Good morning and happy Friday! We are now just 18 days until the midterm elections.
In my latest YouTube video, I break down the three scenarios for what Washington could look like after November 3 — complete Democratic control, complete Republican control, or split control — and what to expect and watch out for in each one.
Will Donald Trump confirm a fourth (or even fifth) Supreme Court justice? Will we have another shutdown? Another impeachment? I get into all of it, to give you some hints about what American politics will look like in 2027. Watch below:
If you haven’t already, you can click below to subscribe to my YouTube channel and get every video directly in your feed:
And now, I want to wrap up the week by trying something new: rounding up five things that stuck out to me this week that you may have missed.
This feature will be special for paid subscribers, to try to let you in on the news items that are catching my eye and that I think are driving American politics under the radar, without getting as much attention.
Subscribing to Wake Up To Politics gives you access to bonus analysis in the Friday newsletter, and also helps support my work demystifying American politics. As always, I’d love to hear your feedback — let me know if you liked this roundup feature and I’ll try to do more of them!
Here goes:
1. There are a lot of poll numbers coming at us right now, but here’s the statistic that I found most interesting out of all the polls that came out last week. According to a Fox News survey, the top issue for American voters right now is “corruption in government,” which 88% of registered voters said they are concerned about.
That includes 93% of Democrats who say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the issue, and 84% of Republicans who say the same, a striking degree of unanimity.
It is very unusual for economic concerns to be outpaced in polls like this, so this stat definitely stood out to me. Now, this certainly doesn’t mean that economic concerns are no longer vitally important to politics: indeed, the next three top concerns in the Fox poll were economic issues.
But the fact that corruption and inflation received essentially equal billing is, by itself, noteworthy — and a new development. Clearly, messaging around government corruption is breaking through in a way that it hasn’t in the past, and galvanizing a near-universal segment of voters.
My big question: will this lead to bipartisan anti-corruption reforms in the next Congress? For example, could the long-running push to ban congressional stock trading finally get over the finish line?
Subscribe to keep reading the six other items that caught my eye this week: