In The News: Department of Political Science
Nevada’s Democrats want the Silver State to be the first in the nation to pick the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.
Voters turned against the ruling DPP due to their dissatisfaction with the party’s domestic performance, not because of their love for China.
Taiwan held local elections for mayor/county magistrates and city council members on November 26. As many had predicted, the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), did not fare well. The number of DPP-controlled cities and counties narrowed further, from six to five, and its vote share drooped by around 5 percent compared to the party’s performance in the last midterm election in 2018.
The 2022 local elections are also the day when a referendum on constitutional amendments for 18-year-old citizens will be held. Although this referendum was unanimously approved by all parties in the Legislative Yuan, President Tsai Ing-wen strongly appealed before the election, and the former Kuomintang opponent Han Guoyu also shouted for it the day before the election. The final result of the referendum was 5.65 million votes in favor and more than 5.02 million votes against votes, but because it is far below the threshold of 9 million (a total of 18 million legitimate voters, half of which need to come out to vote in favor), the referendum case did not pass.
Despite efforts by Republicans to make inroads with Nevada’s Latino voters, early CNN exit polls show that outreach was largely unsuccessful.
It didn’t take long for Nevada Democrats’ redistricting maneuvering to pay off. A year after the Democrat-controlled Legislature redrew the state’s political boundaries, Democrats defended all three of the competitive congressional districts in Southern Nevada while also expanding their majorities in both chambers, including regaining a supermajority in the state Assembly.
All of Nevada's Democratic congressional delegation, in a joint statement, called on the Democratic National Committee to put Nevada's Primary Election first on the calendar in coming years.
Now that we have the midterms in the rearview mirror, Nevada Democrats are using the opportunity to renew their push to have the first presidential primary in the country.
Democratic Representative Val Demings became the congressional candidate who spent the most but still lost in her failed campaign to oust Republican Marco Rubio from his U.S. Senate seat in Florida last week.
Nevada Republicans did not see the “red wave” they were expecting in the 2022 midterms.
With missiles landing over the border of Poland, the ongoing war in Eastern Europe is getting closer to home for NATO-protected countries.
Florida’s Democratic Rep. Val Demings spent the most of losing candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, using some $68 million out of the $72 million raised during the cycle.