fivethirtyeight--2020-04-09--Sanders — And The Media — Learned The Wrong Lessons From Trump In 2016

As I ’ m sure you ’ ve probably guessed , this passage seems like it could be about Donald Trump ’ s campaign for the Republican nomination in 2016 — but it ’ s actually about Bernie Sanders ’ s quest for the Democratic nomination this year .
It comes from an April 2019 feature by the Atlantic ’ s Edward-Isaac Dovere that I consider to be a lodestar for Sanders ’ s strategy since it contains a lot of on-the-record reporting from Sanders campaign .
The article also reveals how the conventional wisdom about how primary campaigns have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Republican nomination in 2016 and Sanders ’ s better-than-expected performance against Hillary Clinton that year .
In particular , it reflects several common assumptions in media coverage of the race this year : • In a divided field , the goal is to have the largest , most enthusiastic base .
• Reaching out to different factions of your party is not that important — and may even dilute your differentiation from the other candidates .
As long as you ’ re winning the plurality of votes , you ’ ll win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party will eventually come around .
• There is no need to make peace with the party establishment .
In our populist era , nominations are won from the grassroots up .
Voters don ’ t care about things like endorsements , and “ party elites ” are largely feckless .
Indeed , if you ’ d beamed down to Planet Earth from some alien civilization in January 2016 and only seen that year ’ s primaries , those might be the lessons that you ’ d take away about how primaries work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ description of the GOP primary , where the Republican establishment belly flopped in trying to stop Trump .
The Democratic primary was a bit more complicated .
Clinton beat Sanders by a rather clear margin in the end .
Still , Sanders overperformed expectations by enough as to at least not contradict the notion that 2016 was the new normal .
But focusing on only what happened in the most recent election is a dumb way to do analysis .
The media and campaign professionals spend endless amounts of time trying to draw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are so consequential , but you can ’ t escape the fact that presidential elections happen only once every four years .
No matter how many lessons you might try to draw from any one example , you ’ re still dealing with a sample size of one .
Rather , the history of the primaries — both in terms of how the media covers them and how campaigns wage them — is often one of fighting the last war and overcompensating for perceived mistakes from four years earlier .
I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either .
One of the reasons that I initially bought so heavily into “ The Party Decides ” hypothesis in 2016 — which implied that Trump ’ s lack of support from the Republican party establishment would eventually doom him — was because of the Republican primary in 2012 , when a series of insurgent candidates ( Newt Gingrich , Herman Cain , Rick Santorum ) briefly surged in the polls only to eventually lose to the slow-and-steady ( and establishment-backed ) Mitt Romney .
But Romney ’ s win in 2012 was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the primaries , which underscores that building coalitions across the different wings of your party ( Romney tried to unite conservatives and moderates , for instance ) is usually a good strategy for winning instead of relying on just one faction .
And as you can see in the table below , the establishment usually does win out in the end : Of course , a result like Romney ’ s win in 2012 that confirms your theories and priors can create its own issues — it can make you overconfident .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that something is true 100 percent of the time when it ’ s actually only true , say , 80 percent of the time .
But while overconfidence is a serious problem , it ’ s probably better than assuming that an abnormal result ( say , something that is true 20 percent of the time ) is the new normal .
You can see lots of this upside-down thinking in media coverage of elections since 2016 .
Because Trump won the general election as a ( modest ) underdog in 2016 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only can win , but that they usually win .
Before the Virginia gubernatorial election in 2017 , for instance , a lot of pundits predicted Republican Ed Gillespie would win despite being narrowly behind Democrat Ralph Northam in the polls .
Northam won by 9 points instead .
It ’ s not just the media who makes these mistakes , however .
It ’ s also the campaigns themselves .
So while I don ’ t intend to do a long post-mortem of the Sanders campaign — instead , see my colleague @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on what went wrong and why — I do want to take a quick inventory of the ways that the 2020 Democratic primary was different from the Republican primary in 2016 .
Most of these problems were fairly predictable and known in advance .
To ensure you that I ’ m not engaging in too much hindsight bias — because it ’ s always easier to say what went wrong with campaigns once you know who won and who lost — I ’ d point you toward this cautiously pessimistic take on Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one from just after the New Hampshire primary , which reflects how my thinking about the Sanders ’ s campaign evolved as it was happening in real-time .
I started out thinking that Sanders ’ s factional , us-versus-them , screw-the-establishment strategy was a poor one .
But it seemed to be going about as well as it possibly could after New Hampshire with the rest of the field divided .
So here are some potential flaws in Sanders ’ s strategy — and reasons why the precedent set by Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to his chances this year : First , Democratic primaries and caucuses do not use winner-take-all rules , while many Republican states do .
That makes it much harder for someone to be in a commanding position by narrowly winning primaries .
Instead , in a multi-candidate race , you have to eventually broaden your coalition to avoid a contested convention .
In consideration of this , some elements of Sanders ’ s strategy simply never made a lot of sense .
Here ’ s another key passage from that Atlantic article : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it could win around 30 percent of the vote with their base and that they could win early states with that amount … but it never really had a plan for what came after that .
Dovere ’ s article makes it sound as though Sanders was actually counting on a contested convention , an awfully risky approach given that contested conventions are : ( i ) highly unpredictable and ( ii ) not likely to be favorable terrain for Sanders , given his lack of support from the establishment and that superdelegates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second and subsequent ballots .
Second , Trump ’ s ideological ambiguity may have helped him in 2016 , while Sanders got stuck in a “ lane ” this year .
Trump may not have done that much traditional outreach to different parts of the GOP , but Republican voters from several wings of the party , perhaps not being quite sure what to make of a candidate like Trump who was reactionary on some issues ( say , immigration ) and quite moderate on others ( say , gay marriage ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of appeal was reflected in the primary results .
In the Michigan Republican primary for instance , Trump won the support of 35 percent of “ very conservative ” voters , 37 percent of “ somewhat conservative ” voters and 37 percent of moderate voters , according to exit polls .
By contrast Sanders ran further to the left in 2020 than he did in 2016 , with a message that shifted from economic populism to a broader and more “ intersectional ” leftism .
This shift was reflected at the ballot box @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won just 24 percent of moderates in the Michigan Democratic primary this year ( but 63 percent of “ very liberal ” voters ) — as compared 44 percent of moderates and 59 percent of “ very liberal ” voters in 2016 .
Third , the importance that Democratic voters attached to “ electability ” and to beating Trump may have made them more willing to take cues from the establishment .
Electability is a whole subject unto itself that I ’ m not going to do justice to here .
I do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tiny bit overrated as a reason for why Sanders lost .
While perceptions of electability probably hurt Sanders relative to Joe Biden , it also probably helped him relative to candidates who weren ’ t white men : most notably , Elizabeth Warren .
Still , electability was important .
In that Michigan exit poll , 58 percent of Democratic voters said they preferred a candidate that could beat Trump to someone who agreed with them on the issues — and 62 percent of the “ beat Trump ” voters went for Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an opportunity to learn from Republicans in 2016 , and this may have made them more aggressive in backing Biden after South Carolina .
One reason to be careful of declaring a “ new normal ” in any trend involving human behavior is that humans have an opportunity to learn from what happened last time and change course .
The establishment ’ s failures in 2016 may have made partly elites reluctant to weigh in early on in the race this time around .
But once they perceived Sanders as the true front-runner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gain a little bit of momentum as he surged to a lead in South Carolina polls , party elites got behind Biden at extremely rapid rates .
It ’ s hard to know if this would have played out the same way if there wasn ’ t 2016 to learn from .
Fifth , Trump ’ s success in 2016 may have reflected an unusually weak field of alternatives rather than a new paradigm .
I ’ m not going to spend much time on this one , because it ’ s rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pete Buttigieg , Kamala Harris , etc .
better candidates than Ted Cruz , Marco Rubio , Jeb Bush , John Kasich , etc.
?
I don ’ t know .
But Democratic voters were certainly much happier with their field of candidates in 2020 than Republicans were with theirs in 2016 , which is some indication that the field might have been stronger .
Sixth , Democrats are a more racially-diverse party , which makes coalition building more essential than it is among Republicans .
Sanders didn ’ t do badly with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the basis of Hispanic support while also winning the support of many younger black voters .
That definitely made him a more plausible nominee than Buttigieg , whose support was extremely white , for example .
Still , nonwhite support wasn ’ t a strength for Sanders in a head-to-head race against Biden , who generally beat Sanders by wide margins among black voters and held his own among Hispanics in many states .
And Sanders ’ s outreach to African American leaders didn ’ t always go smoothly , with many members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead .
Seventh , relying on a fixed base of voters can leave you vulnerable to a turnout surge from other candidates .
One rather explicit assumption made by the Sanders campaign was that it could turn out more voters than its opponents .
Hence , the campaign believed there was not much need to widen their circle to include others .
Even their outreach efforts to Sanders-skeptical party leaders focused on trying to browbeat them into explaining why they didn ’ t support Sanders rather than explaining why they should support him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : One problem with this attitude is that turnout in an election isn ’ t fixed — especially in primaries and caucuses where participation is low .
You may turn out a certain number of people , but your base will not be constant as a percentage of the electorate if turnout goes up .
In Michigan , for example , Sanders got nearly as many votes in 2020 ( 576,754 ) as in 2016 ( 599,000 ) .
But Biden got 838,555 votes in 2020 , as compared to just 581,775 for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general pattern where turnout surged more in Biden ’ s best areas .
So Sanders went from narrowly winning Michigan to losing it by 17 percentage points .
Perhaps Sanders was a victim of his own success in 2016 .
That is , he did such a good job of turning out voters in 2016 that it was hard to improve on his performance in 2020 .
Still , there was never really any recognition that his base alone might not be enough to win — and there were never many efforts to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s interesting that Sanders doubled down even more on his screw-the-establishment messaging amidst his success in the first three states — rather than trying to pivot to a more inclusive campaign and unify the party behind him .
Maybe , if a few things had gone differently , it would have worked .
Sanders did outlast more than two dozen other candidates , after all .
Maybe if Michael Bloomberg hadn ’ t qualified for the Nevada debate and stumbled so badly there , moderate support would have remained divided between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have had a lot more wins on Super Tuesday .
Maybe Sanders ’ s “ 60 Minutes ” interview hurt him .
Maybe he could have gotten Warren to endorse him .
Who knows .
But the Sanders campaign was always pursuing a strategy that claimed to defy the odds , that assumed the old rules no longer applied , and that stuck its thumb in the eye of the establishment .
It would have been remarkable if it had succeeded .
But it ’ s no surprise that it didn ’ t @

