fivethirtyeight--2020-07-28--Why Blaming China For The Pandemic Probably Won’t Help Trump Win

Last week , Fox News host Chris Wallace asked President Trump about his role in how the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded in the U.S. , where case numbers and the death toll are surging even as some other countries seem to be getting things under control .
But in response , Trump diverted responsibility , saying , “ It came from China .
They should ’ ve never let it escape.
” Blaming China for the pandemic isn ’ t a new tactic for the president .
In fact , it ’ s become a fairly common refrain as Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accusing China of causing the coronavirus or exacerbating its spread .
And while it ’ s unlikely that this gambit will solve all of Trump ’ s problems — approval numbers for his handling of the pandemic continue to tank — there is at least some evidence that Americans may be more receptive than in the past to seeing China as the culprit , as opinions of the nation are now the worst they ’ ve been than any time in recent history .
In 2005 , Pew Research Center started regularly asking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and at that point , Americans had a fairly positive opinion of the country ( 43 percent said they had a favorable view and 35 percent said they had an unfavorable one ) .
But in March of this year , as a number of states were issuing stay-at-home orders and millions of Americans were losing their jobs , the share of Pew respondents with a favorable view of China had fallen to 26 percent , while the share with a negative opinion sat at 66 percent .
Granted , public opinion of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but this was still the lowest approval rating of the country since 2005 .
And it wasn ’ t just Pew who found Americans ’ opinions of China are deteriorating .
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that ended in early June found that the majority of Americans held negative views of China , a 12-point uptick in unfavorable opinions since 2000 .
And an Economist/YouGov poll from late June found that 65 percent of Americans think China is unfriendly toward — or even an enemy of — the United States .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Americans , I spoke with Susan Shirk , a political science professor focused on U.S.-China policy at the University of California San Diego , and Michael Beckley , a political science professor at Tufts University .
They suggested that , even before the pandemic , China ’ s own actions in recent years — including its increased military presence in the South China Sea and its alleged violations of human rights and civil liberties — have been driving down Americans ’ opinion of the country .
Shirk told me she traces the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 2008 financial crisis , as she argued that was when perceptions really started to change .
At the time , the U.S. economy was in shambles , but China ’ s economy emerged relatively unscathed .
Shirk said this contributed to China taking a more active role internationally , which hasn ’ t always been well-received .
Beckley argued that Xi Jinping ’ s presidency has also played a significant role in creating a negative public image of China because of how he has consolidated power while in office .
Shirk told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinks people feel increasingly negatively toward China because of “ the way China ’ s acting.
” At the same time , though , Trump has also exacerbated tensions with China by waging a nearly two-year trade war , imposing a series of tariffs on goods U.S. imports from the country .
Then , of course , the pandemic hit .
“ The coronavirus comes and is kind of like the final nail in the coffin , ” said Beckley .
And reports that China hid or downplayed severity of the pandemic in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country ’ s global reputation .
“ [ Unfavorability of China ] has been an ongoing trend , but obviously , the current crisis makes it much , much worse , ” said Beckley .
In the U.S. , this has meant a rapid deterioration in public opinion toward China , with both Democrats and Republicans souring on the country .
In three recent polls , all taken after the pandemic reached the U.S. , about three-quarters of Republicans said they had an unfavorable opinion of China , felts negatively toward China or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Among Democrats , the share who felt the same was anywhere from 44 percent to 62 percent .
It ’ s not clear , though , whether this increased negativity toward China presents a political opportunity for either Trump or presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden .
Some have argued that a firm anti-China stance could benefit either or both parties , though Beckley and Shirk were pretty skeptical that this would be a top issue for voters .
As you can see in the table below , the polling picture on who Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
One poll shows Biden with a 8-point lead over Trump on this question , while two others give him a more modest lead , and one gives Trump a narrow advantage .
Additionally , given that the U.S. is dealing with a major health crisis , an economic downturn and protests across the country , Beckley and Shirk both told me they were somewhat dubious of the idea that either Republicans or Democrats would be able to rally voters around China .
Shirk said that unlike some other topics in the news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t as personal to voters .
And Beckley said that given each candidate ’ s track record with China , he didn ’ t think either Trump or Biden would be able to use the issue much to their advantage .
“ Even though the Trump administration can claim a lot of credit for altering U.S.-China policy and taking a harder-line turn , Trump has said a lot of nice things about Xi Jinping and has been willing to look the other way on China ’ s human rights violations , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paint Biden as belonging to an administration that had a “ naive ” approach toward China , Beckley said , “ basically coddling a rising power.
” But China might play an outsized role in the election if Trump successfully uses it as a scapegoat for the pandemic , allowing him to shift some of the blame for his response onto China .
Brian Reisinger , a Republican strategist who advised Sen. Ron Johnson ’ s and former Governor Scott Walker ’ s reelection campaigns , says that “ there is a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its actions in the early days of the pandemic , but also because it plays on an existing hostility in important electoral states like Wisconsin , where almost 12 percent of the state ’ s jobs are in agriculture .
“ Farmers in rural Wisconsin have felt for years like they ’ re getting ripped off , whether its milk prices or any other type of commodity .
And one of the biggest offenders in the global marketplace is China , ” Reisinger said .
If Trump is able to shift the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stanch the bleeding .
And it might work .
A Navigator poll from late April , for instance , tested multiple narratives about who ’ s to blame for the pandemic , asking voters which of two statements they agreed with more even if they didn ’ t fully agree with either .
When forced to choose between a statement that placed all the blame on Trump and one that put all the blame on China , respondents were essentially evenly divided , 49 to 51 , which is well within the poll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that blamed both Trump and China got slightly more support , at 54 percent .
This suggests that at least some voters are open to an argument that gives China a significant share of the blame for the pandemic .
For Democrats , that means the party ’ s messaging on China will need to focus on what they see as Trump ’ s flawed argument on the coronavirus — arguing that he , not China , is to blame — and setting the record straight on Trump ’ s previous dealings with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ managing director of Democratic consulting firm Precision Strategies .
“ I think what you ’ ve already seen and will continue to see is the Biden campaign poking holes , ” Spahn said .
For example , Biden released an ad in April that criticized the president for accepting Jinping ’ s word that the coronavirus was under control and failing to get more American experts into China .
Of course , a lot has changed since April .
Now , more than 145,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump is handling the coronavirus .
And who Americans believe is at fault has been shifting too .
Morning Consult has been asking registered voters who is most to blame for the spread of the coronavirus , and in late March , a plurality of voters , 36 percent , blamed the Chinese government , compared to just 23 percent who blamed Trump .
However , by late June , 35 percent of voters said they blamed Trump .
Granted , 31 percent still blamed the Chinese government ( and 20 percent said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no opinion ) but the fact that Trump led on this metric instead of China certainly doesn ’ t bode well for him .
In the coming months , Republicans will likely double down on efforts to convince the public that China is to blame for the devastation caused by the coronavirus — Trump is routinely doing so in his coronavirus press briefings and other public appearances — but it ’ s not clear that this will be a winning argument .
But as long as some voters seem open to the idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seeing it come up as a diversionary tactic .

