Walk into any American political argument and you’ll hear both words within minutes. Someone insists “we’re a republic, not a democracy.” Another insists the opposite. The confusion is so widespread that even seasoned voters mix the two terms up. Here’s the honest answer: a democracy is a system where power rests with the people. A … Read more
Every few years, usually right after a presidential election, the same question echoes through living rooms, newsrooms, and social media feeds: why does the Electoral College still exist? It happened in 2000, when Al Gore won about 540,000 more popular votes than George W. Bush but still lost the presidency. It happened again in 2016, … Read more
If you’ve ever asked what would happen if the Electoral College were abolished, you’re asking one of the most consequential questions in American politics. The short answer: presidential elections would be decided entirely by the national popular vote, meaning whoever gets the most votes from coast to coast wins—regardless of which states those votes came … Read more
Ask most Americans to describe the typical member of the opposing party, and they will get it badly wrong. Not slightly off — badly wrong. Research published by universities, Pew Research Center, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology consistently shows that both Democrats and Republicans massively overestimate how extreme, how homogeneous, and how … Read more
Why does the U.S. have only two major political parties? The short answer is that American elections use a winner-take-all system built on single-member districts, so any candidate who finishes second gets nothing. Combined with a principle political scientists call Duverger’s Law, this structure pushes the country toward two dominant coalitions – Democrats and Republicans … Read more
If you remember the Schoolhouse Rock cartoon, a bill becomes a law after a quick hop through Congress and a friendly wave from the president. Our team dug into the actual numbers from the most recent Congress, and the real story is grimmer. Out of 13,556 bills introduced between 2023 and 2024, only 443 became … Read more
The debate over federalism vs. states’ rights has defined American politics since the ink dried on the Constitution. When the federal government tells a state what to do — and the state pushes back — who actually wins? The answer is not as simple as most people think, and that ambiguity was built into the … Read more
Abraham Lincoln personally abhorred slavery and believed it was morally wrong. Yet he was not an abolitionist, did not campaign to end slavery where it already existed, and held views on racial equality that shock modern readers. The story of Lincoln and slavery is not the simple liberation tale taught in grade school. It is … Read more
The most common story about Rosa Parks skips the most important part of who she was. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a Black seamstress refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Most textbooks leave it there, framing her as a tired older woman who had simply had enough that … Read more
The women’s suffrage movement won white women the vote in 1920, but it got race profoundly wrong. White suffrage leaders excluded Black women from conventions, used racist appeals to win Southern support, and treated Black women’s voting rights as expendable bargaining chips. The result was a movement that advanced some women by sacrificing others. For … Read more