“The […] pitch is a mix of idealism and a shouting anger about the system, but at its heart is a hard-nosed math: He’s the only candidate with a sizable chunk of the electorate that won’t waver, no matter what, so a field that keeps growing and splitting support keeps making things easier.”
As I’m sure you’ve probably guessed, this passage seems like it could be about Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination in 2016 — but it’s actually about Bernie Sanders’s quest for the Democratic nomination this year. It comes from an April 2019 feature by the Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere that I consider to be a lodestar for Sanders’s strategy since it contains a lot of on-the-record reporting from Sanders campaign.
The article also reveals how the conventional wisdom about how primary campaigns have changed, in light of Trump winning the Republican nomination in 2016 and Sanders’s better-than-expected performance against Hillary Clinton that year. In particular, it reflects several common assumptions in media coverage of the race this year:
In a divided field, the goal is to have the largest, most enthusiastic base.
Reaching out to different factions of your party is not that important — and may even dilute your differentiation from the other candidates. As long as you’re winning the plurality of votes, you’ll win enough states and the rest of the party will eventually come around.
of votes, you’ll win enough states and the rest of the party will eventually come around. There is no need to make peace with the party establishment. In our populist era, nominations are won from the grassroots up. Voters don’t care about things like endorsements, and “party elites” are largely feckless.
Indeed, if you’d beamed down to Planet Earth from some alien civilization in January 2016 and only seen that year’s primaries, those might be the lessons that you’d take away about how primaries work. They’re a reasonably apt description of the GOP primary, where the Republican establishment belly flopped in trying to stop Trump. The Democratic primary was a bit more complicated. Clinton beat Sanders by a rather clear margin in the end. Still, Sanders overperformed expectations by enough as to at least not contradict the notion that 2016 was the new normal.
But focusing on only what happened in the most recent election is a dumb way to do analysis. The media and campaign professionals spend endless amounts of time trying to draw “lessons” from elections because they are so consequential, but you can’t escape the fact that presidential elections happen only once every four years. No matter how many lessons you might try to draw from any one example, you’re still dealing with a sample size of one.
Rather, the history of the primaries — both in terms of how the media covers them and how campaigns wage them — is often one of fighting the last war and overcompensating for perceived mistakes from four years earlier. I’m not claiming to be immune from this either. One of the reasons that I initially bought so heavily into “The Party Decides” hypothesis in 2016 — which implied that Trump’s lack of support from the Republican party establishment would eventually doom him — was because of the Republican primary in 2012, when a series of insurgent candidates (Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum) briefly surged in the polls only to eventually lose to the slow-and-steady (and establishment-backed) Mitt Romney.
But Romney’s win in 2012 was in line with the longer history of the primaries, which underscores that building coalitions across the different wings of your party (Romney tried to unite conservatives and moderates, for instance) is usually a good strategy for winning instead of relying on just one faction. And as you can see in the table below, the establishment usually does win out in the end:
The party usually does decide, after all Endorsement leaders before the Iowa caucuses where no incumbent president was running for that party’s nomination, 1972 to 2020 Year Party Endorsement leader before Iowa Did they have a clear endorsement lead? Did they win the nomination? 1972 D Ed Muskie ✓ 1976 D Fred Harris 1980 R Ronald Reagan ✓ ✓ 1984 D Walter Mondale ✓ ✓ 1988 D Dick Gephardt 1988 R George H.W. Bush ✓ ✓ 1992 D Bill Clinton ✓ ✓ 1996 R Bob Dole ✓ ✓ 2000 D Al Gore ✓ ✓ 2000 R George W. Bush ✓ ✓ 2004 D Howard Dean 2008 D Hillary Clinton ✓ 2008 R John McCain ✓ 2012 R Mitt Romney ✓ ✓ 2016 D Hillary Clinton ✓ ✓ 2016 R Jeb Bush 2020 D Joe Biden* ✓ ✓ *Biden has not been formally nominated, but is the presumptive nominee. Endorsement leaders from 1980 to 2016 are based on FiveThirtyEight’s 2016 system for calculating endorsement points. Endorsement leaders in 1972 and 1976 are based on “The Party Decides.” Sources: “The Party Decides,” News accounts
Of course, a result like Romney’s win in 2012 that confirms your theories and priors can create its own issues — it can make you overconfident. You may mistakenly assume, for instance, that something is true 100 percent of the time when it’s actually only true, say, 80 percent of the time.
But while overconfidence is a serious problem, it’s probably better than assuming that an abnormal result (say, something that is true 20 percent of the time) is the new normal. You can see lots of this upside-down thinking in media coverage of elections since 2016. Because Trump won the general election as a (modest) underdog in 2016, a lot have inferred that underdogs not only can win, but that they usually win. Before the Virginia gubernatorial election in 2017, for instance, a lot of pundits predicted Republican Ed Gillespie would win despite being narrowly behind Democrat Ralph Northam in the polls. Northam won by 9 points instead.
It’s not just the media who makes these mistakes, however. It’s also the campaigns themselves. So while I don’t intend to do a long post-mortem of the Sanders campaign — instead, see my colleague Perry Bacon Jr.’s comprehensive analysis on what went wrong and why — I do want to take a quick inventory of the ways that the 2020 Democratic primary was different from the Republican primary in 2016.
Most of these problems were fairly predictable and known in advance. To ensure you that I’m not engaging in too much hindsight bias — because it’s always easier to say what went wrong with campaigns once you know who won and who lost — I’d point you toward this cautiously pessimistic take on Sanders from April 2019 and this cautiously optimistic one from just after the New Hampshire primary, which reflects how my thinking about the Sanders’s campaign evolved as it was happening in real-time. I started out thinking that Sanders’s factional, us-versus-them, screw-the-establishment strategy was a poor one. But it seemed to be going about as well as it possibly could after New Hampshire with the rest of the field divided.
So here are some potential flaws in Sanders’s strategy — and reasons why the precedent set by Trump’s win in 2016 might not have applied to his chances this year:
First, Democratic primaries and caucuses do not use winner-take-all rules, while many Republican states do. That makes it much harder for someone to be in a commanding position by narrowly winning primaries. Instead, in a multi-candidate race, you have to eventually broaden your coalition to avoid a contested convention.
In consideration of this, some elements of Sanders’s strategy simply never made a lot of sense. Here’s another key passage from that Atlantic article:
He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina and give him a path to slip through there, too. And then, Sanders aides believe, he’ll easily win enough delegates to put him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.
Sanders’s campaign was right that it could win around 30 percent of the vote with their base and that they could win early states with that amount … but it never really had a plan for what came after that. Dovere’s article makes it sound as though Sanders was actually counting on a contested convention, an awfully risky approach given that contested conventions are: (i) highly unpredictable and (ii) not likely to be favorable terrain for Sanders, given his lack of support from the establishment and that superdelegates would be allowed to vote on the second and subsequent ballots.
Second, Trump’s ideological ambiguity may have helped him in 2016, while Sanders got stuck in a “lane” this year. Trump may not have done that much traditional outreach to different parts of the GOP, but Republican voters from several wings of the party, perhaps not being quite sure what to make of a candidate like Trump who was reactionary on some issues (say, immigration) and quite moderate on others (say, gay marriage), were nonetheless Trump-curious. And that range of appeal was reflected in the primary results. In the Michigan Republican primary for instance, Trump won the support of 35 percent of “very conservative” voters, 37 percent of “somewhat conservative” voters and 37 percent of moderate voters, according to exit polls.
By contrast Sanders ran further to the left in 2020 than he did in 2016, with a message that shifted from economic populism to a broader and more “intersectional” leftism. This shift was reflected at the ballot box, too. For instance, Sanders won just 24 percent of moderates in the Michigan Democratic primary this year (but 63 percent of “very liberal” voters) — as compared 44 percent of moderates and 59 percent of “very liberal” voters in 2016.
Third, the importance that Democratic voters attached to “electability” and to beating Trump may have made them more willing to take cues from the establishment. Electability is a whole subject unto itself that I’m not going to do justice to here. I do think electability may be a teensy, tiny bit overrated as a reason for why Sanders lost. While perceptions of electability probably hurt Sanders relative to Joe Biden, it also probably helped him relative to candidates who weren’t white men: most notably, Elizabeth Warren.
Still, electability was important. In that Michigan exit poll, 58 percent of Democratic voters said they preferred a candidate that could beat Trump to someone who agreed with them on the issues — and 62 percent of the “beat Trump” voters went for Biden.
Fourth, Democratic party elites had an opportunity to learn from Republicans in 2016, and this may have made them more aggressive in backing Biden after South Carolina. One reason to be careful of declaring a “new normal” in any trend involving human behavior is that humans have an opportunity to learn from what happened last time and change course. The establishment’s failures in 2016 may have made partly elites reluctant to weigh in early on in the race this time around. But once they perceived Sanders as the true front-runner after Nevada, and Biden began to gain a little bit of momentum as he surged to a lead in South Carolina polls, party elites got behind Biden at extremely rapid rates. It’s hard to know if this would have played out the same way if there wasn’t 2016 to learn from.
Fifth, Trump’s success in 2016 may have reflected an unusually weak field of alternatives rather than a new paradigm. I’m not going to spend much time on this one, because it’s rather subjective. Were Warren, Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, etc. better candidates than Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, etc.? I don’t know. But Democratic voters were certainly much happier with their field of candidates in 2020 than Republicans were with theirs in 2016, which is some indication that the field might have been stronger.
Sixth, Democrats are a more racially-diverse party, which makes coalition building more essential than it is among Republicans. Sanders didn’t do badly with nonwhite voters — winning Nevada largely on the basis of Hispanic support while also winning the support of many younger black voters. That definitely made him a more plausible nominee than Buttigieg, whose support was extremely white, for example. Still, nonwhite support wasn’t a strength for Sanders in a head-to-head race against Biden, who generally beat Sanders by wide margins among black voters and held his own among Hispanics in many states. And Sanders’s outreach to African American leaders didn’t always go smoothly, with many members of the Congressional Black Caucus backing Biden instead.
Seventh, relying on a fixed base of voters can leave you vulnerable to a turnout surge from other candidates. One rather explicit assumption made by the Sanders campaign was that it could turn out more voters than its opponents. Hence, the campaign believed there was not much need to widen their circle to include others. Even their outreach efforts to Sanders-skeptical party leaders focused on trying to browbeat them into explaining why they didn’t support Sanders rather than explaining why they should support him. Again, from that Atlantic article:
That’s the case Sanders and his aides have been making as they’ve undertaken an outreach effort unlike anything from the last campaign, spending hours on phone calls trying to talk political leaders down from being completely opposed to him. They have a basic script: Start out asking where the support for Sanders is among their constituents, then ask why they think those people support him, and then ask the leaders to explain their own skepticism.
One problem with this attitude is that turnout in an election isn’t fixed — especially in primaries and caucuses where participation is low. You may turn out a certain number of people, but your base will not be constant as a percentage of the electorate if turnout goes up. In Michigan, for example, Sanders got nearly as many votes in 2020 (576,754) as in 2016 (599,000). But Biden got 838,555 votes in 2020, as compared to just 581,775 for Clinton in 2016 — part of a general pattern where turnout surged more in Biden’s best areas. So Sanders went from narrowly winning Michigan to losing it by 17 percentage points.
Perhaps Sanders was a victim of his own success in 2016. That is, he did such a good job of turning out voters in 2016 that it was hard to improve on his performance in 2020. Still, there was never really any recognition that his base alone might not be enough to win — and there were never many efforts to expand beyond his base. Indeed, it’s interesting that Sanders doubled down even more on his screw-the-establishment messaging amidst his success in the first three states — rather than trying to pivot to a more inclusive campaign and unify the party behind him.
I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 22, 2020
Maybe, if a few things had gone differently, it would have worked. Sanders did outlast more than two dozen other candidates, after all. Maybe if Michael Bloomberg hadn’t qualified for the Nevada debate and stumbled so badly there, moderate support would have remained divided between Bloomberg and Biden, and Sanders would have had a lot more wins on Super Tuesday. Maybe Sanders’s “60 Minutes” interview hurt him. Maybe he could have gotten Warren to endorse him. Who knows.
But the Sanders campaign was always pursuing a strategy that claimed to defy the odds, that assumed the old rules no longer applied, and that stuck its thumb in the eye of the establishment. It would have been remarkable if it had succeeded. But it’s no surprise that it didn’t.


