If it's in the News, it's in our Polls. Public opinion polling since 2003.

Commentary by Michael Barone

Most Recent Releases

White letter R on blue background
September 16, 2015

How Obama Has Fundamentally Transformed American Politics by Michael Barone

In this presidential cycle, voters in both parties, to the surprise of the punditocracy, are rejecting experienced political leaders. They're willfully suspending disbelief in challengers who would have been considered laughable in earlier years.

White letter R on blue background
September 11, 2015

In Praise of Monarchy By Michael Barone

Some time in the early evening of Wednesday, London time, Queen Elizabeth II broke a record: she became the longest-serving monarch in British history, beating her great-great-grandmother Victoria's reign of 63 years and 216 days. She is also, at 89, by a solid stretch the longest-lived British monarch.

White letter R on blue background
September 8, 2015

Black Lives Matter's Agenda Is Costing Black Lives By Michael Barone

I've seen this movie before. And for the last 25 years, I thought I'd never have to watch it again. But now it's playing, not in theaters, but all over mainstream media, with something like rave reviews from the president and his administration.   

White letter R on blue background
September 4, 2015

Donald Trump's Appeal Is Based on Yesterday's News By Michael Barone

Aside from the court-ordered dribbling out of Hillary Clinton's classified-material-filled emails, the big presidential campaign news of the summer has been the boom for Donald Trump in the race for the Republican nomination. Trump has risen from 3 percent in the polls (when he announced on June 16) to where he now stands at 26 percent -- 14 percent ahead of any other candidate.

White letter R on blue background
September 1, 2015

Another Impossible Thing May Happen: Change in Partisan Alignments By Michael Barone

In my last column, I looked at the possibility of two impossible things -- impossible things in the sense used by Alice and the Red Queen -- happening in the already turbulent 2016 presidential cycle. Here I'll look at another: the possibility that the partisan division lines that have endured with little change for two decades might suddenly shift and change.

White letter R on blue background
August 28, 2015

Two Impossible Things That Could Happen in 2016 by Michael Barone

One can't believe impossible things, Alice objected.

White letter R on blue background
August 25, 2015

Hillary Clinton and 'Black Lives Matter': An Unproductive Confrontation By Michael Barone

Reporters and voters have so far gotten few glimpses of Hillary Clinton speaking candidly. One of the few examples available is in the videotape and transcript of her meeting with Black Lives Matter protesters in New Hampshire last week.    

White letter R on blue background
August 20, 2015

Donald Trump's Half-Serious, Half-Fantasy Immigration Plan By Michael Barone

Donald Trump's six-page platform on immigration may not be, as Ann Coulter wrote, "the greatest political document since the Magna Carta." But given the issue's role in elevating the candidate to leading Republican polls, it merits serious attention.

White letter R on blue background
August 18, 2015

The Strange Death of the Center-Left by Michael Barone

In 1935 George Dangerfield published "The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914," a vivid account of how Britain's center-left Liberal Party, dominant for a century, collapsed amid conflicts it could not resolve.

White letter R on blue background
August 14, 2015

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: Incapable of Embarrassment by Michael Barone

August is traditionally a vacation month, and East Coast elites, following European tradition, are thick on the ground in the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard (the Obamas' choice) and Nantucket.

White letter R on blue background
August 11, 2015

A Tough Day for the President and His Party By Michael Barone

Thursday was the biggest night of the political year so far, for what happened on the stage at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena and for what happened offstage as well.

The stage was the scene of the first two Republican presidential debates, hosted by Fox News, which together lasted some 200 minutes between 5 and 11 p.m. EDT. What happened there did not go unnoticed. According to overnight Nielsen ratings, the two-hour prime-time debate got a rating as high as the national basketball finals -- almost triple the highest rating of a Republican debate in the 2012 cycle and more than half that of the first Obama-Romney debate that fall. It was apparently the most watched primary debate in history.

White letter R on blue background
August 7, 2015

Too Many Candidates to Fit on a Stage: Democrats Then, Republicans Now By Michael Barone

Why did Fox News decide to schedule two Republican presidential debates rather than one? Simple arithmetic: 90 minutes divided by 17 candidates equals 5 minutes and 29 seconds apiece. That's scarcely enough time for the oral equivalent of a few tweets.   

White letter R on blue background
August 4, 2015

Obama Bets Nuclear Deal Will Change Iran's Regime; Few Agree by Michael Barone

Faute de mieux. That means "for want of something better" in Secretary of State John Kerry's second language. It's also the best case made by its journalistic defenders for approval of the nuclear weapons deal Kerry negotiated with Iran. Or to be more exact, for rallying 34 votes in the Senate or 146 votes in the House to uphold a presidential veto of a congressional vote to disapprove.

White letter R on blue background
July 31, 2015

Asymmetrical Politics: Republicans Act Like an Unruly Mob, Democrats Like a Regimented Army By Michael Barone

As the presidential campaign heats up, and we head into the first debate among the 16 declared Republican candidates, there is an asymmetry between the two political parties.

Republican voters have been seething with discontent toward their party's officeholders and have not become enchanted with any one of 15 more or less conventional politicians who are running. Democratic voters support their officeholders with lockstep loyalty and seem untroubled by the serious flaws of their party's clear frontrunner.

White letter R on blue background
July 28, 2015

Is America Entering a New Victorian Era? by Michael Barone

Forty-seven years ago, the musical "Hair" opened on Broadway. Elderly mavens -- the core theater audience then, unlike the throngs of tourists flocking to cheap movie adaptations today -- were instructed that America was entering an "Age of Aquarius." The old moral rules were extinct: we were entering a new era of freedom, experimentation and self-expression.

White letter R on blue background
July 24, 2015

Increasingly Divided Democrats Causing Problems for Their Party by Michael Barone

America's two major political parties have a difficult task: amassing a 51 percent coalition in a nation that has always been -- not just now, but from the beginning -- regionally, religiously, racially and ethnically diverse.

White letter R on blue background
July 21, 2015

HUD's 'Disparate Impact' War on Suburban America by Michael Barone

Disparate impact. It's a legal doctrine that may be coming soon to your suburb (if you're part of the national majority living in suburbs).

White letter R on blue background
July 17, 2015

Hillary Clinton's Economics: Suddenly It's 1947 By Michael Barone

Like it or not, Hillary Clinton is the single individual most likely to be elected the next president. So it's worthwhile looking closely at and behind her words when she deigns to speak on public policy, as she did in her July 14 speech on economics. 

White letter R on blue background
July 14, 2015

Disruptive Politics: Trump as a Third Party Candidate by Michael Barone

My sole focus is to run as a Republican, Donald Trump told my Washington Examiner colleague Byron York last week, "because of the fact that I believe that this is the best way we can defeat the Democrats." He went on, "Having a two-party race gives us a much better chance of beating Hillary and bringing our country back than having a third-party candidate."

White letter R on blue background
July 10, 2015

What (Little) You See of Hillary Clinton Is What You'll Get If She Wins By Michael Barone

It says something about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign that it was big news that she submitted herself to an interview with a cable news journalist. It also says something that the journalist selected for this honor, Brianna Keilar of CNN, was recently a guest at the wedding of the director of grassroots engagement for the Clinton campaign. Makes sense to hedge your risk.