USA Today’s Rick Hampson has this lengthy analysis of the virtues and flaws of debates that have as many as ten candidates. The latter part of the article discusses how candidates in such debates can succeed. The very bottom of the article gives the schedule and location for the next nine Republican presidential debates. Three are in the west, three are in the midwest, two are in the south, and only one is in the east.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch has this news story about Virginia’s presidential primary ballot access petition requirement. The link goes to a reprint of the story in another Virginia newspaper, the Star Exponent.
This Bloomberg Politics article authored by Steven Yaccino notes problems with the Fox News Republican debate criteria. Fox News still has not said which polls it will depend on to determine which Republicans will be invited into its August 6 debate. By contrast, CNN, which will host the September debate, has already said which polls it will use.
The article also quotes statisticians who say that using polls to determine the top ten, at a time when many polls show ties for eight, ninth and tenth place, is arbitrary. One statistician is quoted as saying, “Methodologically, they might as well be drawing straws.” Also the story explains that some presidential primaries are open, some are semi-closed, and some are closed. Yet a national poll can’t account for differences in the various state primary systems. Therefore, the decision of various polls to either include or exclude certain classes of voters (such as independents, or members of other parties) may determine the results; there is no obvious best way to handle this in a nationwide poll.
UPDATE: also see this story, in which a Fox spokesperson says the network will use “a range of quality polls”, which does not answer any of the objections mentioned in the Bloomberg story.
Washington state’s legislature is in the ninth day of its third special session this year. The legislature has sat more days in 2015 than in any previous calendar year since Washington became a state in 1889. The extended sessions are mostly related to deadlock over the state budget. Special sessions are called when the regular legislative session can’t get its work done. Usually the work that doesn’t get done in regular sessions is passing the budget.
Washington has been using the top-two system starting in 2008. There were two special legislative sessions in 2010, two in 2011, two in 2012, three in 2013, and three this year. Prior to the onset of the top-two system, there had only been six years in Washington history that needed three special sessions. Here is the data going back to 1889.
Political scientist Boris Shor showed in August 2014 that Washington state has the nation’s fourth most polarized legislature. Here is a story about the current special session.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro will hold a one-day trial in Libertarian Party of New Hampshire v Gardiner on Monday, July 13, at 9 a.m. The issue is the 2014 law that makes it illegal for the party petition to circulate during an odd year.
