </p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, of course, has by far the most foreign policy experience of any candidate left in this year’s field – and arguably among the most of any in history. </p>
<p>First Lady, Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation: she has a unique resume. </p>
<h2>Two different world views</h2>
<p>So how do Clinton and the Republicans compare when it comes to American policy the Middle East? </p>
<p>President Obama has often, <a href="https://theconversation.com/grand-strategy-or-no-strategy-obamas-intervention-in-syria-and-iraq-33056">I believe unfairly</a>, been accused of having no grand strategy at all, <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/09/national-insecurity/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Flashpoints&utm_campaign=2014_FlashPoints%20%5BManual%5DRSbestofprint">let alone one</a> for the region. </p>
<p>The consensus among American policymakers is that there are are four enduring interests for the U.S. in the Middle East: oil, regime change, terrorism and the protection of its allies (always Israel and, more variably, Saudi Arabia). </p>
<p>Then there are also always a series of proximate issues that dominate the press – like Iran’s nuclear program or ISIS’ conquests. </p>
<p>The differences between these candidates are which they prioritize, and how they approach them. </p>
<h2>Clinton’s liberal internationalism</h2>
<p>Clinton’s approach to strategy in most of these areas relies on what policymakers and academics generally label a liberal internationalist approach, one that employs what they call <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25097997">“smart power</a>.” </p>
<p>This approach relies on a combination of tools – diplomatic, economic, military, political, technological and cultural – in the pursuit of foreign policy. </p>
<p>Clinton <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-america/2010-11-01/leading-through-civilian-power">has explicitly written </a>and <a href="http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-smart-power-foreign-policy/">talked</a> about smart power. She used this approach in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html">Libya </a>in 2011 when the goal was regime change
and would <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1979260-hillary-clinton-smart-power-versus-isis/">employ the same cocktail</a>: for example, to defeat terrorist groups like ISIS. But while she favors a no-fly zone to protect civilians in Syria, she eschews the idea of American forces entering a Middle Eastern ground war at this point. </p>
<p>So, right or wrong, she appears to have learned some lessons from the Iraq debacle and the shorter Libyan intervention.</p>
<p>All presidential candidates talk about the essential role the U.S. plays as a “leader.” But, when they use that word, they don’t always mean the same thing. </p>
<p>Generally, Clinton favors the kind of influential multilateral approach to leadership adopted by the Obama administration in the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. There it saw itself as a <a href="http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/first-among-equals">“first among equals”:</a> that is, a member of a group who is officially on the same level as the other members but who has more responsibility or power.</p>
<p>In practice, that means that the U.S. sets the agenda and largely defines the approach to problem, even as it seeks and acts on the basis of consensus. </p>
<p>It also means that its policymakers anticipate the need to compromise. John Kerry epitomized that approach in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/15/iran-nuclear-deal_n_7799102.html">exhaustive negotiations</a> with the Iranians. </p>
<h2>The Republican primacist view of the world</h2>
<p>The Republicans all rely on a very different set of principles in defining their general strategy. </p>
<p>It is one that policy wonks and academics label <a href="http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/13/us-grand-strategy-options/">“primacist.”</a> A primacist approach relies much more on military power than Clinton’s more balanced elixir when it comes to foreign policy. </p>
<p>Cruz, for example, simply wants to destroy what he calls “<a href="http://theweek.com/articles/592964/ted-cruz-wants-nuke-middle-east">radical Islam</a>” from the air through carpet-bombing.</p>
<p>Rubio’s view is more developed. <a href="http://www.cfr.org/united-states/marco-rubios-foreign-policy/p28201">His view</a> of leadership entails a rhetorical reference to multilateral coalitions. But still, like Cruz or Trump, he has a far greater willingness to act unilaterally without regard to the concerns of organizations such as the United Nations. </p>
<p>So it isn’t surprising that <a href="https://marcorubio.com/sidebar-featured/marco-rubio-military-defense-spending-policy/">Rubio’s stump speech</a> includes lots of references to rebuilding and modernizing the military in the face of what he characterizes as “devastating” recent defense cuts. Indeed, Trump has said it would be his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvpjOYljmd0">first order of business</a> if elected president. </p>
<p>Of course, America’s military power is unprecedented. And the danger of a primacist approach is that policy makers see the use of force as a first option rather than a last one in resolving every problem. Indeed, it recalls the adage that “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” </p>
<p>Obama tried to construct a national security strategy that conserves American power. Clinton advocates much the same. But the Republicans’ philosophy is based on the belief that the aggressive use of American power will only make it more powerful. </p>
<p>So it isn’t surprising that <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/25/9796242/marco-rubio-isis">Rubio’s plan to defeat ISIS</a> includes a ground war. Or that all the Republicans are staunch advocates of intervention against countries like Iran and say they would <a href="https://marcorubio.com/news/marco-rubio-statement-on-obamas-dangerous-iran-deal/">tear up</a> the agreement with the Iranians (and indeed <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/10/marco-rubio-cuba-obama-policy-roll-back">roll back</a> any agreement with Cuba if elected.) </p>
<p>Unlike Clinton, Rubio, for example, would aggressively support <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/white-house-to-unveil-call-for-strategic-patience-russia-ukraine-syria-iraq-china-asia/">regime changes in both countries</a>. The Republicans reject what Obama characterizes as “<a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/white-house-to-unveil-call-for-strategic-patience-russia-ukraine-syria-iraq-china-asia/">strategic patience</a>” an approach that emphasizes the importance of awaiting changes to slowly unfold in both countries.</p>
<h2>Similarities - yes, there are some</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, there are some areas where Clinton and the Republicans would likely enforce similar policies. </p>
<p>These are areas where every president, including Obama, have been remarkably consistent. The U.S. Navy, for example, protects freedom of navigation in the Straits of Hormuz off Iran’s coast. Their goal is to ensure that world markets are not roiled by a sudden shortage of Middle Eastern oil caused by sabotage of tankers passing through this narrow waterway. </p>
<p>And they’d all maintain a close alliance relationship with Israel, although – based on their rhetoric – the Republicans would be <a href="https://marcorubio.com/news/israel-policy-position/">exceptionally uncritical</a>. </p>
<p>Clinton, for her part, has <a href="http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-on-israel/">consistently supported</a> Israel and has links to America’s Jewish community that <a href="http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/310756/hillary-clinton-and-her-enduring-ties-to-jews/">can be traced back</a> decades. But <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/us/politics/hillary-clinton-backs-iran-nuclear-deal.html">her support of the Iran deal</a> has cast a doubt in the minds of some of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/11/politics/jewish-voters-florida-hillary-clinton-election-2016/">Israel’s supporters</a> as to her fidelity when it matters the most.</p>
<h2>So what should we conclude?</h2>
<p>At the end of the day, the policy differences between Clinton and the leading Republicans are occasionally stark. At other times, however, they are unclear. </p>
<p>If we are to believe what they say (which is always an issue in any election season), then the chances of America entering a new ground war in the Middle East will significantly increase under a Republican president. Their style would be more forceful as they rely more on American military power as an instrument of change. </p>
<p>Clinton’s style and tone would differ. Looking at the success of the Iran agreement, she might be tempted to rely more on multilateral diplomacy as a first option and force as a last – even if it means negotiating with people she doesn’t like. </p>
<p>Then again, despite her impressive resume, Clinton might feel that she has to demonstrate some resolve, as America’s first female president, to address any lingering doubts. And in the Middle East there is no way of knowing where that will lead.</p>
<p>One thing is certain: whoever becomes president, there is no way that America will relinquish its continued obsession with the region.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Reich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The candidates differ on Middle East policy sometimes a lot; other times not so much. But whoever becomes president, there is no way that America will stop obsessing about the region.Simon Reich, Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/556842016-03-03T00:42:26Z2016-03-03T00:42:26ZWill Republican tax plans make America great again?<p>As the old saying goes, there are only two things certain in life: <a href="http://freakonomics.com/2011/02/17/quotes-uncovered-death-and-taxes/">death and taxes</a>. While being taxed is a certainty, the rate and types of income being taxed is not. </p>
<p>Each of the five remaining GOP hopefuls – <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/tax-reform">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/tax_plan/">Ted Cruz</a>, <a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/rubio-tax-plan/">Marco Rubio</a>, <a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/john-kasich-assets/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Kasich-Plan-Fact-Sheet-Cutting-Taxes-1.pdf">John Kasich</a> and <a href="https://www.bencarson.com/issues/tax-reform">Ben Carson</a> (who appeared on the verge of dropping out as this article was written) – has released tax proposals on his official website. Examining these plans provides a rough idea of what will happen to the tax system if a GOP candidate wins the November presidential election.</p>
<p>And with Tax Day approaching, a top question in most voters’ minds is, “How much will I have to pay the federal government?” </p>
<p>Since few voters or politicians are currently discussing the taxes to support programs like Social Security, Medicare (payroll taxes), fix the nation’s highways (gasoline taxes) or curb public health problems (“sin” taxes on cigarettes and alcohol), my analysis will adhere to the candidates’ laser-like focus on income and business taxes.</p>
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<h2>Number of individual brackets</h2>
<p>Currently, the federal government has <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/2016-tax-brackets">seven tax brackets</a> for individuals. All five of the GOP candidates want to reduce the number of tax brackets. </p>
<p>Brackets are designed to make the tax system progressive so that richer people pay a higher percent of their income in taxes than poorer people. Reducing the number of brackets simplifies the tax system but also reduces progressivity, leading to a system where the rich and poor people pay similar percentages.</p>
<p>The debate over whether it is fair for the rich and poor to pay similar percentages has a very long history. This question was brought up by the earliest economists like <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html">Adam Smith</a> and John Stuart Mill. </p>
