Another new poll makes clear what will happen in Iowa: No one knows

… Over the past several days, two major polls of Iowa have been released. At a glance, they seem to offer starkly different pictures of what’s likely to happen in next month’s caucuses. A poll from CNN, the Des Moines Register and Mediacom, conducted by Selzer & Co., has Sen. […] Read more »

The secret origins of presidential polling

Senator Huey Long at the Capitol in 1935. Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com Edwin Amenta, University of California, Irvine In the run-up to its January 14 debate in Des Moines, Iowa, the Democratic National Committee called on private polling firms to conduct more polls. To make it to the debate stage in Des […] Read more »

Presidents used to get an approval rating bump after military strikes. Here’s why Trump likely won’t.

Presidents have historically seen a bump in their approval ratings during a military crisis, but the partisanship that has gripped the country in recent years has stunted that traditional bump in the polls. That evidence suggests President Donald Trump’s approval rating — which has lingered in the lower to mid […] Read more »

Election Update: Sanders Now Leads A Wide-Open Iowa Race

Welcome to your first FiveThirtyEight Election Update of the 2020 primary cycle! This is a column in which we’ll talk about the primary race through the lens of our forecast model, which we released earlier this week. … We don’t necessarily plan to publish an Election Update as a result […] Read more »