Last week, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked President Trump about his role in how the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded in the U.S., where case numbers and the death toll are surging even as some other countries seem to be getting things under control. But in response, Trump diverted responsibility, saying, “It came from China. They should’ve never let it escape.”
Blaming China for the pandemic isn’t a new tactic for the president. In fact, it’s become a fairly common refrain as Trump and other Republicans have doubled down on accusing China of causing the coronavirus or exacerbating its spread. And while it’s unlikely that this gambit will solve all of Trump’s problems — approval numbers for his handling of the pandemic continue to tank — there is at least some evidence that Americans may be more receptive than in the past to seeing China as the culprit, as opinions of the nation are now the worst they’ve been than any time in recent history.
[Related: How Popular Is President Donald Trump?]
In 2005, Pew Research Center started regularly asking Americans about their views on China, and at that point, Americans had a fairly positive opinion of the country (43 percent said they had a favorable view and 35 percent said they had an unfavorable one). But in March of this year, as a number of states were issuing stay-at-home orders and millions of Americans were losing their jobs, the share of Pew respondents with a favorable view of China had fallen to 26 percent, while the share with a negative opinion sat at 66 percent. Granted, public opinion of China has long been on the decline, but this was still the lowest approval rating of the country since 2005.
And it wasn’t just Pew who found Americans’ opinions of China are deteriorating. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that ended in early June found that the majority of Americans held negative views of China, a 12-point uptick in unfavorable opinions since 2000. And an Economist/YouGov poll from late June found that 65 percent of Americans think China is unfriendly toward — or even an enemy of — the United States.
To understand why China is so unpopular with Americans, I spoke with Susan Shirk, a political science professor focused on U.S.-China policy at the University of California San Diego, and Michael Beckley, a political science professor at Tufts University. They suggested that, even before the pandemic, China’s own actions in recent years — including its increased military presence in the South China Sea and its alleged violations of human rights and civil liberties — have been driving down Americans’ opinion of the country.
Shirk told me she traces the changes in China’s behavior to the 2008 financial crisis, as she argued that was when perceptions really started to change. At the time, the U.S. economy was in shambles, but China’s economy emerged relatively unscathed. Shirk said this contributed to China taking a more active role internationally, which hasn’t always been well-received.
Subscribe to our coronavirus podcast, PODCAST-19
Beckley argued that Xi Jinping’s presidency has also played a significant role in creating a negative public image of China because of how he has consolidated power while in office.
Shirk told me that first and foremost, she thinks people feel increasingly negatively toward China because of “the way China’s acting.”
At the same time, though, Trump has also exacerbated tensions with China by waging a nearly two-year trade war, imposing a series of tariffs on goods U.S. imports from the country. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. “The coronavirus comes and is kind of like the final nail in the coffin,” said Beckley. And reports that China hid or downplayed severity of the pandemic in its early days are further harming the country’s global reputation. “[Unfavorability of China] has been an ongoing trend, but obviously, the current crisis makes it much, much worse,” said Beckley.
In the U.S., this has meant a rapid deterioration in public opinion toward China, with both Democrats and Republicans souring on the country. In three recent polls, all taken after the pandemic reached the U.S., about three-quarters of Republicans said they had an unfavorable opinion of China, felts negatively toward China or considered China unfriendly or an enemy. Among Democrats, the share who felt the same was anywhere from 44 percent to 62 percent.
It’s not clear, though, whether this increased negativity toward China presents a political opportunity for either Trump or presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Some have argued that a firm anti-China stance could benefit either or both parties, though Beckley and Shirk were pretty skeptical that this would be a top issue for voters.
As you can see in the table below, the polling picture on who Americans trust to handle China is pretty hazy. One poll shows Biden with a 8-point lead over Trump on this question, while two others give him a more modest lead, and one gives Trump a narrow advantage.
No strong consensus on who’d handle China better Share of voters who think Biden or Trump would be better at handling U.S. relations with China Pollster Polling Dates Biden Trump Morning Consult/Politico June 26-29 43% 37 Harvard CAPS/Harris June 17-18 54 46 NBC/WSJ May 28-June 2 40 43 Fox News May 17-20 43 37 Source: Polls
Additionally, given that the U.S. is dealing with a major health crisis, an economic downturn and protests across the country, Beckley and Shirk both told me they were somewhat dubious of the idea that either Republicans or Democrats would be able to rally voters around China. Shirk said that unlike some other topics in the news, U.S. relations with China just aren’t as personal to voters. And Beckley said that given each candidate’s track record with China, he didn’t think either Trump or Biden would be able to use the issue much to their advantage.
“Even though the Trump administration can claim a lot of credit for altering U.S.-China policy and taking a harder-line turn, Trump has said a lot of nice things about Xi Jinping and has been willing to look the other way on China’s human rights violations,” said Beckley. And Republicans will likely paint Biden as belonging to an administration that had a “naive” approach toward China, Beckley said, “basically coddling a rising power.”
But China might play an outsized role in the election if Trump successfully uses it as a scapegoat for the pandemic, allowing him to shift some of the blame for his response onto China. Brian Reisinger, a Republican strategist who advised Sen. Ron Johnson’s and former Governor Scott Walker’s reelection campaigns, says that “there is a lot of room to blame China” because of its actions in the early days of the pandemic, but also because it plays on an existing hostility in important electoral states like Wisconsin, where almost 12 percent of the state’s jobs are in agriculture. “Farmers in rural Wisconsin have felt for years like they’re getting ripped off, whether its milk prices or any other type of commodity. And one of the biggest offenders in the global marketplace is China,” Reisinger said.
[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]
If Trump is able to shift the blame, it could help his campaign stanch the bleeding. And it might work. A Navigator poll from late April, for instance, tested multiple narratives about who’s to blame for the pandemic, asking voters which of two statements they agreed with more even if they didn’t fully agree with either. When forced to choose between a statement that placed all the blame on Trump and one that put all the blame on China, respondents were essentially evenly divided, 49 to 51, which is well within the poll’s confidence interval. A statement that blamed both Trump and China got slightly more support, at 54 percent. This suggests that at least some voters are open to an argument that gives China a significant share of the blame for the pandemic.
For Democrats, that means the party’s messaging on China will need to focus on what they see as Trump’s flawed argument on the coronavirus — arguing that he, not China, is to blame — and setting the record straight on Trump’s previous dealings with the country, said Mike Spahn, managing director of Democratic consulting firm Precision Strategies. “I think what you’ve already seen and will continue to see is the Biden campaign poking holes,” Spahn said. For example, Biden released an ad in April that criticized the president for accepting Xi’s word that the coronavirus was under control and failing to get more American experts into China.
[Related: Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We’re Headed — And Why They Disagree]
Of course, a lot has changed since April. Now, more than 145,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. and a majority of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the coronavirus. And who Americans believe is at fault has been shifting too. Morning Consult has been asking registered voters who is most to blame for the spread of the coronavirus, and in late March, a plurality of voters, 36 percent, blamed the Chinese government, compared to just 23 percent who blamed Trump. However, by late June, 35 percent of voters said they blamed Trump. Granted, 31 percent still blamed the Chinese government (and 20 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion) but the fact that Trump led on this metric instead of China certainly doesn’t bode well for him.
In the coming months, Republicans will likely double down on efforts to convince the public that China is to blame for the devastation caused by the coronavirus — Trump is routinely doing so in his coronavirus press briefings and other public appearances — but it’s not clear that this will be a winning argument. But as long as some voters seem open to the idea, we can probably expect to keep seeing it come up as a diversionary tactic.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: Biden’s VP Pick Could Be Days Away


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-28--How Biden’s VP Pick Could Shape Perceptions Of The Ticket Overall

In this week ’ s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , the crew discusses the upsides and downsides of Joe Biden ’ @ @ @ @ @ mate .
They also talk about the protests in Portland and President Trump ’ s @ @

How Biden’s VP Pick Could Shape Perceptions Of The Ticket Overall
In this week’s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses the upsides and downsides of Joe Biden’s choices for a running mate. They also talk about the protests in Portland and President Trump’s response.


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-28--Politics Podcast: Biden’s VP Announcement Could Come Any Day Now

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden could announce his running mate as soon as the end of this week , according @ @ @ @ @ laid out .
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast , the crew discusses @ @ @ @ @ that could emerge from each of his potential choices .
They also ask why President @ @ @ @ @ into U.S. cities and how this relates to his reelection message .
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast @ @ @ @ @ Pick Could Be Days Away You can listen to the episode by clicking the “ @ @ @ @ @ audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your @ @ @ @ @ you are new to podcasts , learn how to listen .
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast @ @ @ @ @ .
Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on @ @ @ @ @ , question or suggestion for “ good polling vs. bad polling ” ?
Get in @ @ @ @ @ Twitter or in the comments .

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden could announce his running mate as soon as the end of this week, according to the time frame he laid out. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, the crew discusses the positive and negative narratives that could emerge from each of his potential choices. They also ask why President Trump is sending federal agents into U.S. cities and how this relates to his reelection message.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: Biden’s VP Pick Could Be Days Away
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-29--The Senate Has Always Favored Smaller States. It Just Didn’t Help Republicans Until Now.