<p>Mill, in his book <em><a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP.html">Principles of Political Economy</a>,</em> wrote that the rich should pay more taxes than the poor by arguing, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While most people today agree that the rich should pay more (in absolute terms) than the poor, there are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/millionaires-taxes-survey_n_5272647.html">numerous arguments</a> as to whether they should or should not pay proportionally more.</p>
<p>Today’s GOP candidates approach Mill’s proposal very differently. </p>
<p>Trump supports the most progressivity by proposing the current system be scaled back from seven brackets to four. Rubio and Kasich both support three brackets. Cruz and Carson are on the other end entirely, with both supporting a single bracket flat tax, which has no progressivity.</p>
<h2>Top individual rate</h2>
<p>Another element of progressivity is what’s the top rate.</p>
<p>At the moment, the federal government has individual tax rates ranging from <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf">10 percent to 39.6 percent</a>, with each bracket applied to different levels of income. For example, today the top rate doesn’t kick in until income levels reach over US$410,000 for singles and over $460,000 for married couples filing jointly. </p>
<p>All five GOP candidates want to lower the top rate. A high tax rate means the wealthy provide billions to the government in revenue, at least temporarily. </p>
<p>However, an effective tax system should affect economic decisions as little as possible. High rates often provide a <a href="http://www.laffercenter.com/the-laffer-center-2/the-laffer-curve/">disincentive</a> to work and invest. This means that high rates potentially can kill the golden goose of high government revenue. If high rates cause people to work less, than there will be less income for the government to tax.</p>
<p>While all five candidates want the top rate figure to fall, their proposals vary widely.</p>
<p>Rubio wants to lower the top rate the least by proposing a ceiling of 35 percent. Cruz with his flat tax proposes cutting the top rate the most by taxing everyone just 10 percent, no matter what they earn. Trump (top rate 25 percent), Kasich (28 percent) and Carson (14.9 percent) all feel the optimal number for high income earners is a figure somewhere between Rubio’s and Cruz’s values.</p>
<h2>Top business rate</h2>
<p>Corporate tax reform has been a big issue in recent years and one that increasingly has received some degree of bipartisan support. Both Republicans and Democrats have argued the top <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2015">business tax rate</a> of 39 percent is too high. </p>
<p>Business taxes can be controversial because some people <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/21/axes-do-companies-pay-their-fair-share-of-taxes-depends-how-you-ask.html">view them as unfair</a>. For example, if you are self-employed, the money earned doing that job is taxed just once at the individual rate. However, if you incorporate the business and do the same work, the money is taxed twice, once at the corporate level and a second time when the business gives the profits to the individual.</p>
<p>Another problem is that many large corporations have some leeway in which countries they book profits. While some transactions are clearly local, it is difficult to determine where some transactions actually occur. For example, if a person living in the U.S. buys a song from an Irish band over the Internet from a computer server located in Canada, which country has the right to tax the transaction?</p>
<p>These jurisdictional issues mean companies try to book profits in a country with the lowest tax rate. Currently, many corporations favor Ireland because in 1987 the country slashed the maximum corporate tax rate to <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2015">12.5 percent</a>. This dramatic drop resulted in many multinational businesses moving their European operations to this low-tax haven.</p>
<p>All five candidates want the top business tax rate to fall, but in a variety of ways. Rubio and Kasich both want to lower the top rate the least by proposing a new top rate of 25 percent. </p>
<p>The other three, however, prefer to slash it much more, seeing the optimal top rate closer to 15 percent. Specifically, Carson targets 14.9 percent, Trump 15 percent and Cruz 16 percent.</p>
<p>Still, no candidate proposes a maximum rate that would undercut Ireland. </p>
<h2>The only thing dead certain</h2>
<p>No matter who wins the GOP nomination this summer, it is relatively simple to predict the type of tax legislation that will be pushed by a Republican president in 2017: fewer brackets and lower maximum tax rates.</p>
<p>The reduction in brackets would most likely lead to a less progressive tax system, but it’s less certain how each plan would affect tax revenue and U.S. <a href="http://businessmacroeconomics.com/">gross domestic product</a> (GDP). </p>
<p>All five claim that their proposals would dramatically boost economic growth. For example, Cruz believes his proposal would boost GDP by 13.9 percent over the next decade – or an average of about 1.4 percent a year – while Carson assures us GDP will be 16 percent higher if his flat tax plan is enacted. Many of the candidates claim this greater growth will offset any reduction in revenue because of the lower rates.</p>
<p>Will these predictions of accelerated economic growth prove accurate and result in overflowing tax coffers? Or will these reductions in rates lead to a fiscal crisis?</p>
<p>There are too many unknowns to accurately predict the result. This leaves us with the cold comfort that death is now the only thing with true certainty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
There’s nothing as certain as death, taxes and a Republican with a plan to cut them. But how do the candidates’ proposals stack up?Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555622016-03-02T06:23:27Z2016-03-02T06:23:27ZSuper Tuesday sees Trump and Clinton triumph: scholars around the globe react<p><em>On Super Tuesday, voters from more than a dozen U.S. states voted in presidential primaries with important consequences for the candidates. We asked three scholars in different parts of the world to comment on the results and what they mean for the presidential race going forward.</em></p>
<h2>What now for the Republicans?</h2>
<p><strong>Bryan Cranston, Ph.D. Candidate in Politics and History, Swinburne University of Technology</strong></p>
<p>In 2015, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/22/donald-trump-wont-win-republican-presidential-nomination">political</a> <a href="http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/republicans-2016-what-to-do-with-the-donald/">pundits</a> <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-06/who-thinks-donald-trump-can-and-can-t-win-the-republican-presidential-nomination-">universally</a> agreed that Donald Trump could not win the Republican nomination. Following Super Tuesday’s results, it appears that everything we know about presidential nominating contests is wrong – Trump appears on the verge of becoming the Republican nominee.</p>
<p>Trump is not the unifying figure his party needs. While the polls were open on Super Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a stern rebuke implicitly aimed at Trump, saying that the Republican nominee – whoever it ends up being – needs to <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/paul-ryan-2016-nominee-reject-bigotry-220029">reject bigotry</a>. Senator Lindsey Graham, who has a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/26/politics/lindsey-graham-ted-cruz-dinner/">strong dislike</a> of Ted Cruz, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/01/lindsey-graham-we-may-be-in-a-position-where-we-have-to-rally-around-ted-cruz-video/">said</a> the Republican Party may:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Late last week it was <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sabato-trump-carson-fiorina-wont-win-warns-gop-will-be-rip/article/2572807">reported</a> that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell had encouraged his Senate colleagues facing reelection to run ads distancing themselves and attacking Trump if they feel he is hurting their campaigns.</p>
<p>Two days later, the Senate’s number two Republican, John Cornyn, <a href="http://atr.rollcall.com/cornyn-gop-incumbents-separate-trump/?dcz=">echoed</a> McConnell. Later the same day, Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska with strong Tea Party backing, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/ben-sasse-donald-trump-endorsement/">tweeted</a> he would not vote for Trump and would instead look to support a third-party candidate.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"704144755509305344"}"></div></p>
<p>The commonly held belief is that that Trump will lose badly in the general election. Republican senators are thus refocusing their efforts to be a <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/mitch-mcconnell-republicans-will-drop-trump-like-a-hot-rock-if-he-wins-the-nomination/">bulwark against a Hillary Clinton presidency</a>.</p>
<p>The Republican Party is in a state of utter chaos. At a meeting of Republican governors on February 20, Maine Governor Paul LePage <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party.html">disavowed</a> Trump and called for his colleagues to do the same. Exactly one week later, he <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/26/politics/paul-lepage-donald-trump-endorsement/">endorsed</a> Trump’s candidacy. This highlights that major figures in the party don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>Perhaps most telling is the fact that conservative billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Charles and David Koch (who were prolific donors in 2012) have thus far failed to indicate any interest in this year’s contest, despite <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/01/27/381954047/koch-brothers-put-price-tag-on-2016-889-million">saying</a> in January 2015 that they were prepared to spend US$900 million to elect a Republican president.</p>
<p>If this was any other year, the Republican Party would be rallying around their presumptive nominee, and preparing for a general election contest. Instead, could we see the first brokered convention since 1952? Or will 2016 resemble 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt led a major third-party bid to deny fellow Republican William Howard Taft reelection? Is this what Adelson and the Kochs are waiting for? </p>
<p>Regardless, 2016 looks set to be the most interesting presidential election in decades.</p>
<h2>The role of the youth vote</h2>
<p><strong>Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of <a href="http://civicyouth.org/">CIRCLE</a> at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts University</strong></p>
<p>This primary season, voters under age 30 have proven that they are both willing to vote <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/03/01/yes-college-students-are-voting-but-that-doesn-mean-they-tell-you-who-they-voting-for/lu8kIacR0TBMF5i0xo54iJ/story.html#comments">even when it is inconvenient</a> and poised to <a href="http://civicyouth.org/youthvote2016/">assert their influence on key races</a>. Analyzing data from early contests in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, my colleagues and I at <a href="http://www.civicyouth.org">CIRCLE</a> observed two trends in youth voting. </p>
<p>First, young voters were overwhelmingly supporting Senator Bernie Sanders, and voting in high – but not record – numbers. On the other hand, Republican youth were <a href="http://civicyouth.org/quick-facts/2016-election-center/#Cumulative">coming out in record numbers</a> but not rallying around just one candidate. </p>
<p>As Super Tuesday winds down, exit polls indicate that young Democratic voters had a strong showing and much of that was still motivated by their enthusiasm for Sanders. His surprise win in four states – Vermont, Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota – no doubt has to do with youth participation and enthusiasm. In all states except for Alabama, young voters chose Sanders over Hillary Clinton with comfortable margins – including the South, where he was expected to lose even among youth. </p>
<p>In Arkansas, where Bill Clinton served as governor, young voters stood out by choosing to support Sanders by <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/ar/Dem">62 percent to 38 percent</a> in spite of older voters’ strong support for Clinton. In Oklahoma, 80 percent of youth <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/ok/Dem">voted for Sanders</a>. Tonight’s results suggest that Sanders’ appeal to youth potentially crosses race, gender, and geographical boundaries. </p>
