San Francisco News

Independent voters can be decisive in elections – but they’re pretty unpredictable, not ‘shadow partisans’
Thom Reilly, Arizona State University In the end there was no red wave. And there was no blue wave. There was an independent wave. Pollsters and pundits were counting on independent voters in the 2022 midterm elections to swing to the Republicans as they did in 2014 when Barack Obama was president. That’s when independent turnout in the midterms added up to 29% of all voters, and the GOP won an additional 13 seats in Congress. Expectations for the 2022

How the news media – long in thrall to Trump – can cover his new run for president responsibly
Thomas E. Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School Now that he’s in the 2024 presidential race, the media circus that is Donald Trump is returning for a new season. Trump is still newsworthy. He’s been weakened by his defeat in the 2020

Ron DeSantis: the Florida governor who may steal the Republican nomination from under his mentor Donald Trump’s nose
Thomas Gift, UCL Is Ron DeSantis the heir apparent to Donald Trump? It sure looked like it on Tuesday. In a US midterm election that saw his Republican party underperform nationally, DeSantis was the spectacular outlier, turning in a dominant

Trump announces he’ll run for president again as Murdoch turns on him – and it could be politically expensive for both
Rodney Tiffen, University of Sydney No politician, journalist or media critic has ever been heard to utter the phrase “as subtle as a Murdoch tabloid”. So, when Murdoch’s New York Post responded to the Republicans’ unexpectedly meagre gains in the

‘Red wave’ fails to materialise as Democrats perform above expectations in tight midterm race
Jared Mondschein, University of Sydney On average, the US president’s political party loses 28 seats in the House of Representatives and four Senate seats in their first midterm elections. While votes continue to be tallied, early results indicate that President