U.S. Elections & Voters

There is a 17-point gap between the percentage of Tea Party Republicans (62%) and non-Tea Party Republicans (45%) who say they always vote in primary elections.

Both parties currently are unpopular with the public, but as the GOP showed in 2010, a party with a low favorability rating can still score a sweeping victory in midterm elections.

Will there be “an electoral bonanza for Democrats” if the nation’s estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants are eventually granted the right to vote? The data provide some insights.

Becoming caught up in a serious ethics scandal isn’t necessarily a career-ender for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. It turns out only about a quarter exit the political stage through resignation or retirement.  The rest choose to seek re-election despite the blot on their records—and two-thirds of them win. This scandal scorecard comes […]

Three politicians who were forced from office by scandal are currently attempting comebacks. They are trying to overcome misdeeds that put them in the top five political scandals of recent years as measured by the amount of news coverage.

The Supreme Court today voided a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, meaning several states and local jurisdictions no longer have to get federal approval for changes to their voting laws and procedures. The 5-4 opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, didn’t strike down the “preclearance” provision of the law itself, but rather the decades-old […]

Overview A new poll finds that the public is as interested in the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the Voting Rights Act as in its long-awaited decisions on same-sex marriage. Roughly a third of Americans (35% each) say they are very interested in both how the court will rule on whether parts of the Voting […]

While a record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the 2012 presidential election, an even greater number – 12.1 million—eligible voters did not do so.

I. Inside the 2012 Latino Electorate A record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the 2012 presidential election, but Latinos’ voter turnout rate continues to lag other groups significantly, according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center. Overall, 48% of Hispanic eligible voters turned out to vote in 2012, down […]

By Andrew Kohut In the next several weeks the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the requirement that several states, mostly in the South, get “pre-clearance” from the Justice Department before they make any changes to their election laws. The requirement was part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which […]