Michael Barone probably knows more about your congressional district than your congressman does.
“West Virginia Second,” Barone says when someone mentions Charleston, W.Va. in conversation. “Longest district east of the Mississippi. [U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore] Capito. Bush by 14. Or 15. I think it was ahead of the rest of the state. I think 15 is right.”
And he is right. President Bush defeated John Kerry in the district 57 percent to 42 percent in 2004, as opposed to the statewide total of 56 percent to 43 percent.
Barone has that kind of factual command over all of America’s 435 congressional districts largely because of his work on The Almanac of American Politics.
Now in its 18th edition, the 1,864-page doorstop of a book is the common factual basis for American political journalism and for the academic study of political science.
Barone has been the principal author of every edition since the first one in 1972, but has worked with a string of co-authors and researchers for the volumes that have come out every other year since.
This year’s edition was done with National Journal congressional correspondent Richard E. Cohen. Founding Editor Grant Ujifusa still chips in, but from the time that Ujifusa brought Barone in on the first edition when they were still at Harvard, it has been mostly Barone’s work.
“A compendium like that does not exist unless you have someone who is that good,” said top Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who hired Barone to work at his firm in 1974. “His intellectual powers let him understand the broad rhythms of society and the true nature of the body politic.”
What makes the book different from most similar resources is the reporting that goes into it.
“He puts his shoe leather in it,” said Brian Kelly, Barone’s editor at U.S. News & World Report.
By now, many copies of this year’s edition sit battered with broken spines on the desks of political reporters around the country. Old volumes, polluted with yellow highlighter and margin notes still sit on shelves as ready resources and trophies of elections past.
“I first began writing about electoral politics during the 1980 campaign,” said New York Times political writer John Harwood. “I still have my copy of the 1980 Almanac.”
