Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Source: WalletHub

10 states where party planners can host (and avoid) representative primaries

Source: WalletHub
Source: WalletHub

Illinois should host the first presidential primaries if the goal is to pick a state that most closely matches the demographics of the country.

And Vermont, the home state of Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders, should have minimal influence over the process because its makeup is least similar to the entire United States — meaning the results from that state would be hardly at all predictive of the nation's views.

Those are among the conclusions out Thursday from the personal financial services website Wallet Hub, which has been churning out a series of reports this winter hoping to point political leaders toward helpful data for picking candidates in a more democratically sustainable way.


Once again this year, the Democratic Party has taken heat for its decision to hold its first two contests in a pair of states with abnormally high shares of white voters. But Wallet Hub expects the parties want to look beyond racial makeup if they're in search of places to hold potentially dispositive contests in 2024 and beyond.

And so they compiled and weighted an enormous amount of data about the demographics, economies, education levels, religious affiliations, and partisan and public policy attitudes of all 50 states.

Turns out, Iowa is an 89 percent match with the country — a good if not great No. 17 on the national list, highest among the four early voting states. But only seven states are less of a national mirror than New Hampshire, at 82 percent.

South Carolina, which will vote on Saturday, is near the middle. But as its leaders have advertised for decades, it does have the third highest level of political engagement among African Americans by Wallet Hub's calculus.

Unsurprisingly, seven states that are expected to be contested by both parties in the November presidential election end up among the 10 that are the closest match for the country, according to what the company has labeled its 2020 Electorate Representation Index:

  1. Illinois (95 percent match)
  2. Florida (94 percent)
  3. Michigan (93 percent)
  4. Arizona (92 percent)
  5. Ohio (92 percent)
  6. Pennsylvania (92 percent)
  7. Virginia (92 percent)
  8. Delaware (92 percent)
  9. North Carolina (91 percent)
  10. Indiana (90 percent)

Also unsurprisingly, only two of the 10 states least representative of the entire United States (New Hampshire and Maine) are at all competitive in the general election. Six of the rest can reliably be colored bright red now on the Electoral College map:

  1. Wyoming (83 percent)
  2. Arkansas (83 percent)
  3. New Hampshire (82 percent)
  4. Maine (82 percent)
  5. Alabama (81 percent)
  6. Massachusetts (80 percent)
  7. West Virginia (80 percent)
  8. Utah (78 percent)
  9. Mississippi (78 percent)
  10. Vermont (only a 77 percent match)

www.youtube.com

Source: WalletHub

Read More

Trump Shows That Loyalty Is All That Matters to Him

Guests in the audience await the arrival of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during the Federalist Society's Executive Branch Review Conference at The Mayflower Hotel on April 25, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images/TNS

Trump Shows That Loyalty Is All That Matters to Him

Last week, the Court of International Trade delivered a blow to Donald Trump’s global trade war. It found that the worldwide tariffs Trump unveiled on “Liberation Day” as well his earlier tariffs pretextually aimed at stopping fentanyl coming in from Mexico and Canada (as if) were beyond his authority. The three-judge panel was surely right about the Liberation Day tariffs and probably right about the fentanyl tariffs, but there’s a better case that, while bad policy, the fentanyl tariffs were not unlawful.

Please forgive a lengthy excerpt of Trump’s response on Truth Social, but it speaks volumes:

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Strikes Iran Nuclear Sites: Trump’s Pivot Amid Middle East Crisis

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses the mission details of a strike on Iran during a news conference at the Pentagon on June 22, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia.

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

U.S. Strikes Iran Nuclear Sites: Trump’s Pivot Amid Middle East Crisis

In his televised address to the nation Saturday night regarding the U.S. strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump declared that the attacks targeted “the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.” He framed the operation as a necessary response to decades of Iranian aggression, citing past attacks on U.S. personnel and Tehran’s support for militant proxies.

While those justifications were likely key drivers, the decision to intervene was also shaped by a complex interplay of political strategy, alliance dynamics, and considerations of personal legacy.

Keep ReadingShow less
What if We Fired the Parties?

"They want us divided sign" that represents partisanship among democrats and republicans.

Getty Images, Jena Ardell

What if We Fired the Parties?

Like many Americans, I have been increasingly disappointed by the candidates promoted by political parties because they tend to back candidates who are ultimately focused on personal gain and/or only advancing issues predetermined by party priorities while moving further away from responding to the needs of their constituents. According to The Guardian, in the 2024 election, the number of eligible voters who did not cast their ballot is more than the total of those who voted for either of the party candidates. So, maybe the real issue is that our political party system just isn’t working for most Americans anymore. Assuming this is even partially true, what if, instead of just complaining about the parties or holding our noses and voting for the "lesser evil" every November, we actually fired the parties—took away their grip on our democracy and built something better.

For decades, we've been told we only have two choices. But more and more Americans don't feel truly represented by either major party. We're exhausted by the noise, the blame games, the endless culture wars that solve nothing and only serve to increasingly marginalize portions of our citizenry. Americans want real solutions on housing, healthcare, education, wages, and the future we're leaving for the next generation. And we're not getting them. So, maybe it's time to ask a radical but necessary question: What if the problem isn't just the candidates but the political party system that keeps producing them?

Keep ReadingShow less
The Medical Community Tells Congress That Telehealth Needs Permanent Federal Support
person wearing lavatory gown with green stethoscope on neck using phone while standing

The Medical Community Tells Congress That Telehealth Needs Permanent Federal Support

WASHINGTON–In March 2020, Stephanie Hendrick, a retired teacher in Roanoke, Virginia, contracted COVID-19, a virus that over 110 million people in the U.S. would contract over the next couple of years.

She recovered from the initial illness, but like many, she soon began experiencing long COVID symptoms. In the early months of the pandemic, hospitals and medical centers prioritized care for individuals with active COVID-19 infections, and pandemic restrictions limited travel and in-person treatment for other medical conditions. Hendrick’s options for care for long COVID were limited.

Keep ReadingShow less