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-09--Big Data Is Helping Us Fight The Coronavirus — But At What Cost To Our Privacy?

The battle against COVID-19 has laid bare the limitations of modern technology in the face of a pandemic .
We can ’ t accurately track the disease ’ s toll in real time , nor can we accurately predict where it ’ s headed .
We are told that developing a vaccine will take 18 months — which seems excruciatingly slow — and that the only truly effective weapon we have for now is widespread social distancing , which , of course , has its own painful economic side effects .
We always believed our modern tools would protect us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ startlingly inadequate against this invisible enemy .
In some ways at least , technology has been able to tell us more about how and where the virus is spreading .
Mostly , this has involved creatively harnessing the power of big data — using temperature readings from smart thermometers to detect COVID-19 hot spots , or aggregating cellphone location data to point to the areas of the country where people are staying home .
But against a backdrop of debate between civil liberties and public health , we also need to be asking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much surveillance is acceptable in the service of the greater good ?
To be clear , the types of data being tracked now are usually anonymized , aggregated in large groups according to , say , geography .
They are also collected with the consent of users .
But long before the new coronavirus emerged , critics of big tech companies were already pointing out that users typically give such consent through labyrinthine terms-of-service agreements , often not knowing what their data would ultimately be used for .
In today ’ s world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that rewards its collectors in many ways .
Even as individual data profiles that provide search suggestions , traffic directions and health guidance help improve daily life , that goes hand in hand with more nefarious motives companies might have for recording user activities .
Again , those were the worries being raised prior to the pandemic .
Now , COVID-19 has revealed much starker trade-offs between personal privacy and the collective benefits of technology .
In South Korea , for example , the ability to retrace an infected person ’ s steps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data is part of the country ’ s ( largely successful ) response to the virus .
Other countries are also ramping up digital surveillance at an individual level in the name of public health .
Although such measures may seem less likely to be used in the U.S. , one recent Harris poll showed that a sizable , bipartisan majority of Americans would favor a public coronavirus registry and be willing to share phone location data to get alerts about infected people being nearby .
These efforts might seem appealing because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a threat we ’ re struggling to otherwise control .
If less aggressive tracking — such as the aforementioned smart-thermometer data — has been useful in measuring the effects of social-distancing policies , even stronger versions have the potential to assist in contact tracing and ultimately help contain the virus for good .
If we can bring the power of our growing data-collection apparatus to bear in the fight against COVID-19 , shouldn ’ t we ?
“ This is a genuine emergency , and that justifies a lot of things that would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stanley , a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union , told Bloomberg .
“ But we have to make sure that these temporary powers do not become permanent in a way that hurts everybody else.
” During the coronavirus pandemic , this tension between safety and freedom is playing out across more than just the technology space .
Because a patchwork of policies are being implemented largely at the state level , the rules around actions like quarantines — and their constitutional enforceability — are somewhat open-ended .
“ Right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different protocols in terms of how to handle something that might be a health crisis such as this , ” said University of California , Irvine School of Law professor Michele Goodwin on a recent episode of Slate ’ s “ Amicus ” podcast .
“ There isn ’ t necessarily coherence in terms of states ’ laws .
There isn ’ t any coherence vis-a-vis state and federal law in this domain.
” But Goodwin stressed the need to maintain individual protections even in the face of an extraordinary crisis .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply go away because there is a virus that is afoot that might affect many people , ” she said .
“ You don ’ t lose your civil liberties simply because there is something in the air .
You don ’ t lose your civil liberties simply because you become sick .
It ’ s important to understand the primacy of due process.
” So what does a policy that balances data privacy and the public good look like ?
“ We ask three questions about proposals to use data about people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Adam Schwartz , a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation , told me over email .
“ Would it be effective ?
Would it excessively intrude on our liberties ?
Are there sufficient safeguards ?
” “ Some proposals would not be effective — e.g.
, use of cell-site location information for contact tracing , because it is not sufficiently granular to place two people close enough together to transmit the disease , ” Schwartz wrote .
“ Some proposals would excessively intrude on our liberties — e.g.
, @ @ @ @ @ @ @ download a tracking app .
[ But ] some forms of aggregated data might be a tolerable way to inform decision-making about the outbreak , provided [ there are ] sufficient safeguards to protect privacy.
” Because the coronavirus has been so difficult to stop , it ’ s tempting to fight it by whatever means are available — and there ’ s a case to be made for that , at least temporarily .
( After all , the whole concept of flattening the curve is about giving up freedom of movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
But it ’ s important to also remember that individual rights ceded during a crisis rarely return , even when that crisis subsides .
“ We are very troubled by the historical precedent that new powers given to government in times of crisis tend to stay in place , ” Schwartz told me .
“ Two decades after the 9/11 attacks , the NSA [ National Security Agency ] is still engaged in dragnet internet surveillance .
So before we support new forms of high-tech surveillance of personal data about location @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about whether the surveillance would actually be effective at solving the problem at hand .
And even when the answer is yes , sometimes the impact on our liberties is intolerable.
” And as tech companies were already under fire for collecting too much data before COVID-19 — and officials were already interested in using that information — that means being wary of what kind of information they ’ re able to gather , even if it offers creative ways to help combat the pandemic right now .

The battle against COVID-19 has laid bare the limitations of modern technology in the face of a pandemic. We can’t accurately track the disease’s toll in real time, nor can we accurately predict where it’s headed. We are told that developing a vaccine will take 18 months — which seems excruciatingly slow — and that the only truly effective weapon we have for now is widespread social distancing, which, of course, has its own painful economic side effects. We always believed our modern tools would protect us from catastrophe, but they have proven startlingly inadequate against this invisible enemy.
In some ways at least, technology has been able to tell us more about how and where the virus is spreading. Mostly, this has involved creatively harnessing the power of big data — using temperature readings from smart thermometers to detect COVID-19 hot spots, or aggregating cellphone location data to point to the areas of the country where people are staying home. But against a backdrop of debate between civil liberties and public health, we also need to be asking where the line is digitally: How much surveillance is acceptable in the service of the greater good?
To be clear, the types of data being tracked now are usually anonymized, aggregated in large groups according to, say, geography. They are also collected with the consent of users. But long before the new coronavirus emerged, critics of big tech companies were already pointing out that users typically give such consent through labyrinthine terms-of-service agreements, often not knowing what their data would ultimately be used for. In today’s world, data is an extremely valuable commodity that rewards its collectors in many ways. Even as individual data profiles that provide search suggestions, traffic directions and health guidance help improve daily life, that goes hand in hand with more nefarious motives companies might have for recording user activities.
Again, those were the worries being raised prior to the pandemic. Now, COVID-19 has revealed much starker trade-offs between personal privacy and the collective benefits of technology. In South Korea, for example, the ability to retrace an infected person’s steps using credit card transactions and cellphone tracking data is part of the country’s (largely successful) response to the virus. Other countries are also ramping up digital surveillance at an individual level in the name of public health. Although such measures may seem less likely to be used in the U.S., one recent Harris poll showed that a sizable, bipartisan majority of Americans would favor a public coronavirus registry and be willing to share phone location data to get alerts about infected people being nearby.
These efforts might seem appealing because they represent an effective use of technology against a threat we’re struggling to otherwise control. If less aggressive tracking — such as the aforementioned smart-thermometer data — has been useful in measuring the effects of social-distancing policies, even stronger versions have the potential to assist in contact tracing and ultimately help contain the virus for good. If we can bring the power of our growing data-collection apparatus to bear in the fight against COVID-19, shouldn’t we?
“This is a genuine emergency, and that justifies a lot of things that would not normally be justified,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Bloomberg. “But we have to make sure that these temporary powers do not become permanent in a way that hurts everybody else.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, this tension between safety and freedom is playing out across more than just the technology space. Because a patchwork of policies are being implemented largely at the state level, the rules around actions like quarantines — and their constitutional enforceability — are somewhat open-ended. “Right now, between states, there are different protocols in terms of how to handle something that might be a health crisis such as this,” said University of California, Irvine School of Law professor Michele Goodwin on a recent episode of Slate’s “Amicus” podcast. “There isn’t necessarily coherence in terms of states’ laws. There isn’t any coherence vis-a-vis state and federal law in this domain.”
But Goodwin stressed the need to maintain individual protections even in the face of an extraordinary crisis. “Our civil liberties don’t just simply go away because there is a virus that is afoot that might affect many people,” she said. “You don’t lose your civil liberties simply because there is something in the air. You don’t lose your civil liberties simply because you become sick. It’s important to understand the primacy of due process.”
So what does a policy that balances data privacy and the public good look like? “We ask three questions about proposals to use data about people in new ways in response to COVID-19,” Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me over email. “Would it be effective? Would it excessively intrude on our liberties? Are there sufficient safeguards?”
“Some proposals would not be effective — e.g., use of cell-site location information for contact tracing, because it is not sufficiently granular to place two people close enough together to transmit the disease,” Schwartz wrote. “Some proposals would excessively intrude on our liberties — e.g., China’s compulsion that every resident download a tracking app. [But] some forms of aggregated data might be a tolerable way to inform decision-making about the outbreak, provided [there are] sufficient safeguards to protect privacy.”
Because the coronavirus has been so difficult to stop, it’s tempting to fight it by whatever means are available — and there’s a case to be made for that, at least temporarily. (After all, the whole concept of flattening the curve is about giving up freedom of movement and activity in order to save lives.) But it’s important to also remember that individual rights ceded during a crisis rarely return, even when that crisis subsides.
“We are very troubled by the historical precedent that new powers given to government in times of crisis tend to stay in place,” Schwartz told me. “Two decades after the 9/11 attacks, the NSA [National Security Agency] is still engaged in dragnet internet surveillance. So before we support new forms of high-tech surveillance of personal data about location and health, we must think hard about whether the surveillance would actually be effective at solving the problem at hand. And even when the answer is yes, sometimes the impact on our liberties is intolerable.”
And as tech companies were already under fire for collecting too much data before COVID-19 — and officials were already interested in using that information — that means being wary of what kind of information they’re able to gather, even if it offers creative ways to help combat the pandemic right now.
Why itâs so hard to make a good COVID-19 model


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-09--Democratic And GOP Governors Enacted Stay-At-Home Orders On The Same Timeline. But All Holdouts Are

Democratic And GOP Governors Enacted Stay-At-Home Orders On The Same Timeline. But All Holdouts Are Republicans.

Republican governors have been widely criticized for being slower than their Democratic counterparts in imposing social distancing requirements to halt the spread of the new coronavirus .
Some Democratic governors — Govs .
Gavin Newsom ( California ) , Andrew Cuomo ( New York ) , J.B. Pritzker ( Illinois ) and Jay Inslee ( Washington ) in particular — moved to enact social distancing measures relatively early , in some cases weeks ahead of other states .
But this hasn ’ t been an entirely partisan push — Republican Gov .
Mike DeWine ( Ohio ) also enacted social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must be at war ” with the virus .
In fact , many of the governors who have responded the fastest , lead states that faced intense outbreaks of the virus much earlier than other states .
New York , for instance , is at the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. and accounts for nearly half of the country ’ s reported coronavirus-related deaths with thousands of new cases reported daily .
It makes sense , then , that we see some variation in when states first issued a statewide order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there an actual partisan split in how Democratic and Republican governors have responded ?
In looking at the first recorded COVID-19 case in a given state and how many days passed before the governor imposed a statewide “ stay at home ” or “ shelter in place ” order , I found a governor ’ s party affiliation didn ’ t make a huge difference in when the order was issued .
The median Democratic governor imposed such an order 21 days after the first case appeared and the median Republican governor took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of course , is that the eight governors who have yet to impose a statewide order are all Republican .
Yes , some of those states have partial stay-at-home orders enacted in some cities and counties , but nothing statewide .
And each of those states is now well beyond the 25-day time frame of the median Republican-led state .
Nebraska , for instance , saw its first case on Feb. 17 — 52 days ago — and still hasn ’ t imposed a statewide order .
However , these are also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of detected cases .
Obviously , detected cases aren ’ t a perfect metric , given the wide variation in testing strategies , but it does seem that there is less political demand on these governors to impose a stay-at-home order because the perception of an urgent public health crisis is less prevalent within those states .
Their party affiliation probably plays a role in that perception .
Republican Oklahoma Gov .
Kevin Stitt , for instance , made a point in mid-March of taking his family out to dinner , encouraging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help the local business community .
And although Stitt later sounded a more cautious tone , this is a line that has been echoed by a number of other Republican leaders , perhaps because the spread of the disease hasn ’ t been as prevalent in their state .
The virus largely appeared ( or was detected ) in Democratic-controlled states earlier , so there ’ s been more pressure for Democratic governors to respond .
But we ’ ll see just how much longer before the remaining governors impose such an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are signs that the coronavirus could grow just as fast in red states .

Republican governors have been widely criticized for being slower than their Democratic counterparts in imposing social distancing requirements to halt the spread of the new coronavirus. Some Democratic governors — Govs. Gavin Newsom (California), Andrew Cuomo (New York), J.B. Pritzker (Illinois) and Jay Inslee (Washington) in particular — moved to enact social distancing measures relatively early, in some cases weeks ahead of other states. But this hasn’t been an entirely partisan push — Republican Gov. Mike DeWine (Ohio) also enacted social distancing measures early, declaring “we must be at war” with the virus.
In fact, many of the governors who have responded the fastest, lead states that faced intense outbreaks of the virus much earlier than other states. New York, for instance, is at the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. and accounts for nearly half of the country’s reported coronavirus-related deaths with thousands of new cases reported daily.
It makes sense, then, that we see some variation in when states first issued a statewide order to stay at home, but is there an actual partisan split in how Democratic and Republican governors have responded? In looking at the first recorded COVID-19 case in a given state and how many days passed before the governor imposed a statewide “stay at home” or “shelter in place” order, I found a governor’s party affiliation didn’t make a huge difference in when the order was issued.
The median Democratic governor imposed such an order 21 days after the first case appeared and the median Republican governor took 25 days.
The key difference here, of course, is that the eight governors who have yet to impose a statewide order are all Republican. Yes, some of those states have partial stay-at-home orders enacted in some cities and counties, but nothing statewide. And each of those states is now well beyond the 25-day time frame of the median Republican-led state. Nebraska, for instance, saw its first case on Feb. 17 — 52 days ago — and still hasn’t imposed a statewide order.
However, these are also some of the states with the lowest number of detected cases. Obviously, detected cases aren’t a perfect metric, given the wide variation in testing strategies, but it does seem that there is less political demand on these governors to impose a stay-at-home order because the perception of an urgent public health crisis is less prevalent within those states. Their party affiliation probably plays a role in that perception.
Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, for instance, made a point in mid-March of taking his family out to dinner, encouraging other asymptomatic people to do the same to help the local business community. And although Stitt later sounded a more cautious tone, this is a line that has been echoed by a number of other Republican leaders, perhaps because the spread of the disease hasn’t been as prevalent in their state. The virus largely appeared (or was detected) in Democratic-controlled states earlier, so there’s been more pressure for Democratic governors to respond. But we’ll see just how much longer before the remaining governors impose such an order in their state, as there are signs that the coronavirus could grow just as fast in red states.
Would it hurt the economy to let people die from coronavirus? l FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-08--Politics Podcast: Bernie Sanders Suspends His Campaign For President

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign for president of the United States .
In this @ @ @ @ @ Politics podcast , the crew discusses why he lost , why he decided to drop @ @ @ @ @ and what his role in American politics will be going forward .
You can listen @ @ @ @ @ the “ play ” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in @ @ @ @ @ or your favorite podcast platform .
If you are new to podcasts , learn how @ @ @ @ @ Politics podcast publishes Mondays and Thursdays .
Help new listeners discover the show by leaving @ @ @ @ @ on iTunes .
Have a comment , question or suggestion for “ good polling vs. @ @ @ @ @ in touch by email , on Twitter or in the comments .

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign for president of the United States. In this emergency installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses why he lost, why he decided to drop out when he did, and what his role in American politics will be going forward.
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 publishes 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.
Sanders Drops Out
FiveThirtyEight Emergency Podcast: Sanders drops out of presidential race


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-08--Why Bernie Sanders Lost