<p>On the Republican side, young people are less decisive than older voters, who overwhelmingly went for Trump. Voters under 30 supported Trump in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. But they backed Ted Cruz in Arkansas and Marco Rubio in Virginia. And Cruz and Rubio shared the top spot in Texas.</p>
<p>Compared to Democrat youth, the Republican youth were a smaller share of the voters in today’s primaries, a result of the huge turnout rates by Republicans of all ages. In fact, the absolute number of youth who voted was at a record high – suggesting that young Republicans could be an important force in the general election. </p>
<h2>Could Trump attract the odd Sanders voter?</h2>
<p><strong>Gina Reinhardt, Lecturer, Department of Government, University of Essex</strong></p>
<p>After these results, it’s clear to most that Bernie Sanders’ run for the presidency will soon be over. His victories in Vermont and Oklahoma notwithstanding, Hillary Clinton is steaming toward the 2,382 delegates needed to win the nomination, and his chances of catching up to her are slim.</p>
<p>It’s easy to think that Sanders’ supporters will fall behind Clinton when he’s no longer in the race, but don’t be too sure. Sanders’ surprising success so far has been based on his criticism of the establishment, his pleas for common sense, and his appeal to individuals – small donors. Who else in the race purports to represent the same ideals? Donald Trump.</p>
<p>True, Trump and Sanders could not be more different on their views on immigration, wealth inequality, race relations or, indeed, what “common sense” actually is. But so far, the campaigns have not focused on actual policy prescriptions. The debates have been about broad ideas and catchy slogans. And in some of the broader strokes, Trump and Sanders are strangely similar.</p>
<p>Trump has focused on running as a Washington outsider; Sanders considers himself a socialist, until this year one of the most “outside” of traditional American politics a candidate could claim to be. And like Trump, Sanders proves his mettle by raising millions without attracting a lot of big donors.</p>
<p>Trump is running as a Republican, but many longtime Republicans doubt his loyalty to party ideals, and he has donated heavily to Democrats over the years. Sanders is running as a Democrat, but he holds his Senate seat as an independent. Crucially, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/01/26/trump-and-sanders-allow-partisans-to-stick-with-their-parties-while-also-rejecting-them/">Yanna Krupnikov and Samara Klar</a> argue, both Trump and Sanders:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… allow people to reject the establishment without having to leave their own party.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Certainly, a great many Sanders supporters will move on to Clinton, some of them happily. But others will wish they had a different choice. Perhaps Trump can pull a few his way. And if that seems far-fetched, just think of everything else that’s happened so far in this cycle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gina Yannitell Reinhardt has previously received funding from the US National Science Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg receives funding from WT Grant Foundation, Corporation for National and Community Service, and Spencer Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bryan Cranston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our global newsroom responds to the Super Tuesday primary results in the race for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees.Bryan Cranston, Ph.D. Candidate in Politics and History, Swinburne University of TechnologyGina Yannitell Reinhardt, Lecturer, Department of Government, University of EssexKei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/540252016-03-02T04:39:15Z2016-03-02T04:39:15ZSuper Tuesday: Clinton and Trump lift off as rivals straggle behind<p>The results of “Super Tuesday”, when a clutch of US states voted to choose the two parties’ nominees, have seriously ironed out both the Republican and Democratic primary campaigns. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton scored major gains, and their rivals are now fully on the ropes. It may be that the campaigns are finally stabilising after a truly wild start to the primaries.</p>
<p>Donald Trump has bounced back remarkably from his <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-betting-markets-are-saying-about-the-us-election-after-iowa-caucus-results-53861">loss in Iowa</a>. He went into Super Tuesday having won <a href="https://theconversation.com/republican-race-remains-congested-after-a-new-hampshire-pile-up-54210">New Hampshire</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-winning-streak-reveals-bigotrys-appeal-in-gop-55304">Nevada</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-south-carolina-victory-could-make-him-unstoppable-in-gop-race-55001">South Carolina</a>; he’s also seen off experienced Republican candidates including onetime frontrunner <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/breaking-news-jeb-bush-is-suspending-his-presidential-campaign-219564">Jeb Bush</a> and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – who has made the shocking move of endorsing Trump, to widespread <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/why-americans-hate-politicians-chris-christie-edition/471378/">disgust</a>. </p>
<p>That left Trump with three principal rivals: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich. All three headed into Super Tuesday in hopes of a major turnaround. Instead, they got routed. While Cruz won his home state of Texas (as expected) and netted Oklahoma and Alaska too, other delegate-rich states on the Republican side were called for Trump as soon as the polls closed, including Virginia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Marco Rubio, who has made a show of being the Republican mainstream’s <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rubio-plans-beating-trump-nomination/story?id=37283377">best hope of stopping Trump</a>, walked away with only one win, in Minnesota.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, confirmed that she has fully hit her stride after a rocky start to the primaries. She <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-05/iowa-democrats-say-recount-impossible-in-clinton-sanders-virtual-tie">effectively tied</a> Bernie Sanders in Iowa and <a href="https://theconversation.com/sanders-wins-new-hampshire-why-the-time-is-again-ripe-for-american-socialism-54317">lost big</a> to him in New Hampshire, but then beat him convincingly in <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-reasons-why-clintons-nevada-victory-is-important-55002">Nevada</a> before <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/south-carolina">trouncing him by an astonishing 47%</a> in South Carolina – where, crucially, she won <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/02/28/daily-202-hillary-clinton-s-landslide-victory-in-south-carolina-points-to-big-trouble-for-bernie-sanders-on-super-tuesday/56d26186981b92a22d46a7ae/">90% of the black vote</a>. That didn’t bode well for Sanders, whose campaign has been a barnstorming attack on income inequality and the deep divisions in American society – and on Super Tuesday, Clinton ultimately followed it with a huge sweep. </p>
<p>Georgia and Virginia were called for her as soon as the first polls closed (and tiny American Samoa soon followed). The delegate-rich southern states then quickly began falling into her column by big margins, and then a win in the New England state of Massachusetts with 116 delegates. Sanders won his small home state of Vermont and picked up Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota, but Clinton’s strength was simply too great across the rest of the states. Sanders is now clearly far behind, with very few hopes of recovery.</p>
<p>So what now?</p>
<h2>Ready for Hillary</h2>
<p>Now that Trump’s macho populism has all but steamrolled Cruz’s evangelical conservatism and Rubio’s moderation, and with Sanders’ democratic socialism fading against Clinton’s pragmatic realism, this has fast started to become a contest between Trump and Clinton. And in that contest, the presidency is now Clinton’s to lose.</p>
<p>This would be true whoever was running. The other contenders on both sides simply cannot match her appeal: Sanders is too narrowly leftist for the general electorate, while Cruz and perhaps even Rubio would be too far right. </p>
<p>Trump, meanwhile, polls well among disaffected low income white Americans, which works well for that particular rump of the Republican Party, but much to the disappointment of its elite, who have so far been unable to stop the Trump machine – even as they desperately remind everyone that he’s simply too much of a <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/02/27/former-cia-chief-says-military-could-defy-donald-trumps-orders/">risk</a>, particularly on matters of national security and foreign policy. </p>
<p>Clinton, by contrast, polls especially well among middle-aged and older women, the poor, and middle class Americans, as well as minority communities. This is a winning coalition, one made up of many of the same groups that favoured President Obama in 2008 and 2012. These demographics have continued to swell their ranks, and in the absence of a major event (say, an utterly damning revelation in the drip feed of Clinton’s state department emails), the odds are ever in Clinton’s favour. </p>
<p>Even leaving aside the toxic, chaotic nature of the campaign so far, the prospect of a Trump presidency – or even a Republican one – seems very remote indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54025/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Todd Landman receives funding from the Nuffield Foundation for his podcast series The Rights Track, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). </span></em></p>One outsider movement candidate ran riot, while another seemingly crumpled.Todd Landman, Professor of Political Science, Pro Vice Chancellor of the Social Sciences, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/547912016-02-29T10:09:06Z2016-02-29T10:09:06ZThe Republicans’ mudfight of a campaign masks a real foreign policy debate<p>As far as policy goes, journalists tend to view presidential campaigns through the lens of Bill Clinton’s unofficial campaign slogan from 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And so it goes this year. To the extent that they cover policy rather than personality clashes and outlandish, offensive announcements, the headlines are dominated by stories about Donald Trump’s <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-economy-217496">radically belligerent economic agenda</a> and Bernie Sanders’ railing against <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/bernie-sanders-only-cares-about-inequality.html">income inequality</a> and Wall Street.</p>
<p>But it’s wrong to reduce the current election to nothing more than a contest of differing economic visions. In fact, a closer look reveals a wealth of information about many crucial issues – particularly about foreign policy. </p>
<p>And while there are important differences in the foreign policy platforms of Sanders and Clinton, the more intriguing, and potentially momentous, divide is on the Republican side. While the media has largely neglected this aspect of the Republican race, the leading candidates are fighting for nothing less than sway over the party’s vision of America’s place in the world.</p>
<p>On one side stands Marco Rubio, who remains the leading candidate in the so-called “establishment lane”. The junior senator from Florida advocates an unapologetic vision of American exceptionalism; he sees the US as obligated to address all the trouble spots across the globe vigorously and (apparently) simultaneously. So he would confront Russia, China, and Iran more forcefully than President Obama, and calls for a large increase in defence spending. He also argues that the US should ramp up its involvement in Syria.</p>
<p>This worldview is closely related to <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2011/06/23/whats-a-neoconservative/">neoconservatism</a>, a worldview that first began to focus on foreign policy in the 1970s and which reached its disastrous peak influence during the presidency of George W. Bush. Rubio’s call for “<a href="https://marcorubio.com/issues/this-is-how-america-should-lead/">moral clarity regarding America’s core values</a>”, for example, is quintessentially neoconservative language. </p>
<p>This platform is crafted to appeal to the party’s establishment elite. Indeed, influential neoconservatives such as Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol are reportedly advising him on foreign policy.</p>
