The Fiscal Picture Gets Worse

Many posts have discussed federal deficits and the federal debt. 

 James C. Capretta at AEI

The Treasury Department will release the official tally for fiscal year 2026 later this month, but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has provided a useful early look that is likely to be close to where the more carefully scrubbed numbers eventually land. The bottom line is that the federal government’s fiscal position continues to deteriorate, with rapid spending increases on the main entitlements and net interest on past borrowing accounting for most of the growing fiscal pressure.

The final deficit figure for 2026 is $1.993 trillion, or $218 billion above what was recorded in 2025. Revenue was up 3 percent in 2026 relative to 2025, but spending grew even faster at 6 percent.

On the spending side, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid continue to dominate the outlook, with all three growing at rates exceeding the rate of increase for federal revenue. Social Security outlays rose by 5 percent in 2026, while Medicare and Medicaid were up 8 percent. Their combined spending increase in 2026 was $217 billion, which accounts for 80 percent of the entire increase in noninterest outlays recorded for the entire federal government.

...

What should be most worrisome to policymakers is the combination of rising entitlement obligations and newly emerging pressure on net interest costs. In 2026, net interest payments were $1.143 trillion, up $115 billion compared with 2025 payments. Servicing federal debt now accounts for 15 percent of all federal spending, up from 8.5 percent in 2006.

Violent Threats Against Elected Officials

Many posts have discussed political violence..

 Nick Corasaniti at NYT:

An investigation by The New York Times examining hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs has found that, over a two-year period from 2024 to August of this year, thousands of violent threats inundated the lives of elected officials in unprecedented ways.

Some threats were vague; some were frighteningly specific. They promised torture, stabbing, rape and murder. They aimed at Republicans and Democrats alike, and at a range of officeholders from county clerks to United States senators. They targeted spouses, parents, siblings and children.

At least 44 governors, as well as their staff and families, have been subjected to violent threats over the past two years, The Times’s investigation found. That’s also true of at least 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives — nearly half the body. More than half of the country’s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states’ chief election officers, have received threats of violence.

Do Polls Overlook Republican Voters?

 Many posts have discussed pollsters' challenges, including the plunge in response rates.

Erica Pandey, Russell Contreras andMarc Caputo at Axios:

Research suggests Republicans have become somewhat less likely than Democrats to participate in telephone surveys, and response rates overall have plummeted since the late 1990s, per Pew.

• "We definitely have more people answering surveys who voted for [former Vice President Kamala] Harris than who voted for President Trump," says Brent Buchanan, a Republican pollster and founder of Cygnal. "But if you're a good pollster, you still get the other people."
• Pollsters can compensate by giving greater weight to Trump voters or adjusting samples to better reflect the Republican electorate, which skews male, white and working class.
• Advanced statistical modeling tools can also take a poor sample and make it look like the true electorate, though results may be inaccurate for subgroups like young people or Hispanic voters, Pew's Keeter says.

But that has risks: "The adjustment assumes that the Republicans who respond to a poll are similar to the Republicans who don't respond to the poll," Rice University political science assistant professor Matthew Tyler tells Axios. Tyler said weighting GOP respondents more heavily can backfire if those willing to answer polls are also more willing to vote Democratic than the Republicans who never respond. That could inflate the apparent size of a Democratic wave.

Between the lines: Predicting who will actually vote can dramatically change the results. YouGov chief scientist Douglas Rivers found Democratic leads ranging from six to 16 points depending on how likely voters were identified in a September survey — and called the 16-point margin "almost certainly an overstatement."

The bottom line: Even with the questions about the accuracy of recent polls, most pollsters believe Democrats have the edge heading into Election Day. "I think it's telling that we're hanging our hopes on, 'The polls are wrong,'" Buchanan says. "That's not very strong."

October Surprises Have Changed

 AT WP, Dan Merica writes that the "October surprise" -- a last-minute story that changes the course of a campaign -- is not what it used to be.

“Unless you get a Cal Cunningham-level sex scandal,” Hunt said, “it is really hard to have anything cut through the clutter and the noise that is pumping into voters’ consciences this time of year.”

Instead, operatives said major stories that end campaigns are coming earlier in cycles, often ahead of primaries, so parties have time to replace candidates on the ballot.

There are three key reasons for this shift:

• Early voting: To expand access, many states are starting voting earlier. States like California, Maine and Montana began voting earlier this week, and Iowa, Kansas and North Carolina, among others, will begin next week.
• Changes in political communication: Now, campaigns can push their message earlier and without media involvement through social media and paid communication.
• Self-research: One operative working on House races this cycle said committees and campaigns “have gotten better at recognizing bad candidates early on before it is too late” and “know what to look out for before we fully embrace a candidate, before they become our nominee.”

