U.S. domestic and foreign policy will largely be influenced by two factors in the current presidential term: the “Rising American Electorate” and an increasingly polarized American electorate.

That was the view put forward by Thomas B. Edsall, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, in his Signature Lecture at CIGI. Edsall is a seasoned observer of the U.S. body politic, having covered all aspects of it — including presidential elections, Congress, lobbying, demographic trends, social welfare, the politics of race and ethnicity, and organized labour — during his 25-year career at The Washington Post.