Outside the Beltway

Alas, it probably doesn’t matter.

The races are more alike—and yet more different—than we seem to remember.

The participants for the two-night opening debate of the 2020 campaign season have been announced, and the candidates who were excluded aren’t happy.

In 2016, a crowded Republican field yielded an unlikely nominee. Could history repeat itself in 2020?

Faced with a field that could be more crowded than the Republican field in 2016, Democrats have come up with a different solution to the rather obvious problem of debate scheduling.

Faced with the prospect of a large field like the one Republicans had in 2016, Democrats are trying to figure out how to handle debates. So far, the ideas being put forward are as bad as what the GOP ended up doing.

Corey Stewart rose to become the Republican Party’s Senate nominee in Virginia with blatant appeals to racial division. Now his party fears they’ll be the ones who end up paying the price.

Virginia Republicans took a hard-right turn in yesterday’s primary. This is likely to benefit the Democrats.

Several former candidates for President are emerging as potential candidates for Senate.

Yes you can Ben, yes you can.

The GOP field is now down to five.

Unless the polls are very wrong, it looks to be a good night for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Beyond that, there’s a lot that’s still up in the air.

The final polls of the Iowa Caucus show that the outcome of tonight’s caucuses depend almost entirely on turnout at this point. Plus, a projection of who will win and the order of finish.

Fundraising in the final three months of 2015 largely reflected the state of the race itself, but some candidates are better positioned going forward than others.

Without Trump, the seventh Republican debate largely focused on Ted Cruz, who doesn’t seem to have done himself any favors. Donald Trump, meanwhile, will likely not pay any price at all for skipping the last pre-Iowa debate.

Last night’s Republican debate had a different feel with the absence of a certain bloviating narcissist.

The first debate after the Iowa Caucuses will have fewer participants than past debates, and there will be no undercard debate.

Fox Business Network has announced its criteria for the next GOP Debate, and it looks like Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich will be kept off the prime time stage.

The first post-debate polls of the GOP race have more good news for Donald Trump.

A pair of new national polls shows a new trend in the GOP race heading into the final debate of 2015.

The quadrennial fantasy of a brokered convention, which American politics has not seen since 1952, is rearing its head again, and it’s no more likely now than it was when we talked about this four years ago.

Donald Trump continues to have a commanding lead in the Granite State, but it’s unclear whether he can translate poll support into votes when the primary rolls around.

Donald Trump just keeps leading in the polls, and Republicans keep arguing that it can’t last.

Donald Trump’s speech yesterday at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition was as bizarre as anything else we’ve seen from him.

Seemingly disproving yet another round of predictions of his imminent demise, Donald Trump continues to dominate the race for the Republican nomination.

Candidates who have been excluded from tomorrow’s Fox Business Network are complaining, but their complaints ignore the fact that polling is the best objective criteria we have to determine debate eligibility.

The debate stages for both the undercard and main debate next Tuesday will look different from what we’ve become used to.

Fluctuations continue, but the Republican Presidential field appears to be sorting itself out as we near the beginning of a new phase of the campaign.

A pair of new polls confirms that Republican hopes that Donald Trump would fade are failing to come true.

While Donald Trump and Ben Carson have slipped somewhat in the polls, they both continue to lead the GOP field while Marco Rubio shows signs of breaking out of the middle of the pack.

The criteria for next month’s third Republican Presidential debate have been announced, and they’re likely to end up being bad news for several Republican candidates.

The first significant national polls taken in the wake of last week’s debate show that Donald Trump has slipped somewhat, but still remains the clear leader of the Republican race for President.

The Republican candidates for President took to the stage last night for a debate that seemed to last forever and accomplished nothing.

Carly Fiorina will most likely be excluded from CNN’s prime time debate in September, so of course her campaign is complaining about rules that were established months ago.

Donald Trump’s support in the polls appears to become coming largely from people who don’t typically vote in primary elections.

Trump is at -51 net favorability and Clinton at +40. The rest of the field is at “Who?”

For a variety of reasons, it’s unlikely that the Republican field will shrink significantly before the Iowa Caucuses.

Donald Trump is still in the lead of the Republican circus, but the rest of the field remains uncertain in the wake of the first debate.

The low-polling candidates met in an early debate. It was about what you’d expect.

Donald Trump is center stage, John Kasich is in, and Rick Perry is relegated to the kid’s table.

The last three polls to be released before Thursday’s debate show Donald Trump continuing to solidify his lead.

Donald Trump leads in the first of the final polls to be released before Thursday’s debate.

The first of a series of polls in anticipation of next week’s debate shows Donald Trump still at the top, with a surprise coming out of Ohio.

As expected, former Virginia Governor and Republican National Committee chairman Jim Gilmore has tossed his hat into the ring:

With just over a week to go, Republican candidates for President are fighting for the movement in the polls that could get them in to the August 6th debate.