Why Bernie Sanders Lost

There is a simple explanation for why Sen. Bernie Sanders , who officially suspended his presidential campaign on Wednesday , lost the Democratic nomination : Former Vice President Joe Biden trounced the Vermont senator when the race narrowed to a one-on-one contest after Super Tuesday .
The results of the caucuses and primaries before and on Super Tuesday left Sanders trailing Biden by 83 pledged delegates — a significant , but perhaps not insurmountable , deficit .
But the Vermont senator lost eight of the 11 contests after Super Tuesday , winning only North Dakota , the Northern Mariana Islands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but living abroad .
Moreover , many of Biden ’ s wins were blowouts , ballooning his pledged delegate lead to 311 , a margin that is essentially insurmountable .
Of course , the simple explanation for Sanders ’ s loss begs a deeper question : Why did Sanders do so badly in a one-on-one contest against Biden ?
I ’ d offer three explanations , none of which are mutually exclusive from the other two .
In 2016 , Sanders built a passionate bloc of supporters who crowded his rallies and flooded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , a more centrist , establishment Democrat who had greater appeal among black , Southern and older voters .
In 2020 , Sanders built a passionate bloc of supporters who crowded his rallies and flooded his campaign with money but lost to Biden , a more centrist , establishment Democrat who had greater appeal among black , Southern and older voters .
Sanders got almost no backing from elected Democrats in 2016 , and didn ’ t court the party establishment that much in 2020 either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his candidacy — not only did Sanders again get little support from the party elite , but that same elite was instrumental in helping Biden consolidate the field and winnow the race to a two-man contest .
Both Clinton and Biden were strong opponents , each having deep connections to a recent Democratic president .
But it ’ s fair to criticize Sanders for losing in 2020 in a fairly similar way to 2016 .
By all indications , Sanders and his team did make some attempts to avoid the pitfalls of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to measure this , but it seems like Sanders ’ s outreach to black voters in 2020 was more extensive than four years ago , even if it didn ’ t bear much fruit .
But Sanders ’ s failure to expand his coalition to older voters , minorities and establishment Democrats all but doomed his campaign .
Sanders and his aides also made new mistakes in 2020 .
There were some clear indications that some of Sanders ’ s success in 2016 — among white voters without college degrees , in particular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentiment than strong support for Sanders .
But the senator ’ s advisers seemed to think that Sanders had a unique appeal to white working-class voters that would simply continue in 2020 .
So the Sanders campaign decided to invest heavily in the March 10 primary in Michigan , a state packed with white voters without a college degree .
Biden not only won Michigan easily , but he won overall among white voters without a college degree ( and pretty comfortably ) .
Sanders stayed in the race for about a month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really the end of his campaign .
It undermined one of Sanders ’ s central arguments — that his brand of politics appealed to white voters without a degree in a way that the more centrist vision of Biden and Clinton did not , making the Vermont senator a stronger candidate than Biden in the general election .
Sanders and his team also expected that he would boost turnout among younger voters .
This did not pan out .
Sanders is clearly a skilled politician — he was probably a few breaks away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ field that included some formidable figures .
But former President Barack Obama ( in 2008 against Hillary Clinton ) and President Trump ( in 2016 against former Florida Gov .
Jeb Bush ) were able to defeat primary rivals who entered the race with strong political pedigrees .
Sanders fell short .
Democrats were wary of a very liberal nominee We made this case in more detail in an article earlier this week , arguing that Sanders , Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the Democratic left were always going to face an uphill climb @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overriding priority in 2020 has been defeating Trump , and many in the party view left-leaning ideas as something that makes it harder to win over swing voters .
The boomlets around former Rep. Beto O ’ Rourke and former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg , neither of whom had the traditional qualifications for a presidential nominee , had the feeling of the Democratic Party desperately searching for a white , male , centrist-y candidate to take on Trump .
The party landing on Biden ( white male , centrist-y @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this view , any mistakes that the Sanders campaign made likely played a trivial role compared to the core elements of his political persona , such as identifying as a democratic socialist and favoring fairly left-wing ideas like Medicare for All .
Maybe Democrats would have taken a chance on someone like Sanders at another time , but not with the specter of another four years of Trump if the party ’ s nominee loses in November .
“ If Sanders had this well-organized of a supporter base in 2016 , he might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a professor at George Washington University who specializes in political communication and media , told me .
“ 2016 was defined by deciding the future of the party in power .
2020 was defined by trying to remove the party in power .
Those are just completely different dynamics.
” Trump aside , Sanders was always a weird fit as the Democratic nominee Sanders has finished in second place in the Democratic nomination process the past two cycles .
But it ’ s worth asking : Was Sanders , a white male @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not officially a Democrat , really the second-most likely candidate to win the nomination in either 2016 or 2020 ?
Clinton was a strong front-runner in 2016 and basically cleared the field .
If she had opted against running in 2016 , it ’ s fairly likely that other prominent Democrats — say , Sen. Amy Klobuchar , Biden or Warren — would have run , and it ’ s not clear that Sanders could have defeated them either .
The way the primary process played out , with Sanders the clear front-runner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a surprising comeback to win , suggests that Sanders could have won in 2020 .
But it would have been somewhat fluky if a candidate ( Biden ) who led in the polls for basically the entire race crashed without the party ’ s establishment able to mobilize behind any alternative .
Had Biden not run in 2020 or faltered fairly early , could Buttigieg , O ’ Rourke , Sens .
Cory Booker or Kamala Harris , or even Warren have defeated the Vermont senator in the same way Biden did , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sanders , running to his right and receiving the bulk of support from the party ’ s establishment ?
That seems entirely possible .
Sanders being an older white man is probably relevant here too .
In 2016 , Democrats opted for a historic choice in nominating a female candidate .
In 2020 , they nominated a centrist white guy who they believe is the most electable candidate .
It ’ s hard to imagine Democrats in 2016 blocking the first-ever female major-party nominee in favor of a white socialist man — or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white socialist man over a white centrist man .
In other words , even though a Sanders win seemed plausible and even likely after Nevada , are we really surprised that Sanders is not the Democratic nominee ?
In the context of modern presidential primaries , the real surprise would have been if Democrats had chosen Sanders over a slew of other candidates running on either Bill Clinton-style electoral centrism ( Montana Gov .
Steve Bullock , Biden , Klobuchar ) or Obama-style hope and change ( Booker , Buttigieg , Harris , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pushed the Democratic Party to the left on policy and ideology — but now the party has pushed him back to the U.S. Capitol .

