Good Authority

Republicans and Democrats (cc) James Boast/Supplier Ikon Images, Supplier NTB. Imagine it’s 2028 and you’re asked this survey question: “Who do you think will be elected president in November?” In this era of ubiquitous polling, forecasts, and prediction markets, it is possible to give a reasonably data-driven answer. But many people instead engage in “partisan wishful thinking”: Predicting that their party’s candidate will win.

Protests in Kenya in June 2024 (cc) . In September, protests erupted across the Gambia as citizens grew frustrated with electricity blackouts that lasted as long as 48 hours during some of the hottest weeks of the year. The protests quickly grew into a larger set of complaints about poor public services and President Adama Barrow’s government, just months ahead of the presidential elections in December.

Latino voter registration party in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2008 (cc) Flickr. As the 2026 Hispanic Heritage Month draws to a close, Good Authority editor Nadia E. Brown caught up with Roberto Carlos, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. His research lies at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and politics, with a particular focus on Latinx political behavior, immigration, and political socialization.

Screencap of a Polymarket user’s bets that the Trump administration would invade Venezuela in January 2026 (cc) Wikimedia Commons. Prediction markets are in the headlines this week. The NFL wants the Supreme Court to give states greater control over these popular platforms and treat sports betting practices as gambling.

ICE agents and bystanders in Minneapolis after the Jan. 7, 2026, shooting of Renée Good (cc) Chad Davis. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) recently cosponsored the , a bill that would shift $140 billion in federal funding to communities impacted by named Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations during the second Trump administration.

(cc) Lorie Shaull. Only three Black Americans have been elected governor in America’s first 250 years. They are all Democrats: L. Douglas Wilder in Virginia, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, and Wes Moore in Maryland. This year, voters have opportunities to send other Black Americans to the governor’s office. But this time, the next Black governor may be a woman or a Republican. Eight major-party Black candidates – a record number – are running for governor in the November 2026 general election.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, voting in 2018 (cc) kremlin.ru. On Sept. 20, Russia’s Central Election Commission announced that United Russia (UR), Russia’s main pro-regime party and the party of President Vladimir Putin, had won 58.21% of the vote in the 2026 State Duma elections — its best result since 2007, when the party took 64.30%.

(cc) DonkeyHotey. Many Americans like their own senator while disliking that senator’s party – and quite a few dislike both parties. In this short piece, I use “party brand” loosely to mean how people place a party label relative to the politicians who carry it. It’s an important distinction because voters judge politicians not only by their individual records but also what they think the party represents.

Photo by Etactics Inc on Unsplash. The Trump administration has accordingly moved to make testosterone prescriptions and treatments more widely accessible. The FDA is revising testosterone guidelines, including removing the controlled-substance classification and changing the warning labels for testosterone replacement therapies.