The fight for D.C. statehood is hardly new .
It ’ s been decades since Congress first introduced legislation to make Washington , D.C. , a state , and 27 years since such a bill got a full ( losing ) vote in the House of Representatives , but in late June , a historic step was taken : A majority in the House voted in favor of legislation that would make Washington , D.C. , a state for the very first time .
Of course , this bill won ’ t be signed into law this year given the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a state would almost certainly give Democrats two additional senators thanks to the District ’ s deep blue hue .
But it ’ s important we understand why the Democrats are waging this fight now and why we might see more fights over admitting states in the years to come .
The answer boils down to unequal representation .
On the one hand , the Senate has always been unequal , long giving less populous states an outsized voice relative to their population .
But for more than a century , this hasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Until the 1960s , Republicans and Democrats competed for both densely and sparsely populated states at roughly the same rate But over the last several decades , that ’ s changed .
The parties have reorganized themselves along urban-rural lines , and there is now a clear and pronounced partisan small-state bias in the Senate thanks to mostly rural , less populated states voting increasingly Republican .
In fact , it ’ s reached the point that Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partisan bias in the Senate is to compare the party makeup of senators elected to represent the 15 most populous states ( which have collectively housed about two-thirds of population since the turn of the 20th century ) to the partisan makeup of senators elected to represent the 25 least populous states ( which have collectively housed roughly a sixth of the population consistently since the 1960s ) .
As the chart below shows , the partisan makeup of the Senate was fairly even until the 1960s , when Republicans started to amass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What happened ?
Much of this follows from the post-civil rights realignment of American partisan politics , in which the Democratic Party became more consistently liberal ( and thus more appealing in big , largely urban states ) , and the Republican Party became more consistently conservative ( and thus more appealing in small , largely rural states ) .
But that gap has also widened in recent years , especially starting in 2015 , when Republicans took back a Senate majority , flipping seats in small states like West Virginia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Montana — all states that will be tough for Democrats to regain in 2020 .
And what this has meant practically is that Republicans now hold a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans , as you can see in the chart below .
This imbalance is significant because it poses a real obstacle to Democrats taking back a Senate majority in 2020 .
Take Democrats ’ current odds of retaking the chamber .
The Cook Political Report recently said Democrats are favored to win the Senate , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Congress by over 8 percentage points and have a similar margin nationally in the presidential race , it ’ s remarkable that they still are only slight favorites to control the upper chamber .
Even if D.C. or Puerto Rico were states ( as some on the left advocate ) , Republicans would still have the advantage .
It ’ s true that the statehoods of D.C. and Puerto Rico would help Democrats close the small-state gap , but even if both were states and elected two Democratic senators , Republicans would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 , while only representing 48 percent of the population .
The Senate has always held a contested place in America ’ s democratic system because of its non-proportional qualities .
For the first half of the 19th century , the Senate was a bulwark for the South , with an equal balance of slave and free states despite the growing Northern population advantage .
And in the second half of the 19th century , Republicans attempted to “ stack ” the Senate by admitting a large number of Republican states into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( population of just 6,857 ( ! )
in the 1860 census ) , Nebraska ( 1867 ) , Colorado ( 1876 ) , Montana , Washington , and North and South Dakota as separate states in an 1889 omnibus , and Idaho and Wyoming in 1890 .
But despite rising prairie populism spreading through the Great Plains to the Mountain West in the 1890s , Republicans ’ hopes for a stacked Senate didn ’ t work out quite as planned .
And thanks to the way the American two-party system developed in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans both containing urban liberal and rural conservative wings , the small-state bias of the Senate never became a real partisan issue — until now .
It will likely remain an issue , too , as long as one party is able to win a majority in the chamber while only representing a minority of the population .

The fight for D.C. statehood is hardly new.
It’s been decades since Congress first introduced legislation to make Washington, D.C., a state, and 27 years since such a bill got a full (losing) vote in the House of Representatives, but in late June, a historic step was taken: A majority in the House voted in favor of legislation that would make Washington, D.C., a state for the very first time.
Of course, this bill won’t be signed into law this year given the clear partisan calculus involved — making D.C. a state would almost certainly give Democrats two additional senators thanks to the District’s deep blue hue. But it’s important we understand why the Democrats are waging this fight now and why we might see more fights over admitting states in the years to come.
The answer boils down to unequal representation.
[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]
On the one hand, the Senate has always been unequal, long giving less populous states an outsized voice relative to their population. But for more than a century, this hasn’t posed much of an issue: Until the 1960s, Republicans and Democrats competed for both densely and sparsely populated states at roughly the same rate
But over the last several decades, that’s changed. The parties have reorganized themselves along urban-rural lines, and there is now a clear and pronounced partisan small-state bias in the Senate thanks to mostly rural, less populated states voting increasingly Republican. In fact, it’s reached the point that Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans.
One way to observe this growing partisan bias in the Senate is to compare the party makeup of senators elected to represent the 15 most populous states (which have collectively housed about two-thirds of population since the turn of the 20th century) to the partisan makeup of senators elected to represent the 25 least populous states (which have collectively housed roughly a sixth of the population consistently since the 1960s). As the chart below shows, the partisan makeup of the Senate was fairly even until the 1960s, when Republicans started to amass a partisan advantage in less populated states.
What happened? Much of this follows from the post-civil rights realignment of American partisan politics, in which the Democratic Party became more consistently liberal (and thus more appealing in big, largely urban states), and the Republican Party became more consistently conservative (and thus more appealing in small, largely rural states). But that gap has also widened in recent years, especially starting in 2015, when Republicans took back a Senate majority, flipping seats in small states like West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska and Montana — all states that will be tough for Democrats to regain in 2020.
And what this has meant practically is that Republicans now hold a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans, as you can see in the chart below.
This imbalance is significant because it poses a real obstacle to Democrats taking back a Senate majority in 2020. Take Democrats’ current odds of retaking the chamber. The Cook Political Report recently said Democrats are favored to win the Senate, but considering Democrats currently lead the generic ballot for Congress by over 8 percentage points and have a similar margin nationally in the presidential race, it’s remarkable that they still are only slight favorites to control the upper chamber.
Even if D.C. or Puerto Rico were states (as some on the left advocate), Republicans would still have the advantage. It’s true that the statehoods of D.C. and Puerto Rico would help Democrats close the small-state gap, but even if both were states and elected two Democratic senators, Republicans would still have had a two-seat majority in 2019, while only representing 48 percent of the population.
[Related: The Latest Political Polls Collected By FiveThirtyEight]
The Senate has always held a contested place in America’s democratic system because of its non-proportional qualities. For the first half of the 19th century, the Senate was a bulwark for the South, with an equal balance of slave and free states despite the growing Northern population advantage. And in the second half of the 19th century, Republicans attempted to “stack” the Senate by admitting a large number of Republican states into the union, starting with Nevada in 1864 (population of just 6,857(!) in the 1860 census), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876), Montana, Washington, and North and South Dakota as separate states in an 1889 omnibus, and Idaho and Wyoming in 1890.
But despite rising prairie populism spreading through the Great Plains to the Mountain West in the 1890s, Republicans’ hopes for a stacked Senate didn’t work out quite as planned. And thanks to the way the American two-party system developed in the 20th century, with Democrats and Republicans both containing urban liberal and rural conservative wings, the small-state bias of the Senate never became a real partisan issue — until now. It will likely remain an issue, too, as long as one party is able to win a majority in the chamber while only representing a minority of the population.
Confidence Interval: Democrats could win 60 Senate seats | FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-30--A Republican Congressman Who Might Not Vote For Trump

For this week ’ s episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , we interviewed Rep. Will Hurd of Texas ’ s 23rd Congressional District .
And as you ’ ll hear in the podcast and read in selected excerpts below , we covered a lot of ground , including whether Hurd will vote for President Trump in November .
The transcript below has been lightly edited .
On whether Hurd will vote for Trump : Galen Druke : I want to talk about all that strategy and what the future of the party looks like .
But are you going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Will Hurd : Like a lot of Americans , I wish I had different options on the ballot .
And my plan is always to support a Republican and we ’ re going to be making those decisions over the next 98 days .
GD : So you ’ re going to decide whether or not to vote for him over the next 98 days ?
WH : That is how I always approach my election .
I ’ m just like everybody else .
GD : Well , you previously said that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So I ’ m just wondering if you ’ re hesitant a little bit now ?
Your polling is showing that .
I ’ m like everybody else .
I don ’ t want to vote for a Joe Biden because in the end , some of the policies , I think that a unified Democratic Party is going to pass … would be tough for the country , and things that I don ’ t support , and haven ’ t supported during my time in Congress .
And as somebody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competitive district , I know something about competitive districts and what needs to be done in order to win .
GD : I understand that desire not to vote for Joe Biden , but I guess more specifically on whether or not you ’ ll vote for Trump , what could change your mind in the next 98 days that would make you view him and his presidency differently than what he ’ s shown us so far ?
WH : It ’ s a good question and who knows .
I don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would have been thinking about a global pandemic that would have impacted the entire world and brought the world economy to a standstill .
And so who knows what can happen over these next few weeks .
But in the end , what I think that I ’ ve been trying to preach to my colleagues is that we have to change as a Republican Party .
We have to start appealing to broader groups of people .
And if we don ’ t , and also if the Republican Party doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re not going to have a Republican Party in America .
GD : Everything you ’ re saying here makes it sound like you aren ’ t voting for Trump .
Is that the case ?
WH : As I said , I don ’ t like either one of my choices .
And in the end , we ’ re going to evaluate this over the next 90 days , or 96 days .
GD : President Trump suggested delaying the presidential election , which Congress has the power to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you support delaying the election ?
WH : We are not an authoritarian government where the head of state gets to decide on a whim when an election happens .
So no , this is Congress ’ s role , as you said .
It should go forward as has been established .
And ultimately , look , I ’ m of the opinion that we should be increasing the ways for people to vote , right , the more people that vote , the better off it is .
And this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prove , during my time in Congress , that if you take a message to more people , you can get it to resonate with more people and we shouldn ’ t be afraid .
On the U.S. response to COVID-19 : GD : Overall , do you think the country is doing a good job combating the pandemic ?
WH : No .
We have increasing death rates , right ?
We have the most number of people that are dealing with this right ?
I think the impact it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America versus other countries is still … we ’ re dealing with one of the worst cases .
We ’ re having debates on whether you should be wearing a mask or not .
Wear a mask !
Right ?
A mask is to protect yourself but also to protect the people around you .
So why are we debating that ?
This debate and fights around whether school should open or not — we should be talking about , ‘ how do we work together in order to exceed CDC guidelines on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or not it should happen .
And so yeah , there are all kinds of problems .
But I ’ m always trying to work with these folks to deal with the problem as it is right now .
I know in Texas , a third of the deaths of coronavirus have been in nursing homes .
That ’ s outrageous .
And then also in prisons .
And so if we couldn ’ t handle this in nursing homes or in prisons , how are we going to be handling it in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more chaotic than those other places ?
So yeah , we have a long way to go.
” On the future of the Republican party : GD : Let ’ s talk about where the Republican Party is headed .
You said that the Republican Party needs to look more like America .
And you know , right now , it doesn ’ t .
You ’ re the only Black lawmaker on the Republican side in the House .
Why do you think there are so few Black lawmakers in the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Everybody asked me when I first got elected , how does a Black Republican represent a 71 percent Latino district ?
And I say it ’ s because you know , I work hard and I show up to communities that had never seen a Republican show up , and you do that multiple times .
If you ’ re showing up 90 days before an election , that ’ s called pandering .
You have to be in those communities .
Showing up is half the battle .
And unfortunately , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talk about focusing on your likely “ x voter ” — whether that ’ s a Republican primary voter or Democratic primary voter — rather than trying to grow and appeal to a broader group of people .
It ’ s hard .
GD : Do you think that part of the reason has to do with Republicans actively appealing to a white identity ?
WH : Look , I think when you look at a person like a Steve King — and you know Steve King losing his primary is ultimately a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ folks that that have been elected as a Republican that say racist or misogynistic or homophobic things , that hurts all of us that identify with with being a Republican .
… But what I found is that ’ s not everybody .
But yeah , over time , have those things been said ?
Yes .
And Does that hurt ?
Yes .
And that ’ s why we have to speak out when those things do happen .

For this week’s episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we interviewed Rep. Will Hurd of Texas’s 23rd Congressional District. And as you’ll hear in the podcast and read in selected excerpts below, we covered a lot of ground, including whether Hurd will vote for President Trump in November.
The transcript below has been lightly edited.
On whether Hurd will vote for Trump:
Galen Druke: I want to talk about all that strategy and what the future of the party looks like. But are you going to vote for Trump this fall?
Will Hurd: Like a lot of Americans, I wish I had different options on the ballot. And my plan is always to support a Republican and we’re going to be making those decisions over the next 98 days.
GD: So you’re going to decide whether or not to vote for him over the next 98 days?
WH: That is how I always approach my election. I’m just like everybody else.
GD: Well, you previously said that you will vote for Trump this fall. So I’m just wondering if you’re hesitant a little bit now?
WH: I think that’s accurate.
Your polling is showing that. I’m like everybody else. I don’t want to vote for a Joe Biden because in the end, some of the policies, I think that a unified Democratic Party is going to pass … would be tough for the country, and things that I don’t support, and haven’t supported during my time in Congress. And as somebody who’s represented a large, competitive district, I know something about competitive districts and what needs to be done in order to win.
GD: I understand that desire not to vote for Joe Biden, but I guess more specifically on whether or not you’ll vote for Trump, what could change your mind in the next 98 days that would make you view him and his presidency differently than what he’s shown us so far?
WH: It’s a good question and who knows. I don’t think a year ago we would have been thinking about a global pandemic that would have impacted the entire world and brought the world economy to a standstill. And so who knows what can happen over these next few weeks.
But in the end, what I think that I’ve been trying to preach to my colleagues is that we have to change as a Republican Party. We have to start appealing to broader groups of people. And if we don’t, and also if the Republican Party doesn’t start looking like America, we’re not going to have a Republican Party in America.
GD: Everything you’re saying here makes it sound like you aren’t voting for Trump. Is that the case?
WH: As I said, I don’t like either one of my choices. And in the end, we’re going to evaluate this over the next 90 days, or 96 days.
Rep. Will Hurd on whether he’ll vote for Trump l FiveThirtyEight
On delaying the election:
GD: President Trump suggested delaying the presidential election, which Congress has the power to do, your branch of government. Do you support delaying the election?
WH: We are not an authoritarian government where the head of state gets to decide on a whim when an election happens. So no, this is Congress’s role, as you said. It should go forward as has been established. And ultimately, look, I’m of the opinion that we should be increasing the ways for people to vote, right, the more people that vote, the better off it is. And this is something that I’ve been able to prove, during my time in Congress, that if you take a message to more people, you can get it to resonate with more people and we shouldn’t be afraid.
GOP Rep. Will Hurd On President Trump’s Suggestion To Delay The Election
On the U.S. response to COVID-19:
GD: Overall, do you think the country is doing a good job combating the pandemic?
WH: No. We have increasing death rates, right? We have the most number of people that are dealing with this right? I think the impact it’s had on the United States of America versus other countries is still … we’re dealing with one of the worst cases. We’re having debates on whether you should be wearing a mask or not. Wear a mask! Right? A mask is to protect yourself but also to protect the people around you. So why are we debating that? This debate and fights around whether school should open or not — we should be talking about, ‘how do we work together in order to exceed CDC guidelines on opening schools?’, not whether or not it should happen.
And so yeah, there are all kinds of problems. But I’m always trying to work with these folks to deal with the problem as it is right now. I know in Texas, a third of the deaths of coronavirus have been in nursing homes. That’s outrageous. And then also in prisons. And so if we couldn’t handle this in nursing homes or in prisons, how are we going to be handling it in an educational environment where it is even more chaotic than those other places? So yeah, we have a long way to go.”
GOP Rep. Will Hurd On How The U.S. Is Doing On COVID-19
On the future of the Republican party:
GD: Let’s talk about where the Republican Party is headed. You said that the Republican Party needs to look more like America. And you know, right now, it doesn’t. You’re the only Black lawmaker on the Republican side in the House. Why do you think there are so few Black lawmakers in the Republican caucus in the house?
WH: Everybody asked me when I first got elected, how does a Black Republican represent a 71 percent Latino district? And I say it’s because you know, I work hard and I show up to communities that had never seen a Republican show up, and you do that multiple times. If you’re showing up 90 days before an election, that’s called pandering.
You have to be in those communities. Showing up is half the battle. And unfortunately, I think over time, professional political consultants talk about focusing on your likely “x voter” — whether that’s a Republican primary voter or Democratic primary voter — rather than trying to grow and appeal to a broader group of people. It’s hard.
GD: Do you think that part of the reason has to do with Republicans actively appealing to a white identity?
WH: Look, I think when you look at a person like a Steve King — and you know Steve King losing his primary is ultimately a good thing — but when you know folks that that have been elected as a Republican that say racist or misogynistic or homophobic things, that hurts all of us that identify with with being a Republican.
… But what I found is that’s not everybody. But yeah, over time, have those things been said? Yes. And Does that hurt? Yes. And that’s why we have to speak out when those things do happen.
GOP Rep. Will Hurd On Steve King And Identity Politics l FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-30--Trump Can’t Postpone The Election, But He Can Delegitimize The Results.