<p>Rubio’s main challengers, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, also loudly proclaim American greatness and have harshly criticised Obama’s foreign policy. But they are less eager to launch new military incursions abroad, and both oppose the sort of long-term interventions that have entangled the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Cruz, for instance, has <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/29/how-ted-cruz-trolls-obama-s-foreign-policy.html">bluntly stated</a> that “it’s not the job of the US military to do nation building or produce democratic utopias”.</p>
<p>Trump, characteristically, is more colourful and has called the invasion of Iraq a “big, fat mistake”. In fact, in the recent debate in South Carolina, Trump challenged Republican orthodoxy — and the party establishment —directly, by accusing George W. Bush of lying about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and of failing to prevent the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.</p>
<p>The sharp contrast between Trump and Cruz, on the one hand, and Rubio on the other, underscores a crucial ideological divide that has re-emerged in Republican thinking. Rubio represents the neoconservative orthodoxy that has mostly held sway for the last 15 years among party elites, while Cruz and Trump are espousing an updated form of conservative nationalism. </p>
<h2>Serious consequences</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most eloquent representative of this strand of thinking was Robert Taft. A Republican senator from Ohio and one of the party’s leaders in the 1940s and early 1950s, Taft questioned many of the new international commitments the US made in the early years of the Cold War. Though this perspective largely disappeared after the Korean War, it has resurfaced periodically since 1990 – <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/299111/imaginary-isolationism">if never becoming dominant</a>.</p>
<p>Trump and Cruz don’t agree on all the issues. Cruz is committed to free trade, for instance, whereas Trump <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-anti-trade-tirades-recall-gops-protectionist-past-54631">has made protectionism</a> one of his signature issues. To an extent, this is because Cruz and Trump represent different constituencies. </p>
<p>Cruz tends to channel supporters of the Tea Party, many of whose activists have long been <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2011-03-01/tea-party-and-american-foreign-policy">sceptical of neoconservative thinking</a> (though they have mainly confronted the Republican establishment on domestic issues), and has been making a strong pitch to <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/130422/ted-cruz-lost-evangelical-vote">evangelical conservatives</a>. The base of Trump’s support, meanwhile, seems to consist of <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/donald-trump-american-nationalist-14237">working-class whites</a> who are overwhelmingly hawkish on national security, but who have little patience for sending troops abroad for long periods.</p>
<p>It’s easy to ignore the Republicans’ raging debate on foreign policy, especially since the press is inclined to focus on more lurid themes – the threat of making Mexico pay for a wall on the border, say. But even if the US <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/18/is-a-u-s-decline-good-news-for-china/">is declining</a> relative to rising powers such as China, as many observers now believe it is, foreign policy decisions in Washington DC still have enormous consequences for those of us in the rest of the world. </p>
<p>As the nominating contests reach a fever pitch, perhaps we should pay a bit less attention to Trump’s latest insult, or stories of Rubio’s robotic debate performances, and a bit more to the type of commander-in-chief they would be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John M Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s easy to dismiss the Republican contest as a parochial brawl, but one of its belligerents could be the world’s most powerful person.John M Thompson, Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy, University College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554422016-02-26T06:19:52Z2016-02-26T06:19:52ZThree important quotes from the GOP debate, explained<p><em>The 10th Republican debate offered an opportunity for establishment candidates to slow Donald Trump’s momentum just five days before Super Tuesday. On the Texas stage were just five candidates: Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz, neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Governor John Kasich. We asked three academics to choose key quotes from the debate and explain their significance.</em></p>
<h2>Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Tufts University</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>I won every one. I am building a much bigger, much stronger Republican Party. - Donald Trump</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tonight Donald Trump made a false assertion, just as he did during his Nevada victory speech when he said <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/24/11107788/donald-trump-poorly-educated">“We won with young.”</a> Since <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-nevada-republican-caucuses-entrance-poll-analysis/story?id=37145367">he didn’t win the state’s youth vote</a>, he did not win every group. </p>
<p>In fact, Trump has not had much success winning young voters. In Nevada, Marco Rubio won the youth votes. In <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sanders-cruz-won-huge-iowa-youth-vote/article/2582188">Iowa</a> and <a href="http://redalertpolitics.com/2016/02/21/confirmed-ted-cruz-won-younger-voters-south-carolina/">South Carolina</a>, young people chose Ted Cruz. New Hampshire is the only state so far in which Trump won the youth vote.</p>
<p>It is worth questioning Trump’s next claim that he is building a bigger and stronger Republican Party. It is true that <a href="http://civicyouth.org/nevada-caucuses-2016/">young Republicans participated in larger numbers</a> than ever before in all four states in which early contests have occurred. But given young voters’ refusal to support Trump, the high levels of participation in the Republican contests so far are at least partially attributable to young voters coming out to vote against, not for, Trump. </p>
<p>If Trump wins the nomination, would young voters feel at home in his Republican Party and support him in the general election? Maybe, but not likely. Trump’s rhetoric and policies simply go against most young right-leaning voters’ views. For instance, young Republicans embrace immigrants <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/">as assets</a> to this country far more than the older Republicans. More than six out of 10 hold at least some liberal views even when they identify with the Republican Party. Trump is a candidate who continues to argue for exclusion of Muslims and building of a “very, very tall” wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. He also wants to <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Education.htm">diminish the Department of Education</a>. </p>
<p>Would it matter if young conservatives don’t care for Trump? Definitely. Despite a common myth, the Pew Research Center found <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/25/the-gops-millennial-problem-runs-deep/">over one-third</a> of young people consider themselves Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party. That is approximately 18 million young voters that could support a Republican candidate. Young people were hardly mentioned in tonight’s debate by Trump, Rubio or Cruz. Kasich was a notable exception; he used his opening statement to encourage young people to “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/25/the-cnntelemundo-republican-debate-transcript-annotated/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_debate-web%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">shoot for the stars</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="http://civicyouth.org/at-least-80-electoral-votes-depended-on-youth">Young people took down Mitt Romney in 2012</a> because they overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama in key states. The Republican Party made a mistake of disregarding youth vote then and it is on the same track again. </p>
<h2>Hadar Aviram, University of California, Hastings</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Arizona put in very tough laws on illegal immigration, and the result was illegal immigrants fled the state. - Donald Trump</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-thorny-economics-of-illegal-immigration-1454984443">is referring to</a> Arizona’s SB 1070, <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-182b5e1.pdf">parts of which have been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court</a>. The law awards local officials the authority to racially profile potential undocumented immigrants.</p>
<p>Trump is correct that the law caused immigrants to flee the state, but many critics say that’s not necessarily a good thing. Much of the bravura regarding immigration ignores how much <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-farms-idUSN1526113420070723">U.S. agriculture depends on Mexican hands.</a> </p>
<p>In his book <em><a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100741940">Border Games</a>,</em> Brown University scholar Peter Andreas highlights the paradox of the extreme enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border and the seemingly borderless economic flow of people working in the agriculture industry. And <em>Atlantic</em> writer Eric Schlosser, in his book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003KK5E7Q/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1">Reefer Madness</a>,</em> exposes the hypocrisy of cracking down on undocumented immigration while exploiting the work of defenseless laborers and employing them under profitable conditions that would not be permissible with locals.</p>
<p>Interestingly, five years after the enactment of SB 1070, undocumented immigrants are defying the legislation. <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/23/five-years-after-sb-1070-arizona-immigrants-defy-law.html">Al-Jazeera</a> quotes Petra Falcon, founder of the Latino civic advocacy organization Promise Arizona, who says that the legislation “created this massive movement to fight back, and that was more significant than the exodus because you had protests every day … What’s come out of that is new organization and new coalitions.” </p>
<p>The civil rights group Puente Arizona has successfully obtained an injunction against the sheriff’s office that has halted workplace raids. </p>
<p>While Trump might rejoice in the reduction in immigrant numbers, it is important to consider the grimmer effects of the Arizona legislation. <a href="https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2010/11/pdf/az_tourism.pdf">The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, has estimated</a> that Phoenix lost US$141 million in tourism and convention industry business in the four months after SB 1070 was passed. Moreover, the notorious anti-immigration enforcement policy of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (an <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/23/sheriff_joe_arpaio_speaks_at_trump_rally_in_las_vegas.html">avid Trump supporter</a>) has incurred the wrath of a federal judge, who found in 2013 that Arpaio’s department engaged in racial profiling in its immigration enforcement practices and appointed a monitor to institute reforms – a decision <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-court-arpaio-immigration-20150814-story.html">confirmed by the D.C. Circuit</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, the Arizona legislation led almost immediately to a backlash among the Latino community, causing <a href="http://archive.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/06/08/20100608arizona-immigration-law-backlash.html">a five-fold increase</a> in Latino voters registering for the Democratic Party – something that would upset even Donald Trump.</p>
<h2>Andra Gillespie, Emory University</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Here’s a guy that inherited $200 million. If he hadn’t inherited $200 million, you know where Donald Trump would be right now? Selling watches.
–Marco Rubio</p>
<p>That is so wrong … I took $1 million and I turned it into $10 billion.
