2026 Election
December 20, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Donald Trump does a lot of smart things, but he also does some inexplicably dumb things. Like–if this was an endorsement–endorsing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell as the GOP candidate for Governor of Minnesota: At Friday’s rally in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, livestreamed on the White House’s official YouTube page, Mr. Trump took aim at Walz and Minnesota’s growing fraud crisis, adding his longtime ally Lindell, “deserves to be governor of
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December 7, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Stop the fraud or win elections. This is the choice now facing Democrats in Minnesota. Want to guess which one will prevail? The ethnic-Somali population in Minnesota (including refugees and 2nd generation) numbers around 107,000, according to census data. Thirty-five (35) years ago, that number was zero. Nearly all are citizens. The total foreign-born population in Minnesota sits around 500,000, most of whom are naturalized American citizens. Even allowing for
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November 12, 2025 — Bill Glahn
In the end (if this is the end) what was it all about? The record-long federal government shutdown (43 days, over six weeks) could end as early as tonight, if the House of Representatives goes along with the deal passed by the Senate on Monday. My theory is it all had to do with the odd-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia. A week later, everyone now believes that last
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November 10, 2025 — Bill Glahn
The shutdown continues, although its days are numbered. Last night, Senate Democrats lent 8 votes to reach 60 to end the filibuster on the bill to end the shutdown. I don’t believe a word of the “outrage” directed against Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (NY) or the eight “defectors” in his caucus. It seems to me to be entirely performative. A show for the rubes who bought into the con.
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November 6, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Nothing succeeds like success. The dirty little secret of political science is that there is almost no science in it. The profession runs entirely on folklore: whatever tactic that was seen as working in the last election will work in the next one and the next one. You can’t run controlled experiments. The conventional wisdom prevails, always. Headlines from The Hill newspaper this morning. One: Democrats’ confidence in shutdown strategy
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October 26, 2025 — John Hinderaker
We have written here, here and elsewhere about Jay Jones, the Democrats’ candidate for Attorney General of Virginia. It came out, late in the campaign, that Jones has sent texts in which he fantasized about murdering a Republican legislator (“two bullets to the head”) and urinating on his grave. Also, seeing his young children (“little fascists”) die. You might think that would be the end of Jones’s political career, but
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October 17, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From Iowa Public Radio, Jackie Norris ends Senate run in wake of former Des Moines superintendent’s ICE arrest. Norris is the chair of the school board that hired said illegal alien, Ian Roberts of Guyana. IPR reports, Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris is ending her run for the Democratic nomination in next year’s U.S. Senate race in Iowa. The reason? But the arrest of former Superintendent Ian Roberts
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September 20, 2025 — Bill Glahn
As we’ve noted, Tim Walz has begun his run for a third term as governor of Minnesota from a position of weakness. Local ABC affiliate KSTP 5 reports, KSTP/SurveyUSA poll: Walz has net approval of zero as he begins campaign for 3rd term. And by net zero, they mean he is at 47-47. After seven years in office, Walz is a known quantity. Voters have already made up their minds
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September 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
John Spry is Professor of Finance at the Opus College of Business of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. His expertise includes state and local public finance. With Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s announcement yesterday that he seeks a third term, Professor Spry has attempted to assess Walz’s claim of “cutting taxes for the middle class” against the publicly available record. His analysis demonstrates the difficulty of putting Walz’s
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September 16, 2025 — Bill Glahn
As we’ve been reporting today, Tim Walz is running for an unprecedented third term as Governor of Minnesota. Should he? Voters seem to be saying, “no.” As it happened, John’s American Experiment organization published some polling results today on this very question, The Thinking Minnesota Poll also asked a traditional “right direction/wrong track” question and for the fourth consecutive poll, a plurality of Minnesotans think the state is off on
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July 25, 2025 — John Hinderaker
At the New York Times, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth over Republicans’ plans to try to redistrict several states, including Texas, in hopes of increasing GOP representation in the House. This is a nefarious conspiracy, of course, and if you didn’t know better you would think that Republicans invented gerrymandering. The Times laments the fact that in responding to the GOP’s efforts, “the toolbox for Democrats is relatively
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