voters

The outcome of the 2016 presidential election took many people by surprise. I’ve spent a fair amount of time listening to experts analyze the election results over the past week. There are almost as many explanations as there are pundits . . . the rural vote came out in droves for President-elect Trump; Secretary Clinton didn’t turn out the “Obama Coalition”; votes to third-party candidates swung states one way or the other. All of those analyses are valid to a certain extent, but one thing that hasn’t been talked about is the largest swath of voters (the 50-plus) and how they broke heavily for Donald Trump.

En español |  I will never forget attending my first political debate. It was in Philadelphia, way back in the 1980s, and the two major candidates for vice president were squaring off. I was a college Republican attending Penn State University and was lucky to get a seat.

At Take a Stand, we call the tactic “bird-dogging.” And I believe it’s a major reason Social Security is going to become a much bigger issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Whether you’re a hard-core political junkie or just an ordinary citizen who’s interested in the outcome, there are a wealth of ways to follow the midterm elections on your laptop, tablet or smartphone. Here are some suggestions:

While several states continue legal wrangling over how voters must prove their identity at the polls, a new bill in Congress aims to make it easier for millions of eligible voters to at least register.

A three-judge federal appeals court panel has unanimously upheld Wisconsin’s controversial voter ID law, which had been the focus of earlier conflicting federal and state court rulings.

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While a new Gallup Poll finds that voters 65 and older have moved from "a reliably Democratic to a reliably Republican group" over the past two decades, voters in the next-oldest age bracket - 50 to 64 - haven't followed suit and still show an outright preference for the Democratic Party.

The U.S. Justice Department has filed suit against the voter ID law in Texas, but two older African American women are behind separate legal challenges to new voter ID requirements in North Carolina. The state has one of the nation's most wide-ranging voter ID laws and the first to pass since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.

Polls have the power to buoy politicians and political parties. (Who wouldn't be happy, after all, to know that they're on track to win an election?) At the same time, though, they can dole out bad cases of political heartburn.