Identifying likely voters is a challenge for pollsters in every election. This year, the coronavirus, mail voting and a surge in political engagement may make it even harder than usual. For now, Joe Biden’s nine-point lead across the critical battleground states is so significant that it is essentially invulnerable to […] Read more »
How The GOP Chose To Be A White Party
In general, the Republican Party gets between 5 and 10 percent of the Black vote and less than a third of the Hispanic vote nationally. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Clare Malone discusses the series of choices the GOP made, spanning decades, that made it an overwhelmingly […] Read more »
UT/Texas Politics Project poll finds Trump leading Biden by 4 in Texas
Going into a grim July 4 weekend defined by a resurgent COVID-19 in Texas, a new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds most Texans acutely aware of the hobbled economy and a country limping along on the wrong track. Yet amidst this dark view of the trajectory of the […] Read more »
Believe the Polls This Time
… I am a pollster who works to get Democrats elected. Four years ago I, too, believed—based on public polling and information from the Clinton campaign itself—that our candidate was going to win. I still didn’t take victory for granted. I wanted to win down ballot so Democrats would make […] Read more »
2020’s biggest difference with 2016: Trump loses the honesty debate
President Donald Trump was able to win in 2016 because he was seen as the lesser of two evils. His victory came from the voters who didn’t like either candidate. A large part of that came from the belief that voters saw neither one as honest. Trump’s matchup with former […] Read more »
Trump Wants a Backlash. Can He Whip One Into Shape?
The public response to the demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd is now beginning to take shape more clearly along familiar ideological lines — in ways that are likely to propel politics this year and beyond, dividing left and right as Democrats and Republicans take opposing stands on the […] Read more »