Jonathan Chait: “A new paper by political scientist Corwin Smidt… documents the decline of swing voters, or (as many political scientists call them) ‘floating voters,’ which means voters who pull the lever for a different party than the one they supported in the previous election. From the 1950s through the 1980s, 10 to 15 percent of voters floated between the two parties in presidential elections. Recently that rate has fallen to about 5 percent.”

“The sorting of American politics into semipermanent, warring camps unfolded over decades… But every effort to break the stalemate in the age of polarization has failed. Red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans have tried to create separate, localized identities for their candidates that can allow them to compete in hostile terrain. It doesn’t work because elections at every level have increasingly grown nationalized. The divide between red and blue America is comprehensive.”

Washington Post: “A brand new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 72 percent of Americans believe that politicians cannot be trusted and two-thirds think the country’s political system is dysfunctional. A not insignificant share of folks openly embrace radicalism: 21 percent of those polled would rather the next president ‘tear down’ the political system and ‘start over’ than try to ‘fix’ it.”

A new Quinnipiac poll finds a total of 71% of American voters are “dissatisfied” with the way things are going in the nation today, including 41% who are “very dissatisfied.”

“Voters disapprove 81% to 12% of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job and give the Republican Party a negative 31% to 58% favorability. Disapproval of Democrats in Congress is 66% to 27% and the Democratic Party gets a negative 40% to 50% favorability.”

Politico: “A lot of the traits that make the United States exceptional these days are undesirable, like higher violence and less social mobility. Many of these differences can be attributed largely to the South… Minus the South, the rest of the U.S. probably would be more like Canada or Australia or Britain or New Zealand—more secular, more socially liberal, more moderate in the tone of its politics and somewhat more generous in social policy. And it would not be as centralized as France or as social democratic as Sweden.”

“There are many divides in American politics. There’s red and blue and black and white. But some of the starkest differences exist between rural and urban America. And events in the news this past week only highlighted the size of those divides,” NBC News reports.

“On trade, the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage, rural America has different opinions than those who live in urban and suburban areas, according to polling data. And on each of those issues, the news out of Washington over the past few days has signaled a negative shift.”

A new analysis of Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll data finds a marked  increase in the share of registered voters identifying themselves as liberals, and an even bigger drop in the share saying they are conservatives.

“Abortions have declined in states where new laws make it harder to have them — but they’ve also waned in states where abortion rights are protected, an Associated Press survey finds. Nearly everywhere, in red states and blue, abortions are down since 2010.”

“Explanations vary. Abortion-rights advocates attribute it to expanded access to effective contraceptives and a drop in unintended pregnancies. Some foes of abortion say there has been a shift in societal attitudes, with more women choosing to carry their pregnancies to term.”

Alan Abramowitz: “The 2012 election saw the highest levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting since the American National Election Studies began tracking American voting patterns in 1952. Over 90% of Democrats and Republicans, including voters who claimed to be independents but indicated that they leaned toward one party or the other, supported their party’s presidential candidate. Close to 90% supported their party’s House and Senate candidates as well, and 83% cast a straight-party ballot for president, House, and Senate.”

“These exceptionally high levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting combined with increasing reluctance to openly identify oneself as a party supporter reflect a fundamental change in the way Americans relate to the Democratic and Republican parties — the rise of negative partisanship. A growing number of Americans have been voting against the opposing party rather than for their own party.”

For the first time since Gallup began tracking it in 1999, there are now as many Americans who describe their views on social issues as “liberal” as there are who describe them as “conservative,” the Washington Post reports.

“It’s been a long and slow crawl, but Americans have steadily become more liberal on social issues without much interruption — except for a brief dip when President Obama first took office in 2009. Today, it’s tied at 31 percent. Back in 1999, it was about two-to-one conservative over liberal.”

Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense and president of the Boy Scouts of America, called for an end to the group’s blanket ban on gay adult leaders, warning Scout executives that “we must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be,” and that “any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement,” the New York Times reports.

Wonk Wire: Millennials take over as largest group in workforce

“A record 1,335 Americans living overseas renounced their citizenship in the first three months of 2015,” The Hill reports.

“That number is 18 percent higher than the previous record… In all of 2014, 3,415 individuals gave up their U.S. citizenship, the second straight year when renouncements hit a new record high.”

Our politics may be a mess but this pretty chart on Wonk Wire explains why.

Washington Post: “Since the 1990s, the margin by which states have been more Republican has indeed grown, while the margin by which states vote more Democratic has been relatively flat. This reinforces the idea that partisan loyalty has strengthened — but only on one side of the split. States that vote more Republican than the rest of the country have voted increasingly more Republican. States that vote more Democratic haven’t changed as much.”

Wonk Wire has a map that shows 78 counties in 19 states are now majority-minority.

Reuters: “Republicans and Democrats used to take pride in calling their respective parties ‘big tents‘ with room for a diversity of views. That tradition has ended for Republicans. It may be on its way out for Democrats as well.”

“The main reason the tents are shrinking is that the number of swing states is diminishing. Congressional Republicans increasingly represent red states and congressional Democrats blue states. Thirty percent of Democrats in the House of Representatives now come from just two states — New York and California.”

Doug Sosnik: “Next year’s election is the midpoint between 1992 when the current phase of presidential politics began and 2040, which is around the time that most projections have us approaching a majority-minority country, one in which no race will constitute the majority of Americans.”

“While the 2016 presidential election is likely to reflect the last remnants of this bygone era, the candidate running for president in 2016 who best understands how the country is changing and runs a campaign based on the America of the future rather than the America of the past is most likely to be our 45th president.”