–Donald Trump</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy before him, Donald Trump proves that candidates do not necessarily have to have common origins to have mass appeal. To the amazement of his rivals, Trump has proven skilled at outmaneuvering the establishment by presenting himself as the rich man’s version of Horatio Alger – something that must annoy rivals like Rubio who really do have humble origins. </p>
<p>Trump has been able to tap into real frustrations within some segments of the electorate. These voters believe that America is in a state of decline. They also believe that Beltway insiders overcomplicate things, lack common sense, and get nothing done. </p>
<p>By presenting himself as a plainspoken, take-no-prisoners and take-charge kind of guy, Trump distinguishes himself from the rest of the field. The kind of voters who are drawn to him – and by now, we need to accept that they are many – aren’t looking for specifics. They are looking for someone who promises to get things done. Critics may legitimately argue that Trump is light on specifics. But his supporters care more about affect than details. When Trump offers pat, matter-of-fact solutions, they resonate, especially when he offers up his personal success as evidence of his ability to be proactive.</p>
<p>Some may wonder why Trump’s own wealth has not proven to be a stumbling block. Why do working-class voters identify with him? For starters, many desire his perceived wealth more than they would criticize it. And despite the fact that Trump essentially built his wealth upon an inheritance, he does project more of a “new money” image, giving people the idea that he is self-made. </p>
<p>Trump has clearly figured out how to speak the language of those who are rallying around him. Until his rivals learn to speak that language, they will continue to trail him in the primaries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andra Gillespie has received funding support from NSF and the Ford Foundation. She also directs an institute that is funded by the Mellon Foundation. She also worked for Democratic pollster Mark Mellman in 2004, when he served as John Kerry's pollster.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg receives funding from William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Democracy Fund, Library of Congress, Corporation for National and Community Service, Youth Engagement Fund, and University of Central Florida. She is affiliated with the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Nonprofit VOTE and Generation Citizen. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hadar Aviram does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 10th Republican debate offered a chance for establishment candidates to slow Donald Trump’s momentum just five days before Super Tuesday.Andra Gillespie, Associate Professor, Political Science, Emory UniversityHadar Aviram, Professor of Criminal Justice and Corrections, University of California College of the Law, San FranciscoKei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/546822016-02-22T10:22:14Z2016-02-22T10:22:14ZHarsh Republican immigration rhetoric is invigorating Latino voters<p>Donald Trump has said Mexicans “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-mexico-presidential-speech-latino-hispanic">are bringing drugs, and bringing crime</a>” to the US, while his fellow Republican presidential hopefuls are also talking up hawkish anti-immigration policies as the primary season unfolds. </p>
<p>That they feel confident doing so says something about American Latinos’ surprising history of not showing up at the ballot box in big numbers. But based on the data we have, it seems the anti-immigration right may have finally gone too far.</p>
<p>Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the US, making up <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">17.4% of the population</a>, yet the Latino electorate has so far underperformed at the ballot box. The Pew Research Centre projects that a record 27.3m Latinos will be eligible to vote in 2016. That’s 4m more than in 2012, but still only about half of the US’s Latino population. </p>
<p>Expanding the size of the electorate through voter registration and naturalisation campaigns is undoubtedly an important step towards augmenting the political influence of the Latino community. But the impact of a larger electorate will be mitigated if half of eligible Latino voters continue to stay home on election day. </p>
<p>At the 2012 election, an alarming <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/06/03/inside-the-2012-latino-electorate/">12m eligible Latinos chose not to vote</a>, and the Latino turnout rate dropped from 49.9% in 2008 to 48%. Conversely, 66.6% of African Americans and 64.1% of non-Hispanic whites voted.</p>
<p>While mobilising unlikely voters in Chicago in 2014, I witnessed how misinformation and a lack of understanding of how the government functions fuels public disillusion with the political process, a major reason many voters, not just Latinos, opt to reject the ballot box.</p>
<p>But the viciously anti-immigrant rhetoric promulgated by Republican candidates is forcing Latino voters to pay attention. </p>
<h2>Waking up</h2>
<p>A 2015 <a href="http://publications.nclr.org/handle/123456789/1422/">survey</a> of registered Latino voters jointly conducted by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and Latino Decisions found that 43% of respondents felt more interested in this year’s presidential election than in 2012. The same survey found that immigration reform, deportations and Barack Obama’s recent interventions via <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/19/politics/supreme-court-to-take-up-obama-immigration-actions/">executive actions</a> are the most important issues for 39% of respondents, tied with job creation and the economy – whereas immigration issues ranked only fourth among Latino voters’ priorities in 2012.</p>
<p>This doesn’t make good reading for the Republican presidential front-runners, who claim to recognise the importance of the Latino vote to their campaigns but repeatedly alienate voters with their xenophobic rhetoric and unrealistic immigration policies. </p>
<p>On some themes, Donald Trump is in a league of his own: at the start of his campaign in the summer of 2015, he described Mexicans, by far the US’s largest Latino subgroup, as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-mexico-presidential-speech-latino-hispanic">criminals and rapists</a>. But <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/11/politics/donald-trump-deportation-force-debate-immigration/">all</a> <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/01/08/ted_cruz_to_illegal_immigrant_youth_yes_i_will_deport_you.html">three</a> <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/259932-rubio-people-will-have-to-be-deported">candidates</a> have called for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and have promised to end <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals">Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals</a> (DACA), an administrative policy that allows certain undocumented youth the ability to temporarily live and work in the US.</p>
<p>These promises alarm me since I’m a DACA beneficiary. DACA, among other things, made it possible for me to gain employment after graduating from Amherst College and to continue my graduate education. I am currently a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and a future Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in China. </p>
<p>If Trump, Cruz or Rubio reach the White House, the other 660,000 beneficiaries and I would return to living under fear of deportation without access to legal employment.</p>
<h2>From the ground up</h2>
<p>Deporting all 11m of us is not realistic and will hurt the economy. The cheap labour of undocumented workers subsidises the standard of living of every American. Undocumented immigrants also pay billions in taxes which help support public programs. The <a href="http://www.itep.org/immigration/">Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy</a> that undocumented residents paid an estimated $11.84 billion in state and local taxes in 2012 – and that legalising undocumented people would add $2.2 billion a year to state and local taxes. </p>
<p>Republican candidates know their immigration proposals are unrealistic, but they chose to ignore the facts to score political points with their conservative base.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the American people are on our side. A <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/184577/favor-path-citizenship-illegal-immigrants.aspx">2015 Gallup poll</a> found that 65% of US adults and 77% of Latinos favour a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. While I can’t vote, most of my extended family members, my colleagues and my friends can, and they will not vote for a candidate who wants to deport my mother and me.</p>
<p>Cruz and Rubio, both Cuban Americans, are perhaps hoping Latinos will ignore their stance on immigration and support them in the general election by virtue of their last names. But, if nominated, their ethnicity alone will not endear them to Latino voters. In the aforementioned NCLR survey, only 4% of respondents said they would blindly vote for a Latino candidate; 55% of Latinos listed the candidates’ positions as the most important factor influencing their vote.</p>
<p>This will only matter if Latinos vote in numbers that can make a real difference. Raised turnout and greater political representation are not the catalysts for political empowerment, but the products of it. If those who stand up for Latino interests want to sustain political participation in a meaningful way, civic engagement at the grassroots level must be their focus. </p>
<p>If they can be brought to the ballot box in representative numbers, they could dramatically change American politics. But without a sustained grassroots organising effort, a significant number of Latinos will remain political bystanders in the US.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlos Adolfo Gonzalez Sierra is affiliated with the Latino Caucus of the Lancaster County Democratic Party. </span></em></p>All the anti-immigrant rabble-rousing appears to be backfiring.Carlos Adolfo Gonzalez Sierra, Gates Scholar in Latin American Studies, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/549862016-02-19T21:23:50Z2016-02-19T21:23:50ZThe GOP moves to South Carolina, the first red state battleground<p>Saturday’s Republican primary in South Carolina looks likely to boost the state’s reputation as a hard-fought political battleground. </p>
<p>The best description of Palmetto State politics came from James L. Petigru, a politician who in 1860 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EFSbwGk2szgC&pg=PA355&lpg=PA355&dq=%E2%80%9CSouth+Carolina+is+too+small+to+be+a+republic,+and+too+large+to+be+an+insane+asylum.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=qBMY5htXJL&sig=4-d0fBHf8IrauL1k-8iwMfNKRdw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmxOvj_IHLAhVDeT4KHdF_CxMQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CSouth%20Carolina%20is%20too%20small%20to%20be%20a%20republic%2C%20and%20too%20large%20to%20be%20an%20insane%20asylum.%E2%80%9D&f=false">declared that</a> “South Carolina is too small to be a republic, and too large to be an insane asylum.” Things have changed since that characterization, but it still captures the passion and impulse of the place. </p>
<p>The political division in South Carolina breaks along a line that divides the “low country” of Charleston, with its privilege and past allegiance to Europe, from the “up country” of tradesmen and merchants, who once listened to the call for revolution from Virginia. The up country thought the low country haughty, and the lowlands saw the upstate as backward. </p>
<p>Regional animosity softened in the glow of Ronald Reagan’s Republican popularity. In 1980, the former California governor came to South Carolina and mangled the GOP field in the presidential primary, taking <a href="https://www.scgop.com/about/first-in-the-south/">54 percent</a> of the vote – more than 20 points ahead of the runner-up. After Reagan’s victory that fall, party regulars bragged, telling the press, “We pick presidents.” South Carolina’s “First in the South” primary position became permanent, and it satisfied the state’s longing for prominence and visibility.</p>