Perry Bacon Jr. (perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com)

There is a simple explanation for why Sen. Bernie Sanders, who officially suspended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, lost the Democratic nomination: Former Vice President Joe Biden trounced the Vermont senator when the race narrowed to a one-on-one contest after Super Tuesday. The results of the caucuses and primaries before and on Super Tuesday left Sanders trailing Biden by 83 pledged delegates — a significant, but perhaps not insurmountable, deficit. But the Vermont senator lost eight of the 11 contests after Super Tuesday, winning only North Dakota, the Northern Mariana Islands and among Democrats who are American citizens but living abroad. Moreover, many of Biden’s wins were blowouts, ballooning his pledged delegate lead to 311, a margin that is essentially insurmountable.
Of course, the simple explanation for Sanders’s loss begs a deeper question: Why did Sanders do so badly in a one-on-one contest against Biden? I’d offer three explanations, none of which are mutually exclusive from the other two.
Sanders didn’t run a smart enough campaign
In 2016, Sanders built a passionate bloc of supporters who crowded his rallies and flooded his campaign with money, but lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a more centrist, establishment Democrat who had greater appeal among black, Southern and older voters. In 2020, Sanders built a passionate bloc of supporters who crowded his rallies and flooded his campaign with money but lost to Biden, a more centrist, establishment Democrat who had greater appeal among black, Southern and older voters. Sanders got almost no backing from elected Democrats in 2016, and didn’t court the party establishment that much in 2020 either. That was a major barrier to his candidacy — not only did Sanders again get little support from the party elite, but that same elite was instrumental in helping Biden consolidate the field and winnow the race to a two-man contest.
Both Clinton and Biden were strong opponents, each having deep connections to a recent Democratic president. But it’s fair to criticize Sanders for losing in 2020 in a fairly similar way to 2016.
By all indications, Sanders and his team did make some attempts to avoid the pitfalls of his 2016 run. It’s hard to measure this, but it seems like Sanders’s outreach to black voters in 2020 was more extensive than four years ago, even if it didn’t bear much fruit. But Sanders’s failure to expand his coalition to older voters, minorities and establishment Democrats all but doomed his campaign.
Sanders and his aides also made new mistakes in 2020. There were some clear indications that some of Sanders’s success in 2016 — among white voters without college degrees, in particular — had more to do with anti-Clinton sentiment than strong support for Sanders. But the senator’s advisers seemed to think that Sanders had a unique appeal to white working-class voters that would simply continue in 2020. So the Sanders campaign decided to invest heavily in the March 10 primary in Michigan, a state packed with white voters without a college degree. Biden not only won Michigan easily, but he won overall among white voters without a college degree (and pretty comfortably).
Sanders stayed in the race for about a month after Michigan, but that loss was really the end of his campaign. It undermined one of Sanders’s central arguments — that his brand of politics appealed to white voters without a degree in a way that the more centrist vision of Biden and Clinton did not, making the Vermont senator a stronger candidate than Biden in the general election.
Sanders and his team also expected that he would boost turnout among younger voters. This did not pan out.
Sanders is clearly a skilled politician — he was probably a few breaks away from winning the nomination in a crowded field that included some formidable figures. But former President Barack Obama (in 2008 against Hillary Clinton) and President Trump (in 2016 against former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush) were able to defeat primary rivals who entered the race with strong political pedigrees. Sanders fell short.
Democrats were wary of a very liberal nominee
We made this case in more detail in an article earlier this week, arguing that Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the Democratic left were always going to face an uphill climb in the 2020 primary. Democrats’ overriding priority in 2020 has been defeating Trump, and many in the party view left-leaning ideas as something that makes it harder to win over swing voters. The boomlets around former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, neither of whom had the traditional qualifications for a presidential nominee, had the feeling of the Democratic Party desperately searching for a white, male, centrist-y candidate to take on Trump. The party landing on Biden (white male, centrist-y) fits that general narrative.
In this view, any mistakes that the Sanders campaign made likely played a trivial role compared to the core elements of his political persona, such as identifying as a democratic socialist and favoring fairly left-wing ideas like Medicare for All. Maybe Democrats would have taken a chance on someone like Sanders at another time, but not with the specter of another four years of Trump if the party’s nominee loses in November.
“If Sanders had this well-organized of a supporter base in 2016, he might well have won,” David Karpf, a professor at George Washington University who specializes in political communication and media, told me. “2016 was defined by deciding the future of the party in power. 2020 was defined by trying to remove the party in power. Those are just completely different dynamics.”
Trump aside, Sanders was always a weird fit as the Democratic nominee
Sanders has finished in second place in the Democratic nomination process the past two cycles. But it’s worth asking: Was Sanders, a white male democratic socialist in his 70s who is not officially a Democrat, really the second-most likely candidate to win the nomination in either 2016 or 2020? Clinton was a strong front-runner in 2016 and basically cleared the field. If she had opted against running in 2016, it’s fairly likely that other prominent Democrats — say, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Biden or Warren — would have run, and it’s not clear that Sanders could have defeated them either.
The way the primary process played out, with Sanders the clear front-runner after the Nevada caucuses and Biden needing a surprising comeback to win, suggests that Sanders could have won in 2020. But it would have been somewhat fluky if a candidate (Biden) who led in the polls for basically the entire race crashed without the party’s establishment able to mobilize behind any alternative. Had Biden not run in 2020 or faltered fairly early, could Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Sens. Cory Booker or Kamala Harris, or even Warren have defeated the Vermont senator in the same way Biden did, by getting into a one-on-one race with Sanders, running to his right and receiving the bulk of support from the party’s establishment? That seems entirely possible.
Sanders being an older white man is probably relevant here too. In 2016, Democrats opted for a historic choice in nominating a female candidate. In 2020, they nominated a centrist white guy who they believe is the most electable candidate. It’s hard to imagine Democrats in 2016 blocking the first-ever female major-party nominee in favor of a white socialist man — or in 2020 for them to choose a white socialist man over a white centrist man.
In other words, even though a Sanders win seemed plausible and even likely after Nevada, are we really surprised that Sanders is not the Democratic nominee? In the context of modern presidential primaries, the real surprise would have been if Democrats had chosen Sanders over a slew of other candidates running on either Bill Clinton-style electoral centrism (Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Biden, Klobuchar) or Obama-style hope and change (Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, O’Rourke). Sanders has pushed the Democratic Party to the left on policy and ideology — but now the party has pushed him back to the U.S. Capitol.


