Partisan polarization has been a fixture of American politics for several decades now. Recently, analysts have argued it’s asymmetric. To be sure, Democrats have moved to the left. But they have not drifted from the middle ground as much as Republicans have to the right. …
The major American political parties are in crisis. The proportion of American voters who register as independents has reached 40 percent, rising about 10 percentage points since 2000. A few months ago, unaffiliated voters surpassed Republicans in North Carolina and are quickly gaining ground on the Democrats — that party is actually losing registrants as the state’s population grows. The…
In the past eight years, Democratic registration in North Carolina has dropped by about 128,000 voters while Republicans have gained 124,000 voters during the same period.
A fair reading of the data would be that a large share of unaffiliated voters in North Carolina — perhaps a third or more — are in practice Republican voters.
Republicans and conservatives think they are engaged in how arguments while Democrats and liberals think they are engaged in where arguments.
RALEIGH — Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Rep. Michael Decker said Wednesday that Republicans were ”nasty” because they criticized his party switch but previously welcomed Democrats into the fold. Does he have a point?…