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight ’ s politics chat .
The transcript below has been lightly edited .
sarah ( Sarah Frostenson , politics editor ) : Earlier today , President Trump tweeted that the 2020 election should be delayed “ until people can properly , securely and safely vote.
” Postponing the election , of course , is not something the president can legally do .
But it ’ s also kind of besides the point .
Trump has already been fighting to delegitimize the results come November , claiming that voting by mail can lead to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s dive into that .
How would you describe Trump ’ s efforts to throw November ’ s results into question ?
He did something similar in 2016 when facing Hillary Clinton .
How is this different ?
clare.malone ( Clare Malone , senior political writer ) : Well , in many ways it ’ s exactly what Trump was doing in 2016 .
It ’ s just that he ’ s president now .
And thus , his words are even more damaging ( and they were already very damaging in 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections analyst ) : There ’ s also a very important distinction here .
Before , Trump was just a candidate casting doubt on the election , but now he ’ s a sitting president doing that .
julia_azari ( Julia Azari , political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor ) : I ’ d characterize this as an exercise in control and influence over his party and the news cycle .
Everyone is forced to respond to what he says , even if they ’ re not responding positively .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ many aspects of the job , but he ’ s pretty effective at agenda control .
clare.malone : I would also say that calling for the delay of the actual vote feels VERY dictatorial in nature .
Like , we ’ ve perversely gotten used to the “ fake votes , ” “ fake news ” stuff .
But encouraging a change in the election date feels sort of explicitly over a line .
sarah : And to ask a somewhat obvious question — but one that has to be asked — this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jeopardizing moment , right ?
To put it another way , has another sitting president ever done this ?
julia_azari : I ’ m always nervous about the “ never ” question with past presidents , but yeah , most presidents have not been willing to take on all the formal rules , the legal system and other branches of government while in office .
Congress — which has the power to change the date of an election — used to be stronger , too , and there was no Twitter .
My @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had a presidential election in 1864 , during the Civil War .
geoffrey.skelley : And in modern times , incumbents who have lost reelection have exited office without too much of a fuss .
Take George H.W .
Bush and Jimmy Carter , or if we go further back , Herbert Hoover .
Granted , incumbents don ’ t often lose .
So it ’ s important to note that each of those incumbents lost decisively , meaning there wasn ’ t much to stand on even if they had wanted to fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not like Gerald Ford created a stir in 1976 when he lost narrowly .
julia_azari : Candidates have also conceded even when the election was a mess .
See Al Gore in 2000 , Samuel Tilden in 1876. sarah : But on this question of actually changing the election date .
How much power does Trump have to do that ?
clare.malone : He does not have the power to change the date of the election .
julia_azari : None .
It ’ s up to Congress , and elections are administered by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s my question , though : What happens if Trump refuses to leave the White House on Jan. 20 , and there are no official election results at that point ?
Like , in that dire scenario ( Trump not leaving , no clear winner ) does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi become president and someone has to haul him out of the building ?
geoffrey.skelley : If for some reason the Electoral College hasn ’ t acted or the electoral votes haven ’ t been certified by Congress , Trump ’ s term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 20th Amendment .
So there ’ d be an acting president , who would be the Speaker of the House per the order set out by the Presidential Succession Act — assuming congressional elections occurred .
But of course , that ’ s how it ’ s written , not how it might go .
julia_azari : I keep imagining this scenario , and I have to say , I have a hard time imagining that Trump refuses to leave office .
I don ’ t want to be complacent , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump seems to be comfortable tweeting out bold ideas and not as great at standing firm under political pressure .
So as I see it , there would be a couple of components needed for this to actually happen .
There would be the political pressure — what are advisors , including Jared and Ivanka , telling him to do ?
This would help us understand if there are people who have influence over Trump who have some interest in seeing the system remain intact and legitimate .
The second thing would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Secret Service force him out ?
Does the military gets involved ?
These are wild scenarios .
I would be surprised if these institutions don ’ t have plans for this somewhere , even if they are not publicly known .
geoffrey.skelley : Not to take things down an even darker road , but in this scenario , I think it ’ s important to consider how other institutions like the military act and how the president ’ s supporters behave in the face of attempts to delegitimize the election results .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s where many people ’ s minds go , too .
And as a country , I think we are deeply uncomfortable ( and rightly so ) with the military being involved with a power transition .
I mean , I personally find it incredibly chilling to consider .
geoffrey.skelley : I ’ ve seen Seven Days In May .
Great movie but , uh yeah , disturbing .
But it ’ s a sign of the times when you have Biden actually saying he thinks the military would escort Trump out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to leave .
sarah : Because that ’ s the thing , as you ’ re all saying , there are mechanisms via the 20th amendment to ensure Trump leaves office .
But there ’ s still a very real question of how some of this would actually be enforced if it came to this , right ?
julia_azari : Exactly .
The 20th amendment was ratified to shorten the period between the presidential election in November and the inauguration , which had been in March .
There was growing instability around the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1932 election , and that ’ s some of what it intended to deal with , but it wasn ’ t really designed with this problem in mind .
I ’ m trying to stake out the ground that acknowledges a lot of people won ’ t have much incentive to let Trump violate the rules in this way .
clare.malone : Julia , when you say that a lot of people won ’ t have incentive to let Trump act contrary to the rules , whom are you thinking of ?
julia_azari @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of people who might want to run for president later .
julia_azari : Or make money off the Trump brand .
This includes his kids , and yeah , other Republicans .
clare.malone : That is , people with sway over him .
Got it .
julia_azari : Military leaders , too , as we saw many of them push back after the D.C. protesters incident in June .
sarah : So let ’ s talk about the other big doomsday scenario here : The results aren ’ t considered legitimate .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already taking root ?
julia_azari : That ’ s a good way to frame that , but I ’ m not sure there are signs that it ’ s taking root any more than it ’ s sorta been lurking in the conversation since 2016 — and even before .
geoffrey.skelley : In the face of COVID-19 , states are expanding absentee voting and , in some cases , vote-by-mail .
But the president is making the case that mailed ballots are illegitimate and highly vulnerable to fraud — this is not true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aspersions , he ’ s setting up the potential for delegitimizing the results as they come in , on and after Election Day .
And the after part is probably what really matters , especially if the election is close .
clare.malone : Yeah , I was going to say , we ’ ve spent the past 4 to 5 years conditioning a certain segment of the population to distrust most everything in American life , unless it comes from the president ’ s mouth .
Someone shared this 2017 survey that found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ok with delaying the 2020 election .
Granted , the question was framed around whether people would support delaying the election to make sure people weren ’ t voting illegally ( a big claim of Trump ’ s in 2016 ) .
But I still thought that was surprising .
It ’ s especially striking when you get to 2020 , and the questions revolve around the pandemic .
I was shocked to see , for instance , the share of Republicans and Democrats who were willing to delay the election because of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans supported delaying the election , according to that survey from April ) .
sarah : Yeah … it is mind boggling .
That finding is also at least somewhat corroborated in this paper FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman published with the Voter Study Group earlier this year .
In an examination of democracy in the U.S. , Drutman and his coauthors found that both Republicans and Democrats were open to their preferred presidential candidate “ rejecting the legitimacy of the election if they claim credible evidence of illegal voting or foreign interference.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Republicans said it would be appropriate for Trump “ to refuse to leave office because he claims that he has credible evidence of illegal voting.
” julia_azari : One quibble with that study , though , knowing I have the utmost respect for Lee and his coauthors , is that each scenario lays out a justification for delaying the election , which I think makes it harder to say no .
And I think people ’ s willingness to tolerate this in practice is conditional on their evaluation of that evidence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person making the claims .
( E.g.
, Trump , who isn ’ t very popular . )
I was pretty shocked in general to see how amenable people were to changing this very foundational thing !
Even with the reasonings the survey questions provided them .
julia_azari : I was , too , but I think it ’ s not unreasonable for people to have limits on how much they trust elections if they think those elections were not administered fairly .
geoffrey.skelley : And if the election is close and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any questions about administration could become explosive .
See : the 2000 election .
julia_azari : Right .
It ’ s actually amazing how explosive that wasn ’ t .
But things are different now — I wonder how this plays out if we flip it around .
But let ’ s say it happens again , and he wins narrowly once again ?
Who questions the results ?
And would that be the right thing to do ?
geoffrey.skelley : Yes , I wanted to bring this up !
Trump said there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an election he won — conveniently undoing Clinton ’ s popular vote margin .
And then he set up a task force to investigate fraud after he took office .
It found nothing .
julia_azari : But there will likely be this question of “ credible evidence , ” as they cite in that Voter Study group paper .
What if Trump wins , and people were standing in hours-long lines in Black neighborhoods in Ohio ?
In other words , I think there will be a question of how much skepticism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much is chaos ?
clare.malone : I think there is just going to be skepticism about this election , full stop .
geoffrey.skelley : I would not discount opponents of Trump taking to the streets in that scenario .
A recent simulation by a group of experts about what could happen in these sorts of scenarios did not bring me much comfort .
They found that every scenario — Trump winning or losing but someone defying the result — ended in street-level violence and political gridlock .
sarah : Oof .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the desire to delegitimize results isn ’ t purely a Republican thing , as that Voter Study paper found .
Democrats also showed signs of also being willing to reject the legitimacy of the election if it helps their preferred candidate .
clare.malone : Stacey Abrams ’ s non-concession concession speech in 2018 provided an interesting template for a potential Biden response ( in case of a loss to Trump ) .
Though I do think Biden is such a conventional politician and institutionalist that he wouldn ’ t respond in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not .
sarah : Yeah and Biden obviously isn ’ t waging a campaign of disinformation in the way that Trump is either .
But perhaps one unintended effect of all this is , to Clare ’ s point , that skepticism of the election ( depending on its margin ) is going to be rampant .
julia_azari : Although Biden seems like … truly angry at times about the Trump presidency .
It ’ s not obvious what the institutionalist move is in that scenario , IMO .
julia_azari : I think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skepticism is persistent and embedded in Trumpist ideology and among his followers , but not that widespread if the election is not close .
clare.malone : I mean , let ’ s go back to 2016 .
If Trump had lost , we were all preparing for the launch of Trump TV , a perch from which he would rail for the impeachment of President Clinton .
I can sort of see something similar happening if Trump loses ( unless , of course , he ’ s too tired to start the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would love to have him .
julia_azari : Again , I don ’ t want to be complacent .
I spend way too much time on politics Twitter .
I spend all my time on politics Twitter .
But if Biden wins by a lot and Trump tweets a bunch , most Americans will just go on about their lives .
That ’ s sorta how 2000 played out , and that was obviously really close and subject to questions , too .
geoffrey.skelley : Thing is , I can ’ t imagine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the way Gore eventually did .
clare.malone : Of course , 2000 is the election that a lot of people point to as the start of mistrust in elections as institutions .
And like , the era of “ voter fraud ” alarmism really ramped up under George W. Bush .
julia_azari : But the angry minority has demonstrated that it can drive politics and policy to a great degree .
So I don ’ t want to be complacent , but I do want to be specific in my fears .
clare.malone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on with their lives , but there were corrosive effects .
julia_azari : If he loses , I sometimes imagine that people around Trump will say , “ People will say nice things about you if you do a good concession speech , ” and so he does .
But it ’ s not encouraging that that ’ s what it might come to .
clare.malone : Right , the integrity of democratic institutions might come down to a pep talk from “ Javanka ?
” sarah : So at the outset of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s tweet to postpone the election was different from what he ’ s already done to try and delegitimize November ’ s result .
And we ’ ve also pointed out that there have been prior points in American history where voters have mistrusted election results .
But I think given the abnormal aspects of Trump ’ s presidency , it ’ s easy to point to historical comparisons without really probing whether the moment we ’ re in doesn ’ t have a historical comparison , as historian Rick Perlstein did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he didn ’ t want to do more interviews on how this moment might compare to 1968. julia_azari : I think Perlstein is right , but I also think that we should be precise about how abnormal politics interacts with normal politics , because that has been the story of the Trump presidency IMO .
clare.malone : So , I mean , I take Rick ’ s point in this tweet ; there ’ s this instinct that we have to comfort ourselves with history ( i.e.
, American democracy has weathered much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we sometimes dwell a bit in history without facing the new challenges that Trump presents us .
We sort of have to respect the new paradigm that ’ s been created and understand that there are limits to what history can teach us in this particular case ; i.e.
, Twitter , plus Trump , plus 20 years of diminishing electoral trust .
geoffrey.skelley : It ’ s interesting that people would comfort themselves with history — I take little comfort from it .
We ’ ve been on the brink before with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ julia_azari : I think that ’ s absolutely true .
I don ’ t see history as a comfort but rather as a guide to how much luck and skill it takes to maneuver through this stuff .
I also think history is helpful because it shows what ’ s not normal .
( And what shouldn ’ t be , but is . )