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-08--Here’s What Voters Told Us About Voting In Wisconsin’s Primary

Amid the global coronavirus outbreak and over the objections of a governor who tried to stop in-person voting at the last minute , Wisconsin held its election Tuesday for the Democratic presidential nomination , the state Supreme Court and several local offices .
We won ’ t have actual results until Monday at the earliest , but at this point , we do know that the election experienced a number of setbacks .
Across the state , a shortage of poll workers led to the closure and consolidation of many polling places , which resulted in extremely long lines on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — a city of almost 600,000 people — had just five polling places open ( in normal circumstances , it would have 180 polling places ) .
As a result , wait times in Milwaukee averaged an hour and a half to two hours , with some voters waiting as long as two and a half hours to cast their ballots .
In Green Bay , a city of 105,000 that downsized from 31 polling places to just two , some voters waited nearly three hours .
Long lines were also reported in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was forced to consolidate to one polling place for its population of 70,000 .
But in cities where fewer polling places closed , there seemed to be fewer hiccups .
For example , Madison ( a city less than half Milwaukee ’ s size ) kept 66 polling places open ( compared with 92 normally ) , and there were no major reports of long lines .
Everywhere , though , election officials took extraordinary measures to keep voters safe .
Plexiglass barriers were erected at many polling places to separate poll workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a suburb of Madison , poll workers were instructed to wipe down voting equipment every 15 minutes .
In the small city of Lake Mills , voter Jonathan McLaughlin told FiveThirtyEight he was given hand sanitizer on his way into the polling place , and each voter was given a fresh Bic pen with which to vote ( they were told to either keep it or throw it away when they were done ) .
And according to Kelly Westlund , who was working the polls in Ashland , a city of 8,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team sanitized their hands and the voting equipment regularly and made sure voters kept at least 6 feet apart .
All the poll workers in Ashland were also provided with masks from local hat manufacturer Stormy Kromer .
Some jurisdictions also offered curbside ( a.k.a .
drive-through ) voting , where voters stayed in their car .
But not everyone felt this was safer .
Charles Minnich , who voted curbside on Tuesday morning in Beloit ( on the Illinois border ) , told FiveThirtyEight that the unorthodox setup seemed unrehearsed , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weren ’ t wearing any personal protective equipment .
“ People seemed confused by the whole process , on both sides of the clipboard , ” he said .
“ People are going to get sick and probably die from this.
” Plenty of voters ( 1,287,764 , at last count ) attempted to avoid the inconvenience and dangers of in-person voting by voting absentee — but they weren ’ t immune from problems either .
Because local election officials have been overwhelmed by the number of absentee-ballot requests , there was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the result that , as of Tuesday , many voters still had not received absentee ballots that they requested even weeks in advance .
The Milwaukee Election Commission alone received hundreds of phone calls from voters who said their absentee ballots never arrived .
This might not have been a problem either had the U.S. Supreme Court not ruled late on Monday that absentee ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday , April 7 , in order to count .
( Previously , a federal district judge had decreed that ballots would count as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 13 , even if they were postmarked after Election Day . )
But the Supreme Court ’ s decision essentially forced voters who had not yet received their ballots to either brave the in-person polling places on Tuesday or abstain from voting altogether .
Milwaukee voter Ericka Tucker told FiveThirtyEight that she requested an absentee ballot over three weeks ago and just received it on Monday — only to discover the city had sent her the wrong ballot .
( It was for a different ward from the one she lives in and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) Tucker said she was loath to vote in person because she has been experiencing cold symptoms ( although she does not think she has COVID-19 ) , but she felt that the election for state Supreme Court was too important to sit out .
Luckily , her polling place offered a special drive-through voting line for sick people and she was able to cast a ballot safely .
At the same time , however , a record number of Wisconsinites were able to successfully cast their absentee ballots .
As of Tuesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ returned statewide — even more than the 819,316 that were counted in the 2016 general election , which was likely the most absentee ballots ever cast in state history .
And although overall turnout numbers aren ’ t yet available , it ’ s likely that significantly more Wisconsin voters decided to vote absentee than in-person — remarkable in a state where only 10 percent of ballots were cast absentee in the 2016 presidential primary .
In the City of Milwaukee alone , 56,489 absentee ballots were cast ( and thousands more could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just 18,803 people who voted in person .
However , this still points to a steep dropoff in voter turnout in Milwaukee .
In Wisconsin ’ s 2016 spring election and presidential primary , Milwaukee cast 167,765 ballots , whereas now only 75,292 ballots have been cast .
We don ’ t yet know what turnout was like in other corners of Wisconsin , but it ’ s possible there were dramatic disparities in voter access across the state , and that could end up affecting the outcome of the election .

