On its face, President Trump should have a pretty solid chance of reelection. He is an incumbent, and incumbents have a real advantage in presidential elections. Moreover, many economic indicators are positive. Last month, for example, the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment showed that Americans were more positive […] Read more »
How Our Primary Model Works
Here at FiveThirtyEight, we’ve never built a complete back-to-front model of the presidential primaries before. Instead, in 2008, 2012 and 2016, we issued forecasts of individual primaries and caucuses on piecemeal basis, using polls and demographics. We always thought there were too many complexities involved — how the outcome in […] Read more »
How Serious Is Tom Steyer’s Polling Surge?
… In what might be the most surprising results of the cycle, Fox News released polls in South Carolina and Nevada showing Tom Steyer in a strong position: second place with 15 percent of the vote in the South Carolina primary, and tied for third with 12 percent of the […] Read more »
Foreign Policy Doesn’t Usually Affect Elections. Could Iran Be Different?
The American-ordered drone strike that killed one of Iran’s most powerful military leaders, Qassem Soleimani, has triggered retaliation from Iran and put American troops in the Middle East on heightened alert. It has also brought foreign policy to the top of the news cycle. How events unfold from here is […] Read more »
A popular theory for Trump’s popularity among Republicans appears to be wrong
… To Democrats, the level of support for Trump within his party seems occasionally baffling. How could someone they hate so much be viewed so positively by the other party? Over the course of Trump’s presidency, a theory emerged: He’s so popular among Republicans because Trump-skeptical Republicans have simply given […] Read more »
Trump Is The Most Unpopular President Since Ford To Run For Reelection
Now that the 2020 election has gone from “next year” to “this year,” it’s worth taking a step back and asking a question that we first posed in early 2017: How popular is Donald Trump? After all, a president’s job approval rating can be predictive of his reelection chances, especially […] Read more »