… While the 2020 election is still more than a year off, Republicans ought to be concerned about some early signs, both at the national and state levels. Trump carried self-described independents in 2016, 46 percent to 42 percent, according to that year’s national exit polls, but the GOP lost […] Read more »
Yes, late-breaking and undecided voters do exist — and matter
In today’s highly polarized political times, you might think that undecided, late-breaking voters are an extinct species — akin to the passenger pigeon and the Dodo bird. But ahead of this November’s gubernatorial races in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi, the Democratic Governors Association believes they certainly exist. And the organization […] Read more »
The changing Democratic electorate could upend Iowa’s role in 2020
… In every contested Democratic nomination race in this century, the winner of the Iowa caucuses has eventually won the nomination. That’s a measure of how much momentum candidates can earn, especially in this era of pervasive news coverage, from winning that kickoff contest. Conscious of that history, the leading […] Read more »
What Should Senate Republicans Do About Impeachment?
What is the savviest political strategy on impeachment for Republicans in the Senate? In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew tries to answer that question in a new edition of FiveThirtyEight Debate. Each member of the team was assigned a position and then tried to poke holes […] Read more »
Americans hate all the partisanship, but they’re also more partisan than they were
Three years ago, the Pew Research Center released a study detailing the depths of partisan polarization across the country. A follow-up study released this fall found that, since the election of President Trump, those divisions are even worse. Given the impeachment inquiry unfolding in Washington, things are almost certain to […] Read more »
Why public opinion polls don’t include the same number of Republicans and Democrats
Newcomers to polling sometimes assume that if you are asking Americans questions about politics, it’s only fair to include an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. While this notion makes some sense on the surface, it’s based on a misunderstanding of what polling is intended to do. The goal of […] Read more »