A new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll finds that 63% of registered voters buy into at least one political conspiracy theory.

The nationwide survey asked Americans to evaluate four different political conspiracy theories: 56% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans say that at least one is likely true. This includes 36% who think that President Obama is hiding information about his background and early life, 25% who think that the government knew about 9/11 in advance, and 19% who think the 2012 Presidential election was stolen.”

Most interesting finding: “Generally, the more people know about current events, the less likely they are to believe in conspiracy theories – but not among Republicans, where more knowledge leads to greater belief in political conspiracies.”

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National Journal: “The same demographic trends that helped the GOP keep the House will hurt their shot at the presidency. And the trends that propelled Obama to reelection will impede Democrats from retaking the House.”

George Packer:
“Every President elected between 1976 and 2004 was, by birth or by
choice, a Southerner, except Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed a sort of
honorary status. (When he began the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia,
Mississippi, scene of the murder, in 1964, of three civil-rights
workers, many Southerners heard it as a dog whistle.) A Southern accent,
once thought quaint or even backward, became an emblem of American
authenticity, a political trump card. It was a truism that no Democrat
could win the White House unless he spoke with a drawl. Now the South is
becoming isolated again.”

“Every demographic and political trend that
helped to reelect Barack Obama runs counter to the region’s
self-definition: the emergence of a younger, more diverse, more secular
electorate, with a libertarian bias on social issues and immigration;
the decline of the exurban life style, following the housing bust; the
class politics, anathema to pro-business Southerners, that rose with the
recession; the end of America’s protracted wars, with cuts in military
spending bound to come. The Solid South speaks less and less for America
and more and more for itself alone.”

A new Rasmussen survey finds views of the Tea Party movement are at their lowest point ever, with just 8% saying they are members of the Tea Party, down from a high of 24% in April 2010 just after passage of the national health care law.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that 77% of Americans say the way politics works in Washington is causing serious harm to the country.

A new Gallup poll finds Hillary Clinton is the “most admired woman” for the 11th year in a row while President Obama is the “most admired man” for the 5th year in a row.

A new Pew Research survey finds that blacks voted at a higher rate this year than other minority groups and for the first time in history may also have voted at a higher rate than whites.

“Unlike other minority groups whose increasing electoral muscle has been driven mainly by population growth, blacks’ rising share of the vote in the past four presidential elections has been the result of rising turnout rates.”

A new study in the American Political Science Review suggests the average voter doesn’t have the ability “to make an accurate judgement of the performance of their politicians, showing that voter biases appear to be deep-seated and broad.”

The researchers found that voters “are susceptible to these biases even when given financial incentives to behave otherwise and when the information necessary to avoid these biases was readily available.”

As a result, the findings suggest “that incumbents who associate themselves with good news for which they bear no responsibility, implement policies that generate good news close to elections at the expense of overall voter welfare, and use rhetoric that encourages people to focus on how they feel in the here and now, ignoring the long-term, could benefit at the ballot box.”

Smart Politics: “Ohio has been the most politically divided state in the country in presidential elections for the last 184 years — boasting the lowest average victory margin and the largest number and percentage of races decided by less than five points.”

Jonathan Chait: “How doomed are conservatives? Pretty doomed, if you look carefully at the Pew Research Survey’s close analysis
of the youth vote in the 2012 elections. The Republicans’ long-term
dilemma has generally been framed in racial terms, but it’s mainly a
generational one. The youngest generation of voters contains a much
smaller proportion of white voters than previous generations, and those
whites in that generation vote Republican by a much smaller margin than
their elders. What’s more, younger voters supported President Obama
during the last two election cycles for reasons that seem to go beyond
the usual reasons — social issues like gay marriage and feminism,
immigration policy, or Obama’s personal appeal — and suggest a deeper
attachment to liberalism. The proclivities of younger voters may
actually portend a full-scale sea change in American politics.”

Nate Cohn: “If the two parties continue forward along the lines carved by the Bush and Obama years, then Texas would become quite competitive by the end of the next decade and Democrats will routinely approach 400 electoral votes in national elections. But between now and the mid-2020s, the Republican party will make adjustments to compensate for changing demographics and new issues will rejigger the electorate along unforseen lines. After Bill Clinton won West Virginia by 15 points and lost its eastern neighbor by 2, I suspect that few analysts in 1996 forseaw West Virginia becoming the fifth-most Republican state or Virginia voting more Democratic than the country. The ascent of Democrats in Texas is hardly inevitable and even if it is, it won’t be in 2016 or 2020, at least not in a close election.”

Jonathan Chait: “There is no such thing as a permanent change in American politics. What we’re talking about here is the landscape for a quarter-century or so — anything beyond that is too distant to project. In the long run, interracial marriage and cultural assimilation will make the descendants of today’s Latino voters identify much more closely with the white mainstream, which will make them more amenable to conservatism. But that long run is pretty far off. For the foreseeable future, the decline of the white population is occurring much more rapidly than the weakening identity of the nonwhite population. The Democrats have a party identity that is well suited to this environment; it is the Republicans who will have to adapt.”

Claude Fischer: “A pair of surveys asked Americans a more concrete question: in 1960,
whether they would be ‘displeased’ if their child married someone
outside their political party, and, in 2010, would be ‘upset’ if their
child married someone of the other party. In 1960, about 5 percent of
Americans expressed a negative reaction to party intermarriage; in 2010,
about 40 percent did (Republicans about 50 percent, Democrats about 30
percent).”

The New York Post reports America’s rich are renouncing their citizenship at record levels.

“Startling new data from Uncle Sam show that defections by Americans are expected to double this year, largely to avoid any stiff tax bills resulting from the proposed 55 percent hike on the rich — as well as the likely expiration on Dec. 31 of the Bush era tax cuts. As many as 8,000 US citizens are projected by immigration officials to renounce in 2012, or about 154 a week, versus 3,805 in 2011, or about 73 per week.”

A new Gallup poll finds Americans are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as conservative rather than liberal on economic issues, 46% to 20%.

The gap is narrower on social issues, but conservatives still outnumber liberals, 38% to 28%.

A new Gallup poll finds 41% of Americans identify themselves as “pro-choice,” a record low, while 50% now call themselves “pro-life,” one point shy of the record high.

“Amidst the bipartisan banter of election season, there persists an enduring belief that people get more conservative as they age — making older people more likely to vote for Republican candidates,” according to Discovery News.

“Ongoing research, however, fails to back up the stereotype… In fact, studies show that people may actually get more liberal over time when it comes to certain kinds of beliefs. That suggests that we are not pre-determined to get stodgy, set in our ways or otherwise more inflexible in our retirement years.”

CNN: “Could it be that the reason our government is broken is because of which generation is running things?”

“Authors Morley Winograd and Michael Hais think so, insisting that the problem is that power is now firmly in the hands of self-righteous baby boomers who have spent their entire lives convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is morally inferior. Boomers won’t negotiate anything, Winograd and Hais say, because they think every position they hold is rooted in something no less sacred than their values, and they’re understandably reluctant to negotiate their values.”