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Earlier today, President Trump tweeted that the 2020 election should be delayed “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.”
Postponing the election, of course, is not something the president can legally do. But it’s also kind of besides the point. Trump has already been fighting to delegitimize the results come November, claiming that voting by mail can lead to mass voter fraud.
So let’s dive into that. How would you describe Trump’s efforts to throw November’s results into question? He did something similar in 2016 when facing Hillary Clinton. How is this different?
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Well, in many ways it’s exactly what Trump was doing in 2016. It’s just that he’s president now. And thus, his words are even more damaging (and they were already very damaging in 2016).
geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): There’s also a very important distinction here. Before, Trump was just a candidate casting doubt on the election, but now he’s a sitting president doing that.
julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): I’d characterize this as an exercise in control and influence over his party and the news cycle. Everyone is forced to respond to what he says, even if they’re not responding positively. Trump isn’t effective at that many aspects of the job, but he’s pretty effective at agenda control.
clare.malone: I would also say that calling for the delay of the actual vote feels VERY dictatorial in nature. Like, we’ve perversely gotten used to the “fake votes,” “fake news” stuff. But encouraging a change in the election date feels sort of explicitly over a line.
sarah: And to ask a somewhat obvious question — but one that has to be asked — this is another unprecedented, norm-defying and democratic-value jeopardizing moment, right? To put it another way, has another sitting president ever done this?
julia_azari: I’m always nervous about the “never” question with past presidents, but yeah, most presidents have not been willing to take on all the formal rules, the legal system and other branches of government while in office. Congress — which has the power to change the date of an election — used to be stronger, too, and there was no Twitter. My go-to example for this is we still had a presidential election in 1864, during the Civil War.
geoffrey.skelley: And in modern times, incumbents who have lost reelection have exited office without too much of a fuss. Take George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, or if we go further back, Herbert Hoover. Granted, incumbents don’t often lose. So it’s important to note that each of those incumbents lost decisively, meaning there wasn’t much to stand on even if they had wanted to fight the result. But it’s not like Gerald Ford created a stir in 1976 when he lost narrowly.
julia_azari: Candidates have also conceded even when the election was a mess. See Al Gore in 2000, Samuel Tilden in 1876.
sarah: But on this question of actually changing the election date. How much power does Trump have to do that?
clare.malone: He does not have the power to change the date of the election.
julia_azari: None. It’s up to Congress, and elections are administered by the states.
clare.malone: Here’s my question, though: What happens if Trump refuses to leave the White House on Jan. 20, and there are no official election results at that point?
Like, in that dire scenario (Trump not leaving, no clear winner) does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi become president and someone has to haul him out of the building?
geoffrey.skelley: If for some reason the Electoral College hasn’t acted or the electoral votes haven’t been certified by Congress, Trump’s term ends on Jan. 20, according to the 20th Amendment. So there’d be an acting president, who would be the Speaker of the House per the order set out by the Presidential Succession Act — assuming congressional elections occurred.
But of course, that’s how it’s written, not how it might go.
sarah: Did someone mention 🥁the 20th amendment🥁?
julia_azari: I keep imagining this scenario, and I have to say, I have a hard time imagining that Trump refuses to leave office. I don’t want to be complacent, but like a lot of people on Twitter, Trump seems to be comfortable tweeting out bold ideas and not as great at standing firm under political pressure.
So as I see it, there would be a couple of components needed for this to actually happen. There would be the political pressure — what are advisors, including Jared and Ivanka, telling him to do? This would help us understand if there are people who have influence over Trump who have some interest in seeing the system remain intact and legitimate.
The second thing would be the actual formal power — does the Secret Service force him out? Does the military gets involved? These are wild scenarios.
I would be surprised if these institutions don’t have plans for this somewhere, even if they are not publicly known.
geoffrey.skelley: Not to take things down an even darker road, but in this scenario, I think it’s important to consider how other institutions like the military act and how the president’s supporters behave in the face of attempts to delegitimize the election results.
clare.malone: Totally. I think that’s where many people’s minds go, too. And as a country, I think we are deeply uncomfortable (and rightly so) with the military being involved with a power transition. I mean, I personally find it incredibly chilling to consider.
geoffrey.skelley: I’ve seen Seven Days In May. Great movie but, uh yeah, disturbing.
But it’s a sign of the times when you have Biden actually saying he thinks the military would escort Trump out of the White House if he refused to leave.
sarah: Because that’s the thing, as you’re all saying, there are mechanisms via the 20th amendment to ensure Trump leaves office. But there’s still a very real question of how some of this would actually be enforced if it came to this, right?
julia_azari: Exactly. The 20th amendment was ratified to shorten the period between the presidential election in November and the inauguration, which had been in March. There was growing instability around the time it was ratified, after the 1932 election, and that’s some of what it intended to deal with, but it wasn’t really designed with this problem in mind.
I’m trying to stake out the ground that acknowledges a lot of people won’t have much incentive to let Trump violate the rules in this way.
clare.malone: Julia, when you say that a lot of people won’t have incentive to let Trump act contrary to the rules, whom are you thinking of?
julia_azari: I guess I’m thinking of people who might want to run for president later.
clare.malone: Republicans?
julia_azari: Or make money off the Trump brand. This includes his kids, and yeah, other Republicans.
clare.malone: That is, people with sway over him. Got it.
julia_azari: Military leaders, too, as we saw many of them push back after the D.C. protesters incident in June.
sarah: So let’s talk about the other big doomsday scenario here: The results aren’t considered legitimate. What are the signs that that idea is already taking root?
julia_azari: That’s a good way to frame that, but I’m not sure there are signs that it’s taking root any more than it’s sorta been lurking in the conversation since 2016 — and even before.
geoffrey.skelley: In the face of COVID-19, states are expanding absentee voting and, in some cases, vote-by-mail. But the president is making the case that mailed ballots are illegitimate and highly vulnerable to fraud — this is not true, of course, but by casting aspersions, he’s setting up the potential for delegitimizing the results as they come in, on and after Election Day. And the after part is probably what really matters, especially if the election is close.
clare.malone: Yeah, I was going to say, we’ve spent the past 4 to 5 years conditioning a certain segment of the population to distrust most everything in American life, unless it comes from the president’s mouth.
Someone shared this 2017 survey that found that around half of Republicans would be ok with delaying the 2020 election. Granted, the question was framed around whether people would support delaying the election to make sure people weren’t voting illegally (a big claim of Trump’s in 2016). But I still thought that was surprising.