Amid the global coronavirus outbreak and over the objections of a governor who tried to stop in-person voting at the last minute, Wisconsin held its election Tuesday for the Democratic presidential nomination, the state Supreme Court and several local offices. We won’t have actual results until Monday at the earliest, but at this point, we do know that the election experienced a number of setbacks.
Across the state, a shortage of poll workers led to the closure and consolidation of many polling places, which resulted in extremely long lines on Election Day. For example, Milwaukee — a city of almost 600,000 people — had just five polling places open (in normal circumstances, it would have 180 polling places). As a result, wait times in Milwaukee averaged an hour and a half to two hours, with some voters waiting as long as two and a half hours to cast their ballots. In Green Bay, a city of 105,000 that downsized from 31 polling places to just two, some voters waited nearly three hours. Long lines were also reported in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, which was forced to consolidate to one polling place for its population of 70,000. But in cities where fewer polling places closed, there seemed to be fewer hiccups. For example, Madison (a city less than half Milwaukee’s size) kept 66 polling places open (compared with 92 normally), and there were no major reports of long lines.
Everywhere, though, election officials took extraordinary measures to keep voters safe. Plexiglass barriers were erected at many polling places to separate poll workers from voters. And in Fitchburg, a suburb of Madison, poll workers were instructed to wipe down voting equipment every 15 minutes. In the small city of Lake Mills, voter Jonathan McLaughlin told FiveThirtyEight he was given hand sanitizer on his way into the polling place, and each voter was given a fresh Bic pen with which to vote (they were told to either keep it or throw it away when they were done). And according to Kelly Westlund, who was working the polls in Ashland, a city of 8,000 in northern Wisconsin, she and her team sanitized their hands and the voting equipment regularly and made sure voters kept at least 6 feet apart. All the poll workers in Ashland were also provided with masks from local hat manufacturer Stormy Kromer.
Some jurisdictions also offered curbside (a.k.a. drive-through) voting, where voters stayed in their car. But not everyone felt this was safer. Charles Minnich, who voted curbside on Tuesday morning in Beloit (on the Illinois border), told FiveThirtyEight that the unorthodox setup seemed unrehearsed, and many of the poll workers he saw weren’t wearing any personal protective equipment. “People seemed confused by the whole process, on both sides of the clipboard,” he said. “People are going to get sick and probably die from this.”
Plenty of voters (1,287,764, at last count) attempted to avoid the inconvenience and dangers of in-person voting by voting absentee — but they weren’t immune from problems either. Because local election officials have been overwhelmed by the number of absentee-ballot requests, there was a backlog in sending them out — with the result that, as of Tuesday, many voters still had not received absentee ballots that they requested even weeks in advance. The Milwaukee Election Commission alone received hundreds of phone calls from voters who said their absentee ballots never arrived.
This might not have been a problem either had the U.S. Supreme Court not ruled late on Monday that absentee ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday, April 7, in order to count. (Previously, a federal district judge had decreed that ballots would count as long as they were received by April 13, even if they were postmarked after Election Day.) But the Supreme Court’s decision essentially forced voters who had not yet received their ballots to either brave the in-person polling places on Tuesday or abstain from voting altogether.
Milwaukee voter Ericka Tucker told FiveThirtyEight that she requested an absentee ballot over three weeks ago and just received it on Monday — only to discover the city had sent her the wrong ballot. (It was for a different ward from the one she lives in and therefore featured the wrong local elections.) Tucker said she was loath to vote in person because she has been experiencing cold symptoms (although she does not think she has COVID-19), but she felt that the election for state Supreme Court was too important to sit out. Luckily, her polling place offered a special drive-through voting line for sick people and she was able to cast a ballot safely.
At the same time, however, a record number of Wisconsinites were able to successfully cast their absentee ballots. As of Tuesday evening, 990,129 absentee ballots had been returned statewide — even more than the 819,316 that were counted in the 2016 general election, which was likely the most absentee ballots ever cast in state history. And although overall turnout numbers aren’t yet available, it’s likely that significantly more Wisconsin voters decided to vote absentee than in-person — remarkable in a state where only 10 percent of ballots were cast absentee in the 2016 presidential primary. In the City of Milwaukee alone, 56,489 absentee ballots were cast (and thousands more could still be in transit ) compared with just 18,803 people who voted in person.
However, this still points to a steep dropoff in voter turnout in Milwaukee. In Wisconsin’s 2016 spring election and presidential primary, Milwaukee cast 167,765 ballots, whereas now only 75,292 ballots have been cast. We don’t yet know what turnout was like in other corners of Wisconsin, but it’s possible there were dramatic disparities in voter access across the state, and that could end up affecting the outcome of the election.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: US has held elections during times of crisis before


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-08--Media Coverage Doesn’t Actually Determine Public Opinion On The Economy

In mid-February , Wall Street was celebrating the stock market reaching record highs .
But the stock market has since lost roughly 20 percent of its value in the wake of the coronavirus , and the broader economy is in freefall as well .
A record number of Americans have filed for unemployment benefits , and the March jobs report found the economy had lost 700,000 jobs — the first time that number has declined in a decade .
But even though large swaths of the economy have shuttered with extraordinary speed , this economic downturn is likely to hit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ others .
Those disparate effects , in turn , raise a question that is critical for politics as well as economics : In a country as large and diverse as the U.S. , how do citizens know whether the economy is doing better or worse ?
One obvious source of information is the news media .
In fact , some political scientists have found that negative news coverage of the economy can shape public opinion , especially in an election year .
Marc Hetherington , for instance , found that media coverage in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was more negative than the economy warranted and cost incumbent President George H.W .
Bush support .
That could be particularly telling now , considering this is all happening just months ahead of a presidential election , and a strong economy has historically boosted the incumbent president ’ s chances of winning reelection .
But in a 2017 “ Research & Politics ” article , Eunji Kim , Soojong Kim and I found that the news media ’ s ability to influence Americans ’ perceptions of the economy may be overstated .
Our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coverage of the economy is much more likely to lag public perceptions than to lead them .
That means that the media coverage of an economic recession , like the one we seem to be headed toward , isn ’ t independently reshaping how Americans think the economy is doing .
Instead , we found that media coverage often follows public opinion .
We used nearly 40 years of data from the University of Michigan ’ s surveys of consumers , a long-running survey that asks Americans their views of the economy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ level of concern about the economy .
We then compared that index to a measure of how 24 different media outlets covered the economy during that same time period , including big national newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post as well as regional papers like the Houston Chronicle .
Systematically measuring media outlets ’ coverage in nearly half a million newspaper articles and television transcripts proved a bit more challenging .
But similar to our approach with the economic survey data , we created an index , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ negative economies — words like “ bear , ” “ drop , ” “ jobless , ” and “ layoff , ” as well as “ bull , ” “ growth , ” and “ invest ” — to score the tone of economic stories published by these outlets .
And if we drill down into one of the most prominent media outlets we analyzed , The New York Times , we find no indication that media coverage is shaping public opinion .
A telltale sign of media influence would have been if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic coverage shifted before public perception does .
But as you can see in the chart below , that didn ’ t really happen .
Instead , the public ’ s perceptions of the economy more often seemed to lead news coverage rather than lag behind it .
For instance , during key moments such as in the run-up to the Great Recession in 2008 , the public grew more pessimistic well before the Times ’ s tone shifted .
In fact , this was the case across the 24 media outlets we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which we found that the tone of media coverage consistently led public perceptions of the economy , but overall , we found no strong evidence that media coverage pushed Americans as a whole to perceive the economy in one way or the other .
Given how much attention politicians devote to the tone of media coverage , these results may seem surprising .
But we ’ re actually not the only researchers to conclude that public perceptions aren ’ t heavily influenced by how the media frames the economy .
H. Brandon Haller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found that citizens ’ perceptions of the economy didn ’ t vary much based on their news consumption habits .
Still , other studies find evidence that the influence can run in both directions , with the tone of media coverage sometimes anticipating public perceptions .
For example , Stuart Soroka , Dominik Stecula and Christopher Wlezien found that public perceptions can anticipate media coverage , but also that media coverage can actually lead public perceptions of how the economy has performed but not perceptions of how it will perform .
After examining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four highest-circulation national newspapers , though , Amber Boydstun , Benjamin Highton , and Suzanna Linn conclude that media coverage can predict how Americans view the economy even after accounting for the state of the economy itself .
On two key points , then , academic research has been consistent : Public perceptions of the economy can get out ahead of media coverage , and public perceptions are also closely connected to actual economic conditions .
This suggests that there are critical limits to the media ’ s influence on public perceptions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shows the impact of elite opinion is often overstated .
In other words , when the economy shifts directions , the news media ’ s capacity to reshape public perceptions of the economy is limited at best .
It ’ s easy to pick up a newspaper and assume that its writers and editors can shape public opinion , but that doesn ’ t seem to be true of the economy .
Rather , the public reacts to real-world economic conditions , not media spin .

In mid-February, Wall Street was celebrating the stock market reaching record highs. But the stock market has since lost roughly 20 percent of its value in the wake of the coronavirus, and the broader economy is in freefall as well. A record number of Americans have filed for unemployment benefits, and the March jobs report found the economy had lost 700,000 jobs — the first time that number has declined in a decade.
But even though large swaths of the economy have shuttered with extraordinary speed, this economic downturn is likely to hit some people and places much harder than others. Those disparate effects, in turn, raise a question that is critical for politics as well as economics: In a country as large and diverse as the U.S., how do citizens know whether the economy is doing better or worse?
One obvious source of information is the news media. In fact, some political scientists have found that negative news coverage of the economy can shape public opinion, especially in an election year. Marc Hetherington, for instance, found that media coverage in the run-up to the 1992 presidential election was more negative than the economy warranted and cost incumbent President George H.W. Bush support. That could be particularly telling now, considering this is all happening just months ahead of a presidential election, and a strong economy has historically boosted the incumbent president’s chances of winning reelection.
But in a 2017 “Research & Politics” article, Eunji Kim, Soojong Kim and I found that the news media’s ability to influence Americans’ perceptions of the economy may be overstated. Our analysis found that major media outlets’ coverage of the economy is much more likely to lag public perceptions than to lead them. That means that the media coverage of an economic recession, like the one we seem to be headed toward, isn’t independently reshaping how Americans think the economