… Our focus on polling and other horse-race aspects of campaigns contributes to our tendency to conflate elections with sporting events rather than a consideration of competing ideas. Irresponsibly equating campaigns with boxing matches or pennant races — where one participant comes “off the mat” or another “makes up ground” […] Read more »
Why A Split Verdict In Georgia Isn’t That Crazy
Even with many prestigious pollsters sitting the Georgia runoffs out, there have been plenty of polls of the two U.S. Senate runoffs and they continue to show an exceptionally close race. As of Tuesday afternoon, Democrat Raphael Warnock had a nominal lead of 0.5 percentage points over Republican Sen. Kelly […] Read more »
Goodbye To 2020
In the final 2020 installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew looks back at the rough and wild year that it was. They consider the most surprising political stories of the year, fess up to what they think they got right (or wrong) and answer questions from listeners. They […] Read more »
How to think about polling after 2020
The 2020 presidential election polls were far from perfect. They had President-elect Joe Biden winning the election, which is worth something. Yet, nationally and in every single one of the 18 states where the final polling average was within 10 points in either direction, Biden’s standing relative to President Donald […] Read more »
Georgia Senate Runoffs: Breaking Down November, Looking to January
Key Points• In a highly unusual situation, both of Georgia’s Senate seats will be on the ballot next month — one seat was already scheduled to be elected, while the other is a special election.• As January’s result will decide control of the Senate, both sides are invested in Georgia’s […] Read more »
The 2020 polling paradox: Accurate results in some key states but big misses in others
Polls have faced strident criticism after President Trump outperformed pre-election surveys nationally and in key states. Now that nearly all votes have been counted, a clearer picture of poll accuracy has emerged, showing that they struggled much more in certain states, while they were much more accurate in others. … […] Read more »