It’s especially striking when you get to 2020, and the questions revolve around the pandemic. I was shocked to see, for instance, the share of Republicans and Democrats who were willing to delay the election because of the pandemic (roughly 39 percent of Americans supported delaying the election, according to that survey from April).
sarah: Yeah … it is mind boggling. That finding is also at least somewhat corroborated in this paper FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman published with the Voter Study Group earlier this year. In an examination of democracy in the U.S., Drutman and his coauthors found that both Republicans and Democrats were open to their preferred presidential candidate “rejecting the legitimacy of the election if they claim credible evidence of illegal voting or foreign interference.” And in that vein, 29 percent of Republicans said it would be appropriate for Trump “to refuse to leave office because he claims that he has credible evidence of illegal voting.”
julia_azari: One quibble with that study, though, knowing I have the utmost respect for Lee and his coauthors, is that each scenario lays out a justification for delaying the election, which I think makes it harder to say no. And I think people’s willingness to tolerate this in practice is conditional on their evaluation of that evidence, the credibility of the claims and the person making the claims. (E.g., Trump, who isn’t very popular.)
clare.malone: Totally fair.
I was pretty shocked in general to see how amenable people were to changing this very foundational thing! Even with the reasonings the survey questions provided them.
julia_azari: I was, too, but I think it’s not unreasonable for people to have limits on how much they trust elections if they think those elections were not administered fairly.
geoffrey.skelley: And if the election is close and a state or two is in doubt, any questions about administration could become explosive. See: the 2000 election.
julia_azari: Right. It’s actually amazing how explosive that wasn’t. But things are different now — I wonder how this plays out if we flip it around.
Let’s say Trump wins.
(I mean, this sorta already happened in 2016. Trump won, yet he went right ahead and tried to delegitimize parts of an election he had won.)
But let’s say it happens again, and he wins narrowly once again? Who questions the results? And would that be the right thing to do?
geoffrey.skelley: Yes, I wanted to bring this up! Trump said there were at least 3 million illegal votes in an election he won — conveniently undoing Clinton’s popular vote margin. And then he set up a task force to investigate fraud after he took office. It found nothing.
julia_azari: But there will likely be this question of “credible evidence,” as they cite in that Voter Study group paper. What if Trump wins, and people were standing in hours-long lines in Black neighborhoods in Ohio?
In other words, I think there will be a question of how much skepticism about elections is reasonable, and how much is chaos?
clare.malone: I think there is just going to be skepticism about this election, full stop.
geoffrey.skelley: I would not discount opponents of Trump taking to the streets in that scenario. A recent simulation by a group of experts about what could happen in these sorts of scenarios did not bring me much comfort. They found that every scenario — Trump winning or losing but someone defying the result — ended in street-level violence and political gridlock.
sarah: Oof. It’s interesting to me, though, that the desire to delegitimize results isn’t purely a Republican thing, as that Voter Study paper found. Democrats also showed signs of also being willing to reject the legitimacy of the election if it helps their preferred candidate.
clare.malone: Stacey Abrams’s non-concession concession speech in 2018 provided an interesting template for a potential Biden response (in case of a loss to Trump).
Though I do think Biden is such a conventional politician and institutionalist that he wouldn’t respond in the same way Abrams did, justified or not.
sarah: Yeah and Biden obviously isn’t waging a campaign of disinformation in the way that Trump is either. But perhaps one unintended effect of all this is, to Clare’s point, that skepticism of the election (depending on its margin) is going to be rampant.
julia_azari: Although Biden seems like … truly angry at times about the Trump presidency. It’s not obvious what the institutionalist move is in that scenario, IMO.
clare.malone: A good point!
julia_azari: I think there’s a strong possibility that skepticism is persistent and embedded in Trumpist ideology and among his followers, but not that widespread if the election is not close.
clare.malone: I mean, let’s go back to 2016.
If Trump had lost, we were all preparing for the launch of Trump TV, a perch from which he would rail for the impeachment of President Clinton.
I can sort of see something similar happening if Trump loses (unless, of course, he’s too tired to start the Trump TV experiment!)
geoffrey.skelley: OANN would love to have him.
julia_azari: Again, I don’t want to be complacent. I spend way too much time on politics Twitter. I spend all my time on politics Twitter.
But if Biden wins by a lot and Trump tweets a bunch, most Americans will just go on about their lives. That’s sorta how 2000 played out, and that was obviously really close and subject to questions, too.
geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, I can’t imagine Trump conceding in a 2000-esque situation in the way Gore eventually did.
clare.malone: Of course, 2000 is the election that a lot of people point to as the start of mistrust in elections as institutions. And like, the era of “voter fraud” alarmism really ramped up under George W. Bush.
julia_azari: But the angry minority has demonstrated that it can drive politics and policy to a great degree. So I don’t want to be complacent, but I do want to be specific in my fears.
clare.malone: So you could say people went on with their lives, but there were corrosive effects.
julia_azari: If he loses, I sometimes imagine that people around Trump will say, “People will say nice things about you if you do a good concession speech,” and so he does. But it’s not encouraging that that’s what it might come to.
clare.malone: Right, the integrity of democratic institutions might come down to a pep talk from “Javanka?”
sarah: So at the outset of this chat, I asked how Trump’s tweet to postpone the election was different from what he’s already done to try and delegitimize November’s result. And we’ve also pointed out that there have been prior points in American history where voters have mistrusted election results.
But I think given the abnormal aspects of Trump’s presidency, it’s easy to point to historical comparisons without really probing whether the moment we’re in doesn’t have a historical comparison, as historian Rick Perlstein did in his tweet, telling the media he didn’t want to do more interviews on how this moment might compare to 1968.
julia_azari: I think Perlstein is right, but I also think that we should be precise about how abnormal politics interacts with normal politics, because that has been the story of the Trump presidency IMO.
clare.malone: So, I mean, I take Rick’s point in this tweet; there’s this instinct that we have to comfort ourselves with history (i.e., American democracy has weathered much worse) but I do think that we sometimes dwell a bit in history without facing the new challenges that Trump presents us.
We sort of have to respect the new paradigm that’s been created and understand that there are limits to what history can teach us in this particular case; i.e., Twitter, plus Trump, plus 20 years of diminishing electoral trust.
geoffrey.skelley: It’s interesting that people would comfort themselves with history — I take little comfort from it. We’ve been on the brink before with the 1876 election, for instance.
julia_azari: I think that’s absolutely true. I don’t see history as a comfort but rather as a guide to how much luck and skill it takes to maneuver through this stuff.
I also think history is helpful because it shows what’s not normal. (And what shouldn’t be, but is.)