<p>So which candidate will South Carolina’s Republicans pick on Saturday? The latest Clemson University <a href="http://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/palmetto-poll-frequent-voters-in-south-carolina-favor-trump/">Palmetto Poll</a>, which I founded and oversee with fellow professor Bruce Ransom, shows Donald Trump leading, with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio fighting for second. Our poll of 650 frequent voters also shows a close race for fourth between Jeb Bush and John Kasich.</p>
<h2>A state that bleeds red</h2>
<p>Former state Republican Party Chairman Henry McMaster boasted: “We hunt Democrats with dogs down here.” </p>
<p>The culture of the state remains something different from the Deep South picture of “moonlight and magnolias.” Politicians embrace a traditional southern value: the protection of local interests from government intrusion, especially those by the federal government. </p>
<p>Today, the GOP is <a href="http://www.sc.gov/Government/Pages/stateGovernment.aspx">the majority party</a> in the state, owning six of seven congressional seats, the gubernatorial office, both U.S. Senate seats, and every statewide elective office, including attorney general and secretary of state, plus a majority in both houses of the state legislature.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, South Carolina had the highest percentage of a state’s native population still in residence as adults years later. Multinational companies and interstate highways have changed that in more recent decades, but the new arrivals seemed to adapt to the traditional ways rather quickly. The population might live for the present, with a host of international companies and worldwide imports, but their values remained embedded in what went before.</p>
<p>South Carolina has the only African-American Republican U.S. senator. Conservative to his core, Tim Scott garnered <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/senate/sc/south_carolina_senate_special_election_scott_vs_dickerson-5102.html">more votes</a> in the 2014 general election than senior Senator Lindsey Graham or Governor Nikki Haley. Still a resident of Charleston, Scott likes <a href="http://www.azdictionary.com/quotes/Tim%20Scott-quotes-about-amazing">to say</a>, “My grandfather is 92 years old … he looks at South Carolina and he says, ‘Wow, what an amazing state.’” In a century, South Carolina went from segregation to integration, manufacturing to international business and backwater politics to national leadership. </p>
<p>The “First in the South” designation means more than geography or race. South Carolina is a “base” Republican state. That means any winner in the presidential primary faces an energetic electorate full of questions and opinions. The victor must pacify them all, knowing that a win in S.C. can lead to the party nomination.</p>
<h2>Picking presidents</h2>
<p>That’s what happened to George H.W. “Poppy” Bush in 1988. He’d served as Ronald Reagan’s popular vice president, but <a href="http://millercenter.org/president/biography/bush-campaigns-and-elections">finished third</a>, behind Bob Dole and Pat Robertson, in the Iowa primary. The conventional wisdom at the time gave the South Carolina race to Robertson because of his <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3712057">“Christian Coalition”</a> and organization advantages. That didn’t happen. Bush beat Dole by 28 points, and Robertson by even more. The veep then waltzed through that year’s “Super Tuesday” election to the nomination. </p>
<p>In 1992, with Bill Clinton nipping at his heels, the incumbent president <a href="https://www.scgop.com/about/first-in-the-south/">clobbered</a> upstart challenger Pat Robertson by 40 points in the South Carolina primary.</p>
<p>The state’s reputation as a guardian of conservative values, with an ability to pick a winner, stayed intact when in 1996 Bob Dole returned as an “establishment” candidate. The 2000 election featured a showdown between Texan George W. Bush and Arizona Senator John McCain. Bush desperately needed a win. He <a href="http://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/02/16/Vice-President-George-Bush-rescued-his-faltering-presidential-campaign/3255571986000/">quoted Mark Twain</a> as he began campaigning: “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” The candidate reworked his campaign around his time as governor, “a leader with a record.” It worked, and Bush won the South Carolina primary by 11 points.</p>
<p>Few states embody the combination of social and economic conservatism to the degree of South Carolina, yet the voters always seemed to pick an establishment Republican winner. John McCain appeared as the GOP frontrunner in 2008, converted more to the Washington ways of the U.S. Senate than his opponent, Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee. The preacher won 24 counties, 13 of them in the upstate, while McCain took the remaining 22 in the downstate and eked out a 3-point victory. </p>
<p>Between 1980 and 2008, South Carolina voted in six contested Republican presidential primaries, and picked the party nominee each time, and three presidents. It seemed like a good record, one worthy of the “We pick presidents” label, until 2012.</p>
<p>That year, Mitt Romney seemed to have the Republican nomination wrapped up after being awarded victories in the primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Upstart candidate Newt Gingrich, who won only one other primary state that election cycle, openly clashed with a television moderator in a debate. He subsequently outstripped the field on primary day, and conquered Romney <a href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/south-carolina">40 percent to 28 percent</a>. The state didn’t pick the GOP nominee that year because a one week quarrel over Gingrich’s personal life shifted voter attention away from national issues.</p>
<h2>Not so establishment</h2>
<p>What does it look like in 2016? At a rally outside Clemson, South Carolina last week, a middle-aged woman appeared in a red, white and blue sequined miniskirt with her husband, who sported a sombrero and the words, “Donald Trump” emblazoned on the front. “We’re here to support an American hero,” she said. </p>
<p>Will Trump rule the day on Saturday as our poll predicts? Rubio has been endorsed by popular state politicians like <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/02/03/how-tim-scott-chose-to-endorse-marco-rubio-for-president/">Senator Tim Scott</a>, Representative <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/trey-gowdy-endorses-marco-rubio-217201">Trey Gowdy</a> and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/politics/nikki-haley-endorses-marco-rubio/">Gov. Nikki Haley</a>, but Ted Cruz has an effective “ground game” with lots of volunteers making phone calls across the state. Jeb Bush is struggling to keep up, and both John Kasich and Ben Carson are back in the pack. The press rumor is that John Kasich might beat Jeb Bush. </p>
<p>For the next few days at least, the state has reverted to Petigru’s asylum status. That’s how South Carolina goes about picking a president.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Woodard is affiliated with the Republican Party. He is a Republican political consultant who has worked on the campaigns of Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Former Congressman Gresham Barrett (R-SC), Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), and Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC).</span></em></p>South Carolina is a red state. The GOP candidates know that a win here can lead to the party nomination.David Woodard, Thurmond Professor of Political Science, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/544592016-02-10T06:07:15Z2016-02-10T06:07:15ZSanders, Trump win big in polarized New Hampshire as voters revolt against the establishment<p>New Hampshire voters sent a loud and clear anti-establishment message on Tuesday.</p>
<p>In a result unimaginable just one year ago, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire’s Democratic primary and New York billionaire Donald Trump won the state’s Republican primary. </p>
<p>Neither race was close. Sanders and Trump both won by double digits, handing resounding defeats to their opponents. </p>
<p>The Sanders and Trump victories make clear that polarization is a potent force in the 2016 campaign. </p>
<h2>Young and female voters rallied to Sanders</h2>
<p>The come-from-behind Sanders campaign is a truly remarkable story, the political equivalent of David versus Goliath. </p>
<p>When Sanders announced his presidential candidacy last year, the Democratic establishment viewed the Vermont senator as little more than a left-wing fringe candidate. The idea that Sanders – the only socialist in the U.S. Senate – would win the New Hampshire primary seemed ludicrous. </p>
<p>Indeed, until a few weeks ago the Clinton campaign looked invincible. Last spring Hillary Clinton commanded a <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cnn-bernie-sanders-defeats-hillary-010211219.html">50-point lead</a> in New Hampshire polls and maintained a solid lead into the fall. She also had a well-established campaign infrastructure already in place in New Hampshire, a state she carried over Barack Obama in 2008. </p>
<p>But on Tuesday Sanders defeated Clinton in decisive fashion. Sanders won every income bracket except voters who earn US$200,000 or more per year. Even more impressive, he won a majority of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nh/Dem">female voters</a>, a crucial constituency for Clinton, who seeks to become the nation’s first female president. </p>
<p>The generational divide was unmistakable. Clinton lost every age group except voters <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/09/us/elections/new-hampshire-democrat-poll.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region&region=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region">over age 65</a>. Sanders won 66 percent of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nh/Dem">voters under age 45</a> and an astounding <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nh/Dem">83 percent</a> of voters under age 30. </p>
<p>The fact that a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/clinton-surrogate-to-demand-sanders-release-medical-records-217880">74-year-old candidate</a> appeals so powerfully to young voters is a sign that the normal rules of politics do not apply in 2016. </p>
<h2>How did Sanders do it?</h2>
<p>There is no mystery as to why Sanders prevailed in New Hampshire. He won because he ran as a committed and passionate liberal candidate at a time when the Democratic Party as a whole is becoming <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/183686/democrats-shift-left.aspx">increasingly liberal</a>. </p>
<p>Since 1992, when Bill Clinton won the presidency <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-elections-111528">by running as a moderate</a>, Democratic presidential candidates have positioned themselves in the center of the American political spectrum. Hillary Clinton has followed precisely that centrist model throughout the 2016 campaign. </p>
<p>But the fundamental problem Clinton faces is the liberal base of the Democratic Party is no longer interested in merely winning elections. After years of following the centrists’ lead, liberal Democrats want to see the party – and the country – move to the left. </p>
<p>New Hampshire is a case in point. In 2008 about 56 percent of New Hampshire Democrats identified as liberal. But in 2016 the percentage of liberals surged to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/live/new-hampshire-primary-2016-election/ideology/">two-thirds of New Hampshire Democrats</a>. As more Democrats self-identify as liberals, issues such as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/live/new-hampshire-primary-2016-election/democrats-rate-income-inequality-and-economy-as-most-important/">income inequality</a> have moved to the forefront of the Democratic agenda for the first time in decades.</p>
<p>Accordingly, the centrist politics of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the cautious politics of Barack Obama no longer satisfy the liberal base of the party. </p>
<p>Liberals want to take their party back from the moderates, and they see the Sanders candidacy as the right vehicle to achieve that goal. The New Hampshire results thus make clear that the deep connection between Sanders and the liberal base of the party is a potentially grave threat to the Clinton campaign.</p>
<h2>Trump won every GOP demographic</h2>
<p>A similar antiestablishment mood is sweeping through the Republican Party, but it’s headed in the opposite ideological direction. </p>
<p>Donald Trump won New Hampshire by skillfully capitalizing on <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-trump-congress-20150909-story.html">conservative anger with the Republican leadership</a> on issues like immigration and trade. </p>
<p>Trump’s message of protectionism and xenophobia resonated in New Hampshire, where <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/us/politics/donald-trumps-immigration-message-may-resound-in-new-hampshire.html?mabReward=CTM&_r=0">anti-immigrant sentiment and economic insecurity</a> run deep among the state’s working-class voters.</p>
<p>Crucially, New Hampshire also offered a better cultural fit for Trump than Iowa. Social conservatism is a defining feature of the Iowa Republican Party. It therefore came as no surprise that the brash, twice-divorced Trump never fully connected with the state’s voters. Trump’s <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/08/politics/donald-trump-cnn-megyn-kelly-comment/">vulgar</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/insults-threats-and-more-insults-what-its-like-to-be-a-reporter-covering-trump/2016/02/04/561743a8-c9eb-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab993f_story.html">confrontational</a> approach alienated many Iowans and ultimately resulted in Trump’s underwhelming second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. </p>
<p>New Hampshire, however, is very different from Iowa. New Hampshire is the <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/189038/new-hampshire-least-religious-state.aspx">least religious state</a> in the United States and it has far more in common culturally with New York – Trump’s home state – than Iowa does. Trump’s campaign was thus much better suited for the secular, East Coast culture of New Hampshire. </p>
<p>The election results on Tuesday unequivocally demonstrated that point. Trump finished in first place with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/primaries/new-hampshire">about 35 percent of the vote</a>. Ohio Governor John Kasich finished in a distant second place, about 20 percentage points behind Trump. </p>
<p>What is most notable about Trump’s New Hampshire victory is that he carried every major GOP demographic group. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nh/Rep">Trump won</a> men, women, young voters, old voters, high school-educated voters, college-educated voters, voters who make less than $50,000 per year and voters who make more than $100,000 per year.</p>
<p>It was a truly comprehensive victory and an undeniable sign that Trump has staying power in the GOP race.</p>
<h2>South Carolina and Nevada are up next</h2>
<p>The next date on the presidential calendar is February 20, when South Carolina holds its Republican primary and Nevada holds its Democratic caucuses. </p>
<p>Trump has a large lead in <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/sc/south_carolina_republican_presidential_primary-4151.html">South Carolina polls</a>, and Kasich’s moderate profile is unlikely to find a favorable reception in the archconservative southern state. Trump will therefore emerge from New Hampshire as the clear favorite to win the South Carolina primary.</p>
<p>The Democratic race in Nevada is much less clear. Nevada’s large Latino population gives Clinton an advantage, as she has found her strongest base of support among minority voters. But as Iowa and New Hampshire revealed, Sanders likes to run from behind. He cannot be counted out of any Democratic contest from now on. </p>
<p>Above all, the fact that a socialist won the New Hampshire Democratic primary and a billionaire won the GOP primary demonstrates that the two parties are headed in profoundly different directions. Polarization is shaping the 2016 presidential campaign in unpredictable ways as Americans grow ever more divided.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony J. Gaughan is a registered independent. </span></em></p>Ohio Governor John Kasich takes second place in the GOP race while Senator Marco Rubio drops to fifth.Anthony J. Gaughan, Associate Professor of Law, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/542102016-02-10T05:18:56Z2016-02-10T05:18:56ZRepublican race remains congested after a New Hampshire pile-up<p>The <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/09/politics/new-hampshire-primary-highlights/">New Hampshire primary</a> is over, and the contest for the Republican nomination remains tumultuous and muddled. The Granite State may have a reputation for winnowing the election field, but it seems likely that most candidates will go on to the next contest in South Carolina on February 20. </p>
<p>Donald Trump won comfortably enough. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-what-do-the-iowa-results-actually-mean-53574">Iowa cacuses</a> winner Ted Cruz slipped, but not fatally. Marco Rubio crashed, perhaps catastrophically, into fifth place. Two governors did respectably, while another was effectively counted out. So what next for the Republican contenders?</p>
<h2>The outsiders</h2>
<p>Trump’s hearty showing may do something to staunch a flow of <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/trump-team-struggles-with-candidate-who-wont-adjust-218983">skeptical stories</a> about the efficacy of his threadbare organisation and freewheeling campaigning style. He tends to dismiss criticism of his ground game as irrelevant, since his success is fuelled principally by his money and personality: as he told CNN on the eve of the primary, “<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/08/politics/trump-rubio-momentum-interview/">I’m the product</a>”.</p>
<p>The muddle for second place and Rubio’s tumble certainly helped Trump. For now, his chances are next to impossible to predict, since there is precious little precedent for his campaign. What’s clear is that he benefits from the pile-up behind him: the more candidates in play for the consensus lane, the stronger his chances of clinching the nomination.</p>
<p>Ted Cruz, meanwhile, was always going to struggle in New Hampshire, since his Iowa win relied heavily on that state’s much larger evangelical population. And so his team spent the week-long New Hampshire campaign <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/new-hampshire-primary-2016-live-updates/2016/02/new-hampshire-primary-ted-cruz-marco-rubio-donald-trump-219003">dampening expectations</a>, already keen to get to South Carolina and begin what they hope is a successful swing through favourable states in March. </p>
<p>Cruz has a potentially plausible path to the nomination, and will hope to rack up delegates and build an unstoppable momentum over the next month. He has strong organisation in many Southern states, with support from Tea Party activists in many instances. But he’ll face severe challenges if he can’t broaden his appeal: <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/chapter-4-social-and-political-attitudes/">only around 8% of Americans identify as “very conservative”</a>, the core of his vote.</p>
<h2>The governors</h2>
<p>The most interesting performances were those of the race’s three governors. John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie all want to be the successful “consensus” candidate, appealing to moderate conservatives and receiving establishment support. As experienced executives with moderate records, they should have the best claims to the throne – but this logic seems not to apply in a year when voters are furious with the government and uninterested in experience claims. Bush, Kasich and Christie have duly found their resumés all but useless so far.</p>
<p>The governors needed results strong enough to allow them to make a plausible case for staying in the race: ultimately, two of them did. </p>
<p>Kasich exceeded expectations by coming second, which will easily propel him to South Carolina. He fought a positive campaign in New Hampshire, upbeat in style. He presented himself as the most moderate of the Republican candidates, preaching pragmatism and bipartisanship. But he has a long way to go to be the leading consensus candidate; so far, he has a paltry campaign organisation and limited national support.</p>
<p>Bush’s team, meanwhile, spent the run-up to the primary saying he only needed to do well enough to justify continuing to South Carolina, where his operation is <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/jeb-bush-south-carolina-ads-219014">well advanced</a>. While some donors are apparently itching for him to withdraw, Bush has built a national infrastructure and still has a hard core of supporters. In particular, he’ll be looking forward to his home state of Florida’s winner-take-all primary on March 15 – but he has to make it there first. </p>
<p>Christie <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/chris-christie-works-to-build-on-his-new-hampshire-debate-performance-1454887184">won admirers</a> for his gutsy performance in the last debate, but it came too late to bump him up the rankings in New Hampshire. He’s duly let it be known he is withdrawing, and it’s not hard to see why: he had raised little money and assembled only a weak campaign infrastructure, and would have had to pull in a lot more donors quickly to plot a credible path to the nomination.</p>
<p>For now, the other two governors muddle on, but probably with little enthusiasm for the looming primaries. As long as they’re chasing the same pool of centre-right votes and cannibalising each other’s support, Cruz and Trump will be free to take the initiative. </p>
<h2>The boy in the bubble</h2>
<p>The biggest disappointment was Florida Senator Marco Rubio. His team have long been pushing him as the candidate who <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429092/marco-rubio-conservative-polls-beats-hillary-clinton">can beat Hillary Clinton</a>, and the only major Republican candidate who could win the national vote. After coming a surprisingly strong third in Iowa, he began picking up endorsements, and there were signs the media were ready to anoint him as the chosen establishment candidate. </p>
<p>He needed a strong showing in New Hampshire to maintain a sense of momentum, to stall critics and put the debate behind him, and to maybe knock Bush, Christie or Kasich completely out of the race. But then came the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/08/politics/rubio-debate-new-hampshire-2016/">Republican debate on February 6</a>, and the conservative commentariat and GOP donors soured on him after he robotically repeated a pre-prepared line four times. That humiliation’s now been borne out with a drubbing at the polls, and they’ll now be asking if he really has what it takes to win the presidency.</p>
<p>The result has left him facing some big questions. Will the party establishment give up on him? How will he perform at the next debate on February 13? And will he end up remembered as a freshman senator who over-performed in Iowa, or in Christie’s words, as “<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/02/politics/marco-rubio-attacks-chris-christie/">the boy in the bubble</a>”?</p>
<p>The Republican battle has a long way yet to run. To be sure, there are 28 states in play between now and mid-March, but they may not be enough to end the saga. Republican Party rules require states that vote before March 15 to award delegates proportionally (though each state interprets this in its own way), which makes it difficult for a candidate to pull far ahead of the rest.</p>
