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Weird times, weird poll numbers

Political Theater, Episode 263

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus have the barest majority.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus have the barest majority. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Politics works in patterns. Elections happen on a regular basis and they tend to repeat themselves.  Except when they don’t. 

Most of the time, for instance, presidents see their parties lose seats in midterm elections. It is, after all, when the voters can let the chief executive know what they think of him when he is not on the ballot. So however the public feels about a president tends to be linked to the fate of that president’s party. 

Unless, something else happens. 

We might be in one of those outlier election cycles, when politics don’t always match up with what we expect. Roll Call Elections Analyst Nathan L. Gonzales makes it his business to make sense out of campaigns and elections, candidates and results. His latest piece in Roll Call, “Biden on pace to buck history,” is the sequel to a column he wrote earlier this year for Roll Call, “If history’s a guide, Biden ain’t getting any stronger.”  

Show Notes:

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