And here is how the people think.....No doubt the authors you quoted see as little hope as the people do that politicians and parties could come to the center and work for the people and not the politics...
Now ask all those authors if the two 2 extremes of the parties, the parties that cater to their extremes to win primaries is the cause for not being able to achieve a sense of bipartisanship and a gov that represents the majority in the middle.......
Americans’ outlook on national politics is best summarized as “dismal,” according to a wide-ranging new Pew Research Center report released Tuesday.
“Americans have long been critical of politicians and skeptical of the federal government,” the report’s authors write. “But today, Americans’ views of politics and elected officials are unrelentingly negative, with little hope of improvement on the horizon. Majorities say the political process is dominated by special interests, flooded with campaign cash and mired in partisan warfare.”
Just 14% of US adults, the survey finds, believe that most elected officials care about the thoughts of people like them. Only 15% believe all or most currently serving elected officials ran for office even in part out of a desire to serve the public, while a majority say they think most were motivated by the desire to “make a lot of money.” And just 26% see the quality of candidates for political office over the past several years as good, down 21 points from just five years ago.
Former President Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden. Multiple crises batter Washington and set up a fateful 2024 election Just 27% of Americans describe the country’s political system as working even somewhat well today, with only 37% expressing even some confidence in this system’s future. An open-ended question asking Americans to describe politics these days in one word or phrase yielded overwhelmingly negative responses, ranging from “divisive” and “corrupt” to the kind of invective rarely found in analysis written by think tanks. Asked to describe a strong point of the American political system, more than half of respondents either denied that the system had any or skipped the question altogether.
Americans’ low regard for political institution persists across a somewhat dizzying range of findings. Among them: Just 26% rate Congress favorably, and fewer than half (44%) say that voting in elections is a highly effective way to change the country for the better. On a personal level, 65% of Americans say they frequently feel exhausted when thinking about politics and 55% that they feel angry, with a tenth or fewer feeling hopeful about or excited by the topic.
As the Pew report highlights, this disaffection is particularly notable in that it “comes at a time of historically high levels of voter turnout in national elections.” It also comes even as Americans continue to draw increasingly sharp distinctions between the parties: 54% say they see a great deal of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, a number that’s considerably higher than it was several decades ago.
How new is the political malaise? There’s more than six decades of data from various pollsters to suggest that one measure – public trust in the federal government – is at one of its lowest ebbs since pollsters began asking the question in the late 1950s, with only 16% of Americans now saying they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time.
In 1958, when the National Election Study first began polling the topic, roughly three-quarters of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or at least most of that time. That widespread trust gradually eroded over the course of the next few decades, dropping to just about 27% in the Carter era, before segueing into a pattern of smaller declines and upswings. The last time a majority of the public expressed confidence in the government was just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001; since 2007, the share saying they can usually trust the government has remained lower than 30%.
Public opinion of the legislative branch has followed a similar trajectory. From the mid-1980s through the early 2000s, the Pew report notes, views of Congress were largely positive. But opinions of Congress have now remained underwater for more than a decade, with unfavorable ratings of the institution reaching a near-record high in the latest round of polling.
What role does partisanship play? Increasingly, pollsters have found Americans’ views divided along partisan lines, even on seemingly apolitical topics like ratings of the economy. According to the Pew Research report, Republican-aligned adults are 40 percentage points likelier than their Democratic-aligned counterparts to say that the federal government – currently headed by a Democratic president – is doing too much on issues best left to the states, and 26 points likelier to express anger toward the federal government.
But in many cases, public unhappiness with the political system spans both parties, suggesting something deeper at play than a statement of discontent with the current crop of incumbents. Nearly identical majorities of Democratic- and Republican-aligned adults, 85% and 87% respectively, consider it a good description of the US political system to say that “Republicans and Democrats are more focused on fighting each other than on solving problems,” and both sides give identically poor favorability ratings to the currently divided Congress.
At the same time, Americans are also weary of conversations focused on partisanship: 57%, including similar majorities in both parties, say there’s too much attention paid to disagreements between Republicans and Democrats these days.
Do people think a third political party would fix things? While most Americans still hold a positive view of at least one of the two parties, an increasing share of the public dislikes both political parties. A record-high 28% of Americans view both Republicans and Democrats unfavorably, little changed from a year ago, but up from just 6% when Pew first asked the question in 1994. This disaffection is particularly widespread among adults younger than 50, with 35% of them saying they dislike both parties.
A substantial minority of all adults, 37%, say they’re sympathetic to the wish that there were more political parties to choose from. But the latest poll also finds “considerable skepticism that having more parties would make it easier for the country to solve its problems.” Only 26% of US adults think that new parties would make problem-solving easier, with similar shares saying either that it would make things harder (24%) or have little impact (25%). And only one-third think it’s even somewhat likely that an independent candidate will win the White House any time in the next 25 years.
Are there any limits to Americans’ negativity? As broad as Americans’ discontent with government is, it does have some limits. More than half of Americans say their local elected officials (56%) and their state’s governor (51%) are doing good jobs, for instance. A 56% majority say they usually feel that there’s at least one candidate for political office who shares most of their views, and 57% believe that voting by people like them has at least some effect on the country’s future direction.
