Youngkin's Virginia victory will be hard to replicate

Significance There has been speculation that Youngkin, who generated support from both from former President Donald Trump's camp and moderate Republicans as well as some swing voters last year, may represent the future of the Republican party. However, not all aspects of his campaign are replicable elsewhere. Impacts Of the 36 states holding elections for governor this year, 20 are held by Republicans. Trump will remain central to the Republican party despite a background role in Virginia. Among Democrats, similar speculation about the creation of a new electoral template surrounds Eric Adams, New York’s new mayor.

The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States

This paper studies the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote share for the Republican Party using county-level data from 1990 to 2016. Our main contribution is to show that an increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it. These effects are mainly due to the indirect impact on existing citizens’ votes, and this is independent of the origin country and race of immigrants. We find that the political effect of immigration is heterogeneous across counties and depends on their skill level, public spending, and noneconomic characteristics. (JEL D72, J15, J24, J61, R23)

Yilmaz Güney’s The Fields of Yuréghir and Arkadaş: From Despair to Hope

This article discusses two relatively unknown works of Yilmaz Güney in the English-speaking world: Boynu Bükük Öldüler (They Bowed their Heads in Shame),1 a semi-autobiographical novel, which in 1972 won the Orhan Kémel prize, and Arkadaş (The Friend), a film released in Turkey by Güney Film in 1974. More than ten years separate these two works. The Fields of Yuréghir was written during Güney’s imprisonment from 1960 to 1963, a period marked by the military coup of 27 May 1960, which lasted until 1961 and a series of coalition governments from 1961 to 1965 under the premiership of İsmet İnönü (1884-1973) of the Republican Party. Arkadaş was filmed in 1974 against the backdrop of the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus in August 1974, a time of great patriotic fervour under the charismatic and left-leaning premiership of Bülent Ecevit (1925-2006). Güney had by then experienced considerable success as a filmmaker and actor. Arkadaş is a product of this favourable constellation of circumstances, both political and personal, that marked this brief period that was abruptly ended by his imprisonment in September 1974. The article is divided into the following sections: a short biography of Yilmaz Güney; a summary of The Fields of Yuréghir and Arkadaş; a thematic analysis of the two works under the headings of political engagement, sexual mores, religion, and national identity; and a conclusion.

The COVID States Project #70: MA Governor Charlie Baker's Approval

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s announcement last week that he would not seek re-election comes on the heels of a wave of retirements of moderate Republican politicians who have found themselves at odds with former President Donald Trump and his vision of the Republican Party. Governor Baker’s decision to not seek re-election is somewhat surprising, given the Republican has consistently garnered some of the highest gubernatorial approval ratings according to numerous polls (including our own). However Baker has struggled to garner support from members of his own party, with numerous polls finding higher approval among Democrats and Independents than among Republicans. Baker’s struggles with his own party were on full display when President Trump endorsed Baker’s primary challenger, Geoff Diehl, in October. Baker faced grim primary prospects according to a Public Policy Polling1 poll that found Baker trailing Diehl in a hypothetical matchup between the two candidates. Baker has already served two terms as leader of the Bay state, and a third consecutive term would have been unprecedented for a Massachusetts governor.The Covid States Project regularly asks people in all 50 states about their approval of their governor’s handling of the pandemic and, in our most recent survey, about approval of their governor’s overall job performance. In this report, we focus on the approval of Governor Charlie Baker’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic since April 2020, and Baker’s most recent general approval rating.

Minority Versus Minority: Partisanship and Inter-Group Competitions Among Asian Americans

Increasingly salient in democratic politics are the divides among political parties regarding how they mobilize supports between ethnic majorities and minorities. Why, then, do some members of a minority group support political parties that seem antithetical to the interests of minority groups? We draw on group conflict theory to suggest that a partial explanation rests on perceived competition within minority groups. We test this theory by focusing on Republican Party support among Asian Americans in the United States. Based on two representative surveys and an original online survey experiment of Asian Americans, we demonstrate that perceived competition among racial minority groups has a significant effect on the partisanship of Asian American and pushes them toward the Republican Party. We also present observational evidence suggesting our theory applies to other minority groups. Our findings provide critical implications on how race affects politics in democracies with increasingly diversified ethnic minority groups.

“Director of Ukraine”. Behavioral mechanisms and specifics of professional relations of Petro Shelest, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine

Based on a detailed study and analysis of archival sources and testimonies of contemporaries, the characteristics of Petro Shelest’s methods and principles of personnel selection for key positions in the Ukrainian SSR, his relations with subordinates in the process of work, formation of the closest circle of colleagues are presented. The analysis of the personnel of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1963-1972 has been made. Based on memoir sources, character traits have been studied; personal qualities, as well as originality of relations of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party both with subordinates and the top leadership of the Soviet state and family members have been de- scribed. The author of the article clarifies the main trends in the development of the system of privileges and the privileges of the Soviet nomenklatura in the period of “stagnation”. The pro-Ukrainian course of the leader of the republican party organization was reflected in the author’s book OUR SOVIET UKRAINE, which was published in 1970. At first glance, the openly ideological propaganda work of Petro Shelest clearly demonstrated the attention of the republican party-state elite to the social economic problems of Ukraine, and the interest in its history and culture. Sometimes Shelest defended individual Ukrainian cultural figures who were subjected to ideological persecution. At the same time, Petro Shelest remained a typical expression of the Soviet command-administrative system. It was during his leadership of the republic that mass punitive operations against the Ukrainian national movement took place. In August 1968, Shelest was one of the initiators of the suppression of the “Prague Spring” which, in his opinion, contributed to the spread of anti-Soviet sentiment in Ukraine.However, P. Shelest’s pursuit of an autonomist course, his independence in resolving issues, and “localism and manifestations of nationalism” could not please the allied leadership. In April 1973, a campaign was inspired against his book OUR SOVIET UKRAINE. The book, which had a circulation of 100,000 copies, was withdrawn from sale and libraries. Shelest was removed from the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee “for health reasons” and was forced to take retirement.

When Rural and Urban Become “Us” versus “Them”: How a Growing Divide is Reshaping American Politics

The United States’ long-standing broad “catch-all” political parties have historically combined voters from distinct regions of the country, each including both rural and urban dwellers. Since the late 1990s, however, rural Americans nationwide have increasingly supported the Republican Party, while urbanites have persisted in their allegiance to the Democratic Party. The growing rural-urban divide has become mapped onto American polarization in ways that are fostering tribalism. This place-based cleavage is now contributing to the transformation of the nation’s politics and that of many states. It also threatens to have deleterious effects on democracy.