A new Gallup poll finds that 60% of Americans believe the federal government has too much power — a record high — while 32% now say the government has the right amount of power.

Mother Jones: “Everybody knows that our political views can sometimes get in the way
of thinking clearly. But perhaps we don’t realize how bad the problem
actually is. According to a new psychology paper,
our political passions can even undermine our very basic reasoning
skills. More specifically, the study finds that people who are otherwise
very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise
probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes
against their political beliefs.”

Reid Wilson: “There was a time, not so long ago, when the phrase ‘permanent campaign‘ described a state of mind. Now, as the number of state legislators who find themselves facing recall efforts mounts, the permanent campaign is taking on a much more literal meaning.”

“The recall election, once reserved for forcing out elected officials accused of a crime, ethics violations or gross misconduct, has become an overtly political tool. Since 2011, voters in four states have successfully mounted petition drives to recall state legislators over new laws curbing the influence of public unions, or expanding the reach of background checks on gun purchasers.”

Ron Fournier: “The trouble is that Millennials believe traditional politics and government (especially Washington) are the worst avenues to great things. They are more likely to be social entrepreneurs, working outside government to create innovative and measurably successful solutions to the nation’s problems, even if only on a relatively small scale. … A generation ago, government had a monopoly on public service. To Millennials, the world is filled with injustice and need, but government isn’t the solution. They have apps for that.”

Dana Millbank: “Certainly, there are young leaders serving in the capital who are as enlightened as those of any previous generation, just as there are volunteer warriors fighting for America as bravely as any conscript ever did. But as a whole, my generation, untested by trial, is squandering American greatness by turning routine give-and-take into warfare.”

“Tom Brokaw justifiably called the cohort that survived the Great Depression and fought the World War II the greatest generation. I’m afraid that my generation will someday be called the weakest.”

The Wonk Wire “chart of the day” shows how the U.S. population distribution has changed over time.

Very cool animation.

Ron Brownstein looks at how the politics of abortion and gay rights are moving in opposite directions.

“Across the U.S., the two issues’ trajectory has strikingly diverged. Gay marriage has rapidly advanced through Democratic-leaning terrain. Meanwhile, in conservative states, Republican governors and legislatures have approved the most concentrated burst of abortion restrictions since the Supreme Court established the nationwide right to the procedure in 1973. In perfect symmetry, 13 states, almost all strongly Democratic, have legalized same-sex marriage, while 13 reliably Republican states have banned abortion at 22 weeks or earlier.”

While the balance of opinion toward abortion nationwide has remained largely steady over the past 20 years, Pew Research finds widening disparities in public attitudes on the issue across different regions of the country.

“Opposition to legal abortion is highest in parts of the South – including Texas, which recently passed sweeping new abortion restrictions. The South Central region is the only one in which opposition to legal abortion has significantly increased since the mid-1990s. By contrast, support for legal abortion remains highest in New England – and the gap between New England and South Central states has widened considerably over the past two decades.”

“By a margin of 56% to 27%, more Americans say they’d prefer to impose limits on abortions after the first 20 weeks of pregnancy rather than the 24-week mark established under current law,” according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

“Another 10% surveyed in the poll volunteered they would prefer to outlaw abortion in the United States altogether or limit it earlier than 20 weeks after fertilization. At the same time, however, 54% say they oppose state laws that make it more difficult for abortion clinics to operate; compared to 45% who support such legislation.”

A new USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll
“finds that Americans by more than 2-1 say the best way to make positive
changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities,
not by being active in government. Those younger than 30 are
particularly put off by politics. They are significantly less likely
than their parents to say participating in politics is an important
value in their lives.”

A new study in the Journal of Politics by Andrew Healy and Neil Malhotra finds that young men who were raised with sisters are more likely to express socially conservative views on attitudes about gender roles.

“Having sisters makes males more politically conservative in terms of their gender role attitudes and their partisanship. Particularly for gender role attitudes, we find that these political socialization effects persist until respondents are well into adulthood.”

[Read more…]

A new Gallup survey finds that despite a high 85% of Americans saying they are “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American, 71% say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed in today’s United States, while 27% say they would be pleased.

“Perhaps today or certainly sometime very soon, another baby will be born or a new immigrant will arrive and the number of Latinos in California will equal the state’s non-Hispanic white population,” the Sacramento Bee reports.

“The change… has long been predicted by state demographers. It won’t instantly make Latinos an equally powerful political force in California, or bring their incomes into parity with non-Hispanic whites, or close the school achievement gap. But it is an important milestone – and a reminder that these other goals will become easier to achieve as the number of Latinos continues to grow.”

First Read: “If you follow American politics day by day, tweet by tweet, poll by poll, and speech by speech, it’s easy to lose sight of the biggest story over the past five years — just how much change (both socially and demographically) this country has witnessed over the past four years. The nation has its first African-American president who won re-election a year ago. A majority of Americas now support gay marriage, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that married same-sex couples are entitled to federal benefits. The country is on track to be a majority-minority nation 30 years from now. And the Senate is poised to pass immigration legislation giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. Taken together, this is a stunning amount of social change in a very short period of time.”

“And all of that change helps to explain much of the partisanship and politics over the past four years. After all, when one side is pursuing change, the other side is often resisting it.”

Pew Research looks at the new Census Bureau report on the ethnic breakdown of voters and “if you’re a Republican thinking of running for president one day, you may be a bit concerned.”

“First, whites were 74% of voters last year at a time when they were just 63% of the population. This racial turnout gap is driven by the fact that a disproportionate share of non-whites are either too young to vote, not eligible to vote (because they’re not citizens), or just don’t vote. All of these factors could change over time.”

“Second, if we look at the 2060 projections, we can see that there’s a lot more diversity yet to come. The Census Bureau makes its projections based on an analysis of fertility rates, mortality rates and immigration trends. They’re not set in stone. Things change. But they give a sense of the general direction of things. And many of these future demographics are already a reality–for example, about half of newborns in 2010 were non-white.”

Charlie Cook: “President Obama carried the 18-to-29-year-old voting bloc by 34 points in 2008 and by 23 points last year. But a new national survey of millennial voters conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests this emerging generation might not be as locked into the Democratic camp as conventional wisdom suggests, and that young voters exhibit some of the same stark partisan divides as older Americans.”

Also important: “The poll shows that young voters’ trust in their leaders and political institutions is low and dropping.”

Garry South: “In three of the last four non-presidential elections, Republicans actually nominated Latinos for statewide office: Ruben Barrales for controller in 1998, Gary Mendoza for insurance commissioner in 2002 and Maldonado for lieutenant governor in 2010. All three were attractive, articulate candidates with compelling personal stories. But all three went down in flames, receiving an average of only 37.9% of the vote. And there is no indication in post-election analyses that they received any meaningfully higher share of the Latino vote than a white male GOP candidate would have gotten. In fact, the last Republican Latino statewide officeholder was elected 142 years ago, when Romualdo Pacheco won the lieutenant governorship in 1871, then served several months as governor in 1875.”

Bloomberg reports on how Democratic activists “have come to Texas on a mission as large as the state’s 261,000 square miles: to capitalize on the surge in Hispanic population and turn the Lone Star State into a two-party competitive one instead of the place where the Republican nominee has carried every presidential election since 1976.”