About Michael Barone

Michael Barone

Michael Barone

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

From 1974 to 1981, Barone was vice president of the polling firm of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. From 1981 to 1988, he was a member of the editorial page staff of The Washington Post. From 1989 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2009, Barone was a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report. He was senior staff editor at Reader's Digest from 1996 to 1998.

Barone is the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, published by National Journal every two years. The first edition appeared in 1971. He is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (Free Press, 1990), The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (Regnery, 2001) and Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation's Future (Crown Forum, 2004).

Over the years, Barone has written for many publications, including The Economist, The New York Times, The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, National Review, The American Spectator, American Enterprise, The Times Literary Supplement and The Daily Telegraph of London. He has served as a political contributor to the Fox News Channel since 1998 and has appeared on many other television programs.

Barone graduated from Harvard College (1966) and Yale Law School (1969), and was an editor of the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Law Journal. He served as law clerk to Judge Wade H. McCree Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1969 to 1971.

Barone lives in Washington, D.C. He has traveled to all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts. He has also traveled abroad extensively and has reported on elections in Russia, Mexico, Italy and Britain.

View his work here.

...

Trump's Churchillian Foreign Policy May 08, 2026

Knowingly or not, President Donald Trump, in his decision to attack Iran, has embarked on a foreign policy that has been, on and off, both persistent and controversial in the great English-speaking nations. You can trace it back at least to the Glori... Read More

...

The Young, Violent Political Left May 01, 2026

You have to be awfully smart to believe something this stupid. In a Manhattan Institute survey of Democratic voters, 46% said they believed it was definitely or probably true that "the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July 2024 was orche... Read More

...

All Redistricting Reformers Are Hypocrites Apr 24, 2026

Hypocrisy was triumphant, as it usually is in arguments over redistricting, in Virginia this week, as voters approved a "fairness" constitutional amendment allowing the Democratic-majority legislature to enact a congressional districting plan that is... Read More

...

How Hungary Matters Apr 17, 2026

What's the big deal about Hungary? It's a central European country with 9.5 million people — slightly less in population and area than the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. But it's been the subject of more care, attention and debate in America than... Read More