<p>As the campaigns swing south, the mainstream lane to the nomination is still congested. The Republican establishment has yet to anoint its candidate of choice – and as long as it waits to do so, its outsiders will keep running amok.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been updated to reflect Chris Christie’s decision to end his campaign.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54210/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Kennedy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the results in, Trump stands proudly on top of what looks like a five-way car crash. What now?Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies, University College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/536922016-02-03T22:42:08Z2016-02-03T22:42:08ZAre the media killing the New Hampshire primary?<p>Is the New Hampshire primary over the hill? </p>
<p>After 20 years of observing and analyzing the contest as a professor at Dartmouth College, I fear the answer might be “yes.”</p>
<p>The primary is turning 100 this year, but its relevance is in doubt as the national media threaten the state’s traditional function of vetting the candidates.</p>
<p>In this election cycle, for example, I’ve observed that polls – designed, funded and analyzed by the press – started earlier, involved more organizations and occurred more frequently compared to the previous five primaries I have analyzed. They have overshadowed every aspect of the 2016 campaign. Consequently, the face-to-face contact in town meetings and small groups for which the state is renowned has had far less effect on the candidates’ standing in the state than in the past. </p>
<h2>A big spotlight</h2>
<p>The state’s prominence in the presidential nominating process results from its first-in-the-nation primary status and its voters’ penchant for defying conventional wisdom. </p>
<p>For decades, reporters have descended on New Hampshire looking for the big story about unexpected upsets and emerging front-runners. Candidates have braved the Granite State winters because they want to become that big story.</p>
<p>The phenomenon of surprising verdicts began in the 1952 primary with Senator Estes Kefauver’s upset of President Harry Truman and General Dwight Eisenhower’s defeat of “Mr. Republican,” Senator Robert Taft, even though Ike didn’t campaign in New Hampshire. A more recent example was in 2000, when Senator John McCain’s Straight Talk Express overwhelmed Texas Governor George W. Bush. Until the Democratic primary in 1992, no candidate who lost New Hampshire ever had won the nomination. </p>
<p>In years with less political drama, the state enables candidates to build momentum after a caucus win in Iowa or to attract a second look from donors and activists. With journalists crowding the state, they have a good chance of making news with an apt quote or a crowd-pleasing message.</p>
<h2>How retail politics used to work</h2>
<p>The self-interested strategies of journalists and politicians thus create an information-rich environment for New Hampshire voters.</p>
<p>Candidate visits are newsworthy in the tiny state and are covered extensively in local newspapers and in its efficient television market dominated by Manchester-based WMUR. Citizens can meet candidates with relatively little effort or tap into firsthand accounts of events from friends or coworkers.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3088402?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">My research</a> on the 1996 primary indicates that voters who met a candidate or attended a rally developed a more favorable opinion of that candidate and could identify more traits about him or her. So, retail politics can make a difference.</p>
<p>Interactions with individual voters have historically proven valuable to candidates, as well. New Hampshire’s small scale enables those who aspire to the presidency to run relatively low-cost campaigns in the state. Local officials are accessible for building networks, and citizens are accustomed to volunteering. It is a playing field highly favorable to underdogs. Moreover, candidates can practice their messages and fix mistakes before the intense glare of the national spotlight focuses on them, much as Broadway producers schedule plays for out-of-town performances before the opening on Broadway.</p>
<p>At least, that’s the way it is supposed to work.</p>
<h2>Change in 2016</h2>
<p>Retail politics is still happening in New Hampshire’s 2016 primary, but something is amiss with the Republican contest. </p>
<p>Donald Trump’s celebrity status made him the immediate front-runner in the polls last summer with voters who were not paying attention to the nominating contest. After Trump burst on the political scene, he immediately enjoyed support in statewide polls of roughly <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html">25 percent</a>.</p>
<p>Trump, as one might expect from a reality show host, proved masterful in exploiting the worst vices of the media for conflict, scandalous behavior and the pseudo-objectivity of opinion surveys. His startling statements consumed the public space not already devoted to reporting poll results. A week before the primary, he still led with an average of 32 percent as other candidates struggled for the notice of <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-2016/primary-forecast/new-hampshire-republican/">the press</a>.</p>
<p>What happens in the Republican primary could have potentially severe consequences for New Hampshire’s tradition of personal contact between voters and candidates. Trump has made only a handful of visits to the state, all of them large-scale rallies. Neither Cruz nor Rubio has spent much time in New Hampshire, although they are here now trying to build momentum from Iowa. </p>
<p>Trump’s other opponents, particularly Governors Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich, have worked diligently to meet citizens in diverse community settings, but they have not yet altered the dynamics of the race established last summer. Face-to-face campaigning is the only route these candidates can take to overcome the media’s obsession with The Donald and his polls. If the strategy does not work for one of them, however, retail politics in the Granite State may no longer be perceived as a viable path to the White House.</p>
<p>The New Hampshire primary is now one of the few places remaining in the United States to see democracy, with a small “d,” in action. In an electoral system dominated by professional consultants, negative ads and mega-donors, the state’s unique political culture has presented an alternative vision of politics in which ordinary people still matter. </p>
<p>The state – and the nation – can hang on to something precious, at least for a while longer, by resisting the media’s and their polls’ distorted coverage of this election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda Fowler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For 100 years, retail politics has ruled the New Hampshire primary. We may be seeing a new dynamic emerge in 2016.Linda Fowler, Professor of Government, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/538612016-02-02T17:18:38Z2016-02-02T17:18:38ZWhat betting markets are saying about the US election after Iowa caucus results<p>Heading into the Iowa caucuses, all the main forecasting methodologies ranked Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as favourites to win the first contests in their respective nomination battles. In the end, they were half right, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-what-do-the-iowa-results-actually-mean-53574">if only just</a>): while Clinton managed to squeak the narrowest of wins over Bernie Sanders, Trump came second behind Ted Cruz of Texas, with Florida’s Marco Rubio nipping at his heels.</p>
<p>The results were written up with varying degrees of surprise and shock. So who did the best job of predicting them?</p>
<p>Of the opinion polls, the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics survey is generally regarded as the gold standard in terms of the Iowa state caucuses. In its <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/01/30/donald-trump-reclaims-lead-latest-iowa-poll/79562322/">last survey before voting began</a>, it had Trump on the Republican side leading Ted Cruz by 28% to 23%, with Marco Rubio on 15%. For the Democrats, Clinton was leading Sanders by 45% to 42%. This survey proved wide of the mark and, in that regard, it was broadly consistent with other recent polling.</p>
<p>Then there’s the panel-of-experts model. One such group is the <a href="http://www.politico.com/caucus">Politico Caucus</a>, a panel of strategists, operatives and activists. In its final survey, Republicans were split, but put Donald Trump in pole position, with Cruz second and Rubio third. Democratic insiders were less divided, coming out strongly in favour of a decisive Clinton victory. So, also wrong.</p>
<p>But there’s another way of forecasting that often proves to be much closer to the actual result: the betting and prediction markets. These can be observed in real time through the <a href="http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics">Oddschecker</a> service (which lists a range of leading bookmaker prices) as well as by observing the prices on the person-to-person betting exchanges. </p>
<p>There are also dedicated “crowd wisdom” prediction markets such as <a href="https://twitter.com/almaniscrowd?lang=en-gb">Almanis</a>, “wisdom of crowd” projects such as <a href="http://predictwise.com/">Predictwise</a>, as well as real-money prediction markets such as <a href="https://www.predictit.org/">PredictIt</a> and the <a href="http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/">Iowa Electronic Markets</a>.</p>
<p>On the eve of the caucuses, the real-money betting and prediction markets gave Clinton about a two-in-three chance of winning Iowa, and Trump just a little less. Rubio, it seemed, was trailing third by a fair margin. In the event, it was Cruz who surged to victory among the Republicans while Rubio’s third-place showing was unexpectedly strong. The Democratic race was labelled pretty much across the board as too close to call for most of the count, but the betting markets sided consistently with Clinton.</p>
<p>As soon as the actual results are declared, the betting markets adjust to incorporate the new information. So far they’ve already shaken up their thinking about who will become the Republican party’s nominee, but have barely flickered in regard to the Democratic choice. </p>
<h2>Odds on</h2>
<p>Going into the caucuses, of the main candidates the betting markets gave Trump a 50% chance of winning the Republican nomination, followed by Rubio on 32%, Cruz on 9% and Jeb Bush on 8%. The commensurate predictions for the Democratic nomination were 80% for Clinton and 19% for Sanders.</p>
<p>In terms of winning the White House, Clinton was firm favourite, with a 51% chance of winning the general election, followed by Trump on 19%, Rubio on 15%, Sanders on 6%, Cruz on 4% and Bush on 3%.</p>
<p>As Americans woke up after the count that map had changed significantly, at least on the Republican side. The new favourite to win the Republican nomination on the betting markets is Rubio, who emerged from the polling with a 53% chance of being the eventual nominee, followed by Trump on 26%, Cruz on 14% and Bush on 5%. </p>
<p>Despite the narrowness of the Democratic contest, the betting markets were unfazed, with Clinton clinging to her 80% chance of taking the nomination.</p>
<p>As to the map of probabilities for who will eventually win the White House, the markets still rank Clinton as the firm favourite for the presidency, just as strong as before Iowa, and Rubio is now her closest challenger: the markets now rate his chances of progressing all the way to victory in November at more than one in five, up from 15%. Trump’s chance has slipped to about one in ten, down from 19%.</p>
<p>So the news of the night is that nothing has really changed on the Democratic front, while Rubio has leapfrogged Trump as the most likely challenger to Clinton. Next comes the New Hampshire primary – and the outcome of that might turn out to be much more significant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53861/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leighton Vaughan Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above. He tweets at @LeightonVW. </span></em></p>Instead of fixating on polling and pundits, you might as well go straight to the bookies.Leighton Vaughan Williams, Professor of Economics and Finance and Director, Betting Research Unit & Political Forecasting Unit, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.