Other Pew studies have found that most Americans continue to count the US as among the world’s greatest countries and to express broad satisfaction with the state of their own community. Other polling has found that Americans remaining largely satisfied with most aspects of their own day-to-day-existence.
There are also limits on the extent to which most Americans perceive politics as impinging on their lives. Per Pew’s classification, only 35% of Americans are highly engaged with politics – meaning that they frequently follow news about government and current affairs, express high level of interest in politics and frequently talk about politics with others. This group experiences political life in a way that’s notably different from other Americans. Those who are highly politically engaged, for instance, are 20 points likelier than those with low engagement to say there are clear solutions to most big issues facing the country today, and 25 points likelier to see a great deal of difference between the two main political parties.
Among all US adults, while about two-thirds say that who is president makes a big difference to the nation’s standing in the world (67%) and to the mood of the country (65%), only about half (52%) see the presidency as similarly central to the health of the economy – and just 24% say that it makes a big difference to their own personal life.
The Pew Research Center report is based primarily on a July 10-16 survey among 8,480 adults, with a margin of sampling error of +/- 1.5 percentage points. The survey was conducted online, using the nationally representative American Trends Panel.
Americans Are Down on Biden. Why Does His Party Keep Winning Elections?
"The Democrats think centrism will re-elect Biden. That’s a dangerous assumption"
Despite a flood of negative polls for Democrats, the party has delivered a string of strong results in special elections, which can be a useful gauge of the national political environment.
Canvassers encouraged residents of Columbus to vote no on an Ohio ballot referendum that was widely viewed as a proxy battle over abortion rights. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
By Reid J. Epstein
Reporting from Washington Sept. 26, 2023
For nearly two years, poll after poll has found Americans in a sour mood about President Biden, uneasy about the economy and eager for younger leaders of the country.
And yet when voters have actually cast ballots, Democrats have delivered strong results in special elections — the sort of contests that attract little attention but can serve as a useful gauge for voter enthusiasm.
In special elections this year for state legislative offices, Democrats have exceeded Mr. Biden’s performance in the 2020 presidential election in 21 of 27 races, topping his showing by an average of seven percentage points, according to a study .. https://dlcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DLCC-Memo_Strong-Record-in-2023-Special-Elections.pdf .. conducted by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s campaign arm for state legislative races.
Taken together, these results suggest that the favorable political environment for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has endured through much of 2023. Democratic officials have said since the summer of 2022, when the ruling came down, that abortion is both a powerful motivator for the party’s voters and the topic most likely to persuade moderate Republicans to vote for Democratic candidates.
The Governor, the Wolf and the Warden: Law enforcement officers say they were pressured to lie when Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana killed a black wolf in 2021 . He says the story is an election-year smear.
Leaving Washington: A wave of retirees in the House from both parties, including committee chairs and rising stars, say that serving in Congress is no longer worth the frustration .
“Dobbs absolutely changed the way that people thought about and processed things that they had perceived as a given,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the D.L.C.C. “We continue to see voters recognizing what’s at stake in these elections.”
Democrats are now using abortion rights to power races far down the ballot — an extension of how candidates in special elections at the congressional level have long used prominent national issues to fuel their campaigns.
“The best evidence that a special election produces is whose side is more engaged on a grass-roots turnout level,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview on Monday. “That gives you some signal about who is bringing their turnout back next year.”
Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings have illustrated a wide gap .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/17/us/politics/biden-democrats-voter-concerns.html .. between how Democratic leaders view him and what voters think. But past presidents — including Barack Obama — have recovered from similarly sour numbers to win re-election, a point Mr. Biden’s aides repeat to seemingly anyone who will listen.
Political operatives remain vexed about how much stock to put into the results of special elections. Such races tend to draw a fraction of the turnout in regular contests, and the voters skew older and more educated — a demographic that in the Trump era is more likely to favor Democrats.
The party that wins special elections tends to trumpet their importance and predictive power, while the losing side writes them off as insignificant measures of voters’ mood.
“These aren’t just one-off election wins,” she wrote. “They prove that our message is resonating with voters — and that we can’t write off any corner of the country.”
Officials with the Republican state legislative campaign arm did not respond to messages on Monday.
The next chance for Democrats to prove their strength in down-ballot elections will come in Virginia. A slate of Democratic state legislative candidates are warning on the campaign trail that a Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Glenn Youngkin would roll back abortion rights. Republicans are pitching the same menu .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/us/politics/virginia-youngkin-elections.html .. of tax cuts and parental influence over schools that swept Mr. Youngkin into office two years ago.
The elections are likely to serve as a solid arbiter of the parties’ strength heading into 2024. Under the state’s new legislative district lines, Mr. Biden would have won a majority of House of Delegates seats in 2020. But Mr. Youngkin carried a majority of the districts when he was elected in 2021.
“These are competitive maps,” Ms. Williams said. “When we get to the other side of this November election and you look at all of these things combined, you’re going to see a very strong story for Democrats.”
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