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-30--Gun Sales Are Surging, But Background Checks Aren’t Keeping Up

Gun sales were so slow earlier this year that in February , The New York Times ran a piece on how some gun manufacturers were looking to rebrand to make up for the “ Trump slump.
” But then the pandemic hit .
And on Friday , March 13 , when President Trump declared a national emergency , the number of background checks went through the roof , according to the FBI system that vets gun buyers .
In March , the FBI received almost 1.5 million requests for background checks , according to data the bureau released to FiveThirtyEight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On Friday , March 20 alone , 104,084 background check requests were sent to the bureau ; according to a slightly different measure that includes checks run by state systems , that day saw the highest daily number of background checks on record .
In fact , by that broader measure , five of the gun background check system ’ s 10 busiest days were in March 2020 .
While March is usually a busy month for background checks , it was off the charts this year .
But the number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up .
As you can see in the chart below , as the number of background checks sent to the FBI rose , so did the percentage that were delayed more than three business days — a critical deadline after which federal law allows dealers to legally sell a gun without a completed background check .
This is significant because it means that it may have been easier for guns to get into the hands of people who can not legally own them .
The danger here isn ’ t theoretical .
Dylann @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he used to kill nine black churchgoers in Charleston , South Carolina , in 2015 because of this loophole .
Roof had a record for drug possession that meant he couldn ’ t legally own a gun , but after the three-day period passed , the gun dealer sold him a gun anyway .
To be sure , these numbers aren ’ t a perfect portrait of gun sales : They don ’ t include data from 20 states that process some or all of their background checks themselves rather than through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ represents a gun sale — many checks are run when people apply for gun permits , when states check on the status of gun permit holders , or for other purposes .
A single background check can also represent multiple gun sales .
[ Related : Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We ’ re Headed — And Why They Disagree ] We also don ’ t know how many background checks from March the FBI never completed .
When a background check drags on for 88 days , the bureau stops researching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ check request from its systems to comply with federal regulations .
The bureau hasn ’ t yet released data on purged requests made in March .
We do know that the bureau never completes the overwhelming majority of background checks that take longer than three business days .
For instance , 79 percent of such checks were never completed in 2019 .
This year , it purged over 80 percent of such checks from January and 78 percent from February .
Still , Jurgen Brauer , chief economist at Small Arms Analytics and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the spike in background checks in March represented a real surge in retail gun sales .
For instance , Brauer ’ s consulting firm analysed FBI data and found that retail gun sales drove the surge in March , along with a second surge in June that was likely tied to Black Lives Matter protests .
In total , the firm estimated that gun sales rose year-over-year by 85 percent in March and 145 percent in June .
And a team of researchers at the University of California , Davis ’ s Violence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gun background checks to gun violence data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive , finding a nearly 8 percent increase in gun violence over expected levels from March through May 2020 .
This study hasn ’ t yet been peer reviewed , but if it ’ s accurate , that ’ s 776 additional fatal and nonfatal injuries , not including suicides and accidents .
[ Related : How Americans View The Coronavirus Crisis And Trump ’ s Response ] This surge in gun sales during the pandemic has meant that an already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , causing massive delays , according to Brauer .
He compared background checks to a drainage system that backs up during a big storm .
“ There ’ s a massive flow of rainwater , and the systems can ’ t handle it , ” he said .
The FBI , however , disputed that characterization in a statement to FiveThirtyEight .
Holly Morris , a spokesperson for the bureau , said the agency hasn ’ t found a relationship between the rise in the share of delayed background checks and the increased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the percentage of delayed transactions and any extended processing times can be attributed to a number of variables , ” Morris wrote via email , adding that staffing levels for the background check system have remained the same throughout the pandemic .
There are signs that the influx in gun sales might not be slowing anytime soon .
The initial spikes in gun sales in March lined up closely with events related to the pandemic , including Feb. 26 , when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first confirmed that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just being brought back by travelers , and Trump ’ s national emergency declaration on March 13 .
But as the pandemic has worn on , the reasoning driving the spike in gun sales has changed , too .
By the time gun sales soared even higher in June , research suggests it was no longer the coronavirus on buyers ’ minds but the protests over the police killing of George Floyd .
Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight of Wellesley College compared the FBI ’ s state-by-state background check data with data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see if states with more searches for the racist slur saw a larger increase in gun sales .
They found what Levine described as a “ modest correlation ” in June , suggesting that at least some of those sales were driven by concerns over Black Lives Matter protests .
“ As the pandemic settled down , gun sales settled down too , until it got to June , ” Levine said in an interview .
“ In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing , there was another very dramatic spike.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gun sales in the U.S. will continue to progress , as we don ’ t yet have data for July .
The data released to FiveThirtyEight did not include June , but less-detailed data the FBI published online shows that last month the agency ran more background checks than any other month on record .
And , of course , sales rose in 2016 in part over fears that Hillary Clinton would take the White House and impose new gun regulations , so with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead in the polls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not be far behind .
Not to mention that another surge in coronavirus cases could again drive a spike in sales like the one we saw in March .
Whatever happens , more gun sales will likely mean more delays — potentially putting guns into the hands of people who can ’ t legally own one .
Nate Silver doesn ’ t buy that Trump ’ s fate is sealed , ‘ a lot could change in 100 days ’

Gun sales were so slow earlier this year that in February, The New York Times ran a piece on how some gun manufacturers were looking to rebrand to make up for the “Trump slump.”
But then the pandemic hit. And on Friday, March 13, when President Trump declared a national emergency, the number of background checks went through the roof, according to the FBI system that vets gun buyers.
In March, the FBI received almost 1.5 million requests for background checks, according to data the bureau released to FiveThirtyEight in response to a public records request. On Friday, March 20 alone, 104,084 background check requests were sent to the bureau; according to a slightly different measure that includes checks run by state systems, that day saw the highest daily number of background checks on record. In fact, by that broader measure, five of the gun background check system’s 10 busiest days were in March 2020. While March is usually a busy month for background checks, it was off the charts this year.
But the number of background checks didn’t just go up. As you can see in the chart below, as the number of background checks sent to the FBI rose, so did the percentage that were delayed more than three business days — a critical deadline after which federal law allows dealers to legally sell a gun without a completed background check.
This is significant because it means that it may have been easier for guns to get into the hands of people who cannot legally own them.
The danger here isn’t theoretical. Dylann Roof was able to buy the gun he used to kill nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 because of this loophole. Roof had a record for drug possession that meant he couldn’t legally own a gun, but after the three-day period passed, the gun dealer sold him a gun anyway.
To be sure, these numbers aren’t a perfect portrait of gun sales: They don’t include data from 20 states that process some or all of their background checks themselves rather than through the FBI. And not every background check represents a gun sale — many checks are run when people apply for gun permits, when states check on the status of gun permit holders, or for other purposes. A single background check can also represent multiple gun sales.
[Related: Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We’re Headed — And Why They Disagree]
We also don’t know how many background checks from March the FBI never completed. When a background check drags on for 88 days, the bureau stops researching the potential buyer and purges the background check request from its systems to comply with federal regulations. The bureau hasn’t yet released data on purged requests made in March.
We do know that the bureau never completes the overwhelming majority of background checks that take longer than three business days. For instance, 79 percent of such checks were never completed in 2019. This year, it purged over 80 percent of such checks from January and 78 percent from February.
Still, Jurgen Brauer, chief economist at Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting, and other experts agree that the spike in background checks in March represented a real surge in retail gun sales. For instance, Brauer’s consulting firm analysed FBI data and found that retail gun sales drove the surge in March, along with a second surge in June that was likely tied to Black Lives Matter protests. In total, the firm estimated that gun sales rose year-over-year by 85 percent in March and 145 percent in June.
And a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program compared FBI data on gun background checks to gun violence data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, finding a nearly 8 percent increase in gun violence over expected levels from March through May 2020. This study hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, but if it’s accurate, that’s 776 additional fatal and nonfatal injuries, not including suicides and accidents.
[Related: How Americans View The Coronavirus Crisis And Trump’s Response]
This surge in gun sales during the pandemic has meant that an already brittle background check system is getting overloaded, causing massive delays, according to Brauer. He compared background checks to a drainage system that backs up during a big storm. “There’s a massive flow of rainwater, and the systems can’t handle it,” he said.
The FBI, however, disputed that characterization in a statement to FiveThirtyEight.
Holly Morris, a spokesperson for the bureau, said the agency hasn’t found a relationship between the rise in the share of delayed background checks and the increased volume of requests. “The influx in the percentage of delayed transactions and any extended processing times can be attributed to a number of variables,” Morris wrote via email, adding that staffing levels for the background check system have remained the same throughout the pandemic.
There are signs that the influx in gun sales might not be slowing anytime soon. The initial spikes in gun sales in March lined up closely with events related to the pandemic, including Feb. 26, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first confirmed that the virus was spreading within the U.S. and not just being brought back by travelers, and Trump’s national emergency declaration on March 13. But as the pandemic has worn on, the reasoning driving the spike in gun sales has changed, too. By the time gun sales soared even higher in June, research suggests it was no longer the coronavirus on buyers’ minds but the protests over the police killing of George Floyd.
[Related: The Latest Political Polls Collected By FiveThirtyEight]
Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight of Wellesley College compared the FBI’s state-by-state background check data with data on Google searches for the N-word to see if states with more searches for the racist slur saw a larger increase in gun sales. They found what Levine described as a “modest correlation” in June, suggesting that at least some of those sales were driven by concerns over Black Lives Matter protests.
“As the pandemic settled down, gun sales settled down too, until it got to June,” Levine said in an interview. “In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, there was another very dramatic spike.”
It’s hard to know how gun sales in the U.S. will continue to progress, as we don’t yet have data for July. The data released to FiveThirtyEight did not include June, but less-detailed data the FBI published online shows that last month the agency ran more background checks than any other month on record. And, of course, sales rose in 2016 in part over fears that Hillary Clinton would take the White House and impose new gun regulations, so with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead in the polls, another surge in gun sales may not be far behind. Not to mention that another surge in coronavirus cases could again drive a spike in sales like the one we saw in March.
Whatever happens, more gun sales will likely mean more delays — potentially putting guns into the hands of people who can’t legally own one.
Nate Silver doesn’t buy that Trump’s fate is sealed, ‘a lot could change in 100 days’


fivethirtyeight--2020-07-30--Confidence Interval: Will Biden Choose Kamala Harris As His VP?

Welcome to another episode of Confidence Interval , where we make a persuasive case for a hot take … and @ @ @ @ @ really feel about the idea .
This time , elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich argues that @ @ @ @ @ Kamala Harris as his running mate .

Welcome to another episode of Confidence Interval, where we make a persuasive case for a hot take … and then reveal how confident we really feel about the idea. This time, elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich argues that Joe Biden will pick Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.