Month: December 2015

Cruz Now Leads in Iowa

Buck Banks

24%

A new Monmouth University poll in Iowa finds Ted Cruz surging into the lead, followed by Donald Trump at 19%, Marco Rubio at 17%, Ben Carson at 13%, and Jeb Bush at 6%. Said pollster Patrick Murray: “This marks the first time Ted Cruz has held a lead in any of the crucial early states. As Ben Carson’s stock has fallen, Cruz has been able to corral most of those voters. Rep. Steve King’s endorsement may not be the primary reason for this swing, but it certainly put a stamp on the Cruz surge in Iowa.”

Renewables Exceed Fracked Oil as Energy Resource

Buck Banks

6.2 million barrels

The equivalent energy in barrels that leading renewable-energy technologies will add daily to the global energy mix, exceeding the 5.7 million barrels a day pumped from U.S. shale oil wells since 2010, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Bloomberg: “New wind turbines and solar panels worldwide will provide more energy over the next five years than U.S. shale-oil production has over the past five.” … “’Wind and solar are on track to exceed 100 gigawatts in new installations for the first time,’ the analysts wrote. Solar and wind energy are saving a gigaton of carbon dioxide emissions annually and the market for four leading low-carbon technologies is now worth more than $600 billion per year.”

Carson May Be Leading Among Actual Voters

Buck Banks

27%

Ben Carson’s lead, followed by Marco Rubio at 17% and Donald Trump at 15%, in a new Monkey Cage poll in Iowa that finds that non-voters may be driving Donald Trump’s popularity. “To build a sample, we began with the list of registered voters in Iowa and stratified our sample by factors like age and sex. Other pollsters have done something similar. However, what we did — but other have not — is stratify the sample based on another factor: Whether or not people had voted in at least one primary election since 2006.”

No Middle Ground in 2016

Buck Banks

If the Republicans win the presidency in 2016, they will also almost inevitably control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving them virtually unfettered command over the entire federal government to go along with their domination of the great majority of the state governments. The Republican president could easily be in a position to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court for an unstoppable right-wing majority that would last for a generation to come. … If, however, the Democrats win the presidency in 2016, they will almost certainly take back the Senate and make gains in the House – and the Democratic president will likely be able to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court that will eventually comprise a liberal majority. Between these two stark alternatives, there is no middle ground. In 2016, the country will become either one thing or the other.

— Sean Wilentz, in Rolling Stone