“For all the talk about how partisan polarization is overwhelming Washington, there is another powerful, overlapping force at play: Voters who are not deeply rooted increasingly view politics through a generic national lens,” the New York Times reports.

“Friends-and-neighbors elections were already a thing of the past in congressional campaigns. But the axiom that “all politics is local” is increasingly anachronistic when ever-larger numbers of voters have little awareness of what incumbents did for their community in years past and are becoming as informed by cable television, talk radio and the Internet as by local sources of news. In this year’s primaries, the trend is lifting hard-liners, but it has benefited more moderate candidates in general elections.”

Nate Cohn: “Hispanic-Americans are growing in number, coveted by the nation’s political parties and deeply in favor of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws. Given this combination, why does such an overhaul still seem to be such a long shot in Washington?”

“One reason is that no demographic group is more marginalized in American elections than Hispanics. Many are ineligible to vote, while those who can vote often do not or are concentrated in noncompetitive districts and states. The dynamic will be particularly strong in this year’s midterms in November, when Hispanic voters will represent a tiny fraction of the electorate in the states and districts critical to the battle for control of Congress.”

A new Pew Research study finds Republicans and Democrats in Congress “aren’t the only partisans who deeply distrust people from the other side of the aisle,” the New York Times reports.

“Liberals and conservatives prefer to associate with and live near their fellow partisans. They would be unhappy if their children married someone with a different political viewpoint. The result isn’t just polarized politics, but a divided society where liberals and conservatives increasingly keep apart.”

Really amazing charts over at Wonk Wire.

Civic Youth has a great interactive map showing the turnout of young voters over the years.

A new Pew Research survey finds that 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31–the so-called Millennial generation– now live in their parents’ home, the highest share in at least four decades.

“A badly botched lethal injection in Oklahoma has not chipped away at the American public’s support of the death penalty, although two-thirds of voters would back alternatives to the needle,” according to a new NBC News poll.

“One in three people say that if lethal injections are no longer viable — because of drug shortages or other problems — executions should be stopped altogether… But many others are open to more primitive methods of putting prisoners to death: 20% for the gas chamber, 18% for the electric chair, 12% for firing squad and 8% for hanging.”

Alan Abramowitz: “Perhaps the single most important political decision that American voters get to make is who will occupy the White House for four years. If social class has a powerful influence on public opinion and political behavior, we should find evidence of its effects in presidential voting decisions. Given the contrasting positions of the two major parties on economic policies benefitting upper and lower-income Americans in recent years, as well as the contrasting backgrounds of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, one might have expected upper-income voters to be much more likely to support the Republican candidate than lower-income voters. However, the evidence displayed in Figure 1 shows that family income was only weakly related to presidential voting decisions.”

Brendan Nyhan: “Just under 9% of members of Congress between 1789 and 1996 were related to a previous member of Congress, according to a 2009 study, including 7% of those who served after 1966. More recently, 12% of all House races without an incumbent candidate between 1994 and 2006 had a member of a political dynasty as a candidate.”

Wall Street Journal: “The urban-rural divide has also grown in presidential contests. In 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton beat Republican George Bush in the 50 densest counties–the most urban in the country–by 25 percentage points. By 2012, Democrat Barack Obama’s advantage in those urban counties had shot up to 38 points.”

“The shift in rural areas has been even more dramatic. In 1992, Mr. Bush won the 50 least-dense counties–the most rural in the country–by 18 points. In 2012, Mr. Romney’s advantage there had roughly tripled, to 53 points.”

Charlie Cook: “It’s surprising how many people who avidly follow American politics don’t seem to appreciate that elections are both seasonal and cyclical in nature.”

“The seasonal aspect is the more obvious one. Clearly in some years, or seasons, the wind is blowing in favor of one party. In other years, it appears to blow in the opposite direction. In others still, as during the time between seasons, the partisan winds do not seem to blow in any direction at all.”

“Unfortunately, the cyclical nature is lost on more people. In any given even-numbered year, the House is on a cycle of its own, the Senate another, and the governorships yet another. The easiest to identify is the House cycle; with its two-year terms, all you have to do is look at the previous election. If Democrats had a great year and picked up a large number of Republican seats, you know that Democrats are likely to be overexposed and to suffer losses in the coming election cycle. If Republicans had a banner year in the previous election, they are more likely to lose than to gain seats. It’s all pretty straightforward.”

Pew Research: “The Millennial generation is forging a distinctive path into adulthood. Now ranging in age from 18 to 33, they are relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry– and optimistic about the future.”

Most interesting: 50% of Millennials now describe themselves as political independents and 29% say they are not affiliated with any religion.

Monkey Cage: “In Ideology in America, Christopher Ellis and James Stimson describe a striking disjuncture. When identifying themselves in a word, Americans choose ‘conservative’ far more than ‘liberal.’ In fact they have done so for 70 years, and increasingly so since the early 1960s.”

“But when it comes to saying what the government should actually do, the public appears more liberal than conservative. Ellis and Stimson gathered 7,000 survey questions dating back to 1956 that asked some variant of whether the government should do more, less, or the same in lots of different policy areas. On average, liberal responses were more common than conservative responses. This has been true in nearly every year since 1956, even as the relative liberalism of the public has trended up and down.”

“About one in four Americans say that abortion should be legal in all circumstances, one in five say abortion should always be illegal, and slightly over half the public thinks abortion should be legal in some, but not all, circumstances,” according to a new CNN/ORC poll.

Compare your name to voter registration records to predict your party affiliation.

A TIME survey found that preferences for pets or particular kinds of food can accurately predict partisanship.

“Loving cats may not make a person a liberal, but it does increase the odds that a person already is one. To see how accurate our survey was, we analyzed the data from 220,192 TIME readers who took the quiz and then volunteered their actual political preferences, and found that all 12 items did in fact predict partisanship correctly.”

Wonk Wire looks at the fascinating trend in the states over the last two decades.

In one chart, over at Wonk Wire.

Gallup: “Overall, Americans are as likely to be positive (39%) about the current state of the country as they are to be negative (40%). However, the gap between whites’ and nonwhites’ views of where the country stands is wider than at any point in recent history, with nonwhites now almost twice as likely as whites to view the nation’s situation positively.”