The October Surprise is not dead. It has just changed.

House v. Senate

 In Federalist 51, Madison wrote:

In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.

An old saying in the House:  “The other party is the opposition; the Senate is the enemy."

 Hans Nichols at Axios:

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) is saying out loud what House Republicans have been grumbling about for much of the year: They're fed up with the Senate.

Why it matters: You won't ever hear Speaker Mike Johnson or Majority Leader Steve Scalise talk about their Senate counterparts like this."There are no Democrats. There are no Republicans. They are just senators," Emmer told donors last week at a closed-door fundraiser for Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.). We were in attendance.

Emmer said Senate Majority Leader John Thune "is doing the job that he thinks he's supposed to do. There's a certain fraternity sorority that is the U.S. Senate."

 The intrigue: Emmer had a blunt message for senators who repeatedly say they can't pass House GOP priorities: "Don't just keep telling me 'Don't have the votes. Don't have the votes.' You suck."

Emmer said he once thought as a House member that he should stay out of the filibuster debate.

Now, he thinks his colleagues should "get rid of the darn filibuster."

Perceptions of Media Freedom

 Many posts have dealt with media problems.

Benedict Vigers at Gallup:

Even though most Americans continue to say the U.S. media have a lot of freedom, the percentage saying so has reached a new low this year. Slightly more than two in three Americans (69%) surveyed in May and June say there is a lot of media freedom in the U.S., down six percentage points from the previous low of 75% in 2025.

...

For much of the past 15 years, perceptions of media freedom in the U.S. have outpaced those in other advanced economies. Across 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, median perceptions of media freedom have typically hovered around 80%, slightly lower than in the United States. Last year was the first time on record that the two were tied, both at 75%, despite similarities in 2023 and 2015, when the U.S. advantage was smaller. While Gallup has not yet completed data collection in all OECD countries this year, based on available data, the OECD median will be between 70% and 76%. This means that 2026 is the first year on record in which the U.S. ranks below the bloc's median.

Virtually every president has complained about the press. Trump says that reporters who irk him "should be arrested." Can't you see that his instincts are authoritarian? I know a lot of "anti-anti-Trumpers." Can't you see it, my friends? Doesn't it matter? https://t.co/qDyxSZxwfy

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) October 6, 2026

Rose Research, Fall 2026

Watch this clip from The Wire.

It is the best description of research, ever.

The big stuff:

Beware hallucinations and incomplete answers. Always ask for sources and links.

Finding the literature: https://consensus.app/

Great resources at Honnold Library -- which students usually overlook! 

• Nexis Uni: news sources and law journals
• Political science journals
• Dissertation abstracts (search for "California" and "redistricting" in abstracts, and you will see a couple of Rose Institute names)

The Internet Archive—if a link is broken or altered, this site might help you find it. 

California 

• CA.gov
• California ballot measures -- archive going back to 1911
• California bills and laws
• LAO -- Legislative Analyst's Office -- analysis of CA issues
• Public Policy Institute of California -- California surveys and policy analysis
• News sites: CalMatters and Rough & Tumble
• CA elections from the Secretary of State
• California Elections Data Archive -- local elections in CA
• California State Library Digital Collections
• State archives
• California open data

General State Policy and Politics

• NCSL -- National Conference of State Legislatures -- analysis & data on state issues  Partisan composition of legislatures
• Open States -- bill information for all state legislatures
• Urban Institute State Economic Monitor
• Ballotpedia
• Tax Foundation

General Public Policy and Finance

• CRS
• CBO
• GAO
• GovInfo
• Budgets
• Biden White House Archives
• FRED: Federal Reserve Economic Data
  
• Census
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

Crime

• Bureau of Justice Statistics
• Prisoner statistics
• Crime data explorer
• Gun Violence Archive

Health

• Local data
• HealthData.gov
• Kaiser Family Foundation

National Elections, Parties, Campaign Finance

• Precinct-level national maps
• 2016
• 2020
• 2024 
• US Presidential Election Atlas -- just what the title says, great historical data (but note the unusual color scheme: red is D, blue is R)
• US Elections Project -- turnout data
• Open Secrets -- Center for Responsive Politics site for federal campaign finance and lobbying e information
• FEC -- Federal Election Commission
• FCC Public Inspection Files (ad buys on broadcast stations)

Public Opinion

• Polling Report -- an aggregation of national poll data
• Gallup -- the best-known US pollster, delivering new numbers daily
• Pew Research Center
• 2018 exit poll
• 2020 exit poll
• 2024 exit poll