Election Day is now just three months away, and the overall trajectory of the race hasn’t changed much recently: Joe Biden continues to hold a sizable lead over President Trump. Biden is now up by 8 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, and he has an advantage of 5 […] Read more »
Poll-Based Election Forecasts Will Always Struggle With Uncertainty
Key Points• We have no idea how much uncertainty exists in pre-election polls. That leads to very complex poll-based forecast models.• The general public lacks the expertise necessary to appropriately interpret win probabilities from those complex models.• Some research shows that overly certain forecasts might depress turnout, which could matter […] Read more »
The fight for the Senate is not over yet
There are good reasons for Democrats to be upbeat about their chances of netting at least three Senate seats in the fall, which, combined with a Joe Biden presidential victory, would flip the chamber. But while Democrats are on the offense in more states than a year ago, they haven’t […] Read more »
The Senate: Ranking the Top Dozen Best Targets
Key Points• National Republicans breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday night, as Rep. Roger Marshall (R, KS-1) beat 2018 gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach (R) in the Kansas Senate primary. Practically speaking, the Kansas Senate race went from being a potentially major Democratic offensive target to one where the Republicans […] Read more »
The 2020 election actually starts in one month
Election Day 2020 is now less than three months away. In reality, however, the election starts in one month; on September 4, North Carolina will begin sending absentee ballots to voters. The fact is that we no longer have one election day in this country, especially in the age of […] Read more »
Do voters view Biden and Trump as moderate or extreme?
One of the Trump campaign’s main attack lines portrays Joe Biden as a puppet of the radical left and stokes fears of socialism. Is this messaging resonating with voters, and conversely, how extreme or moderate do voters think President Trump is? In political campaigns, opponents often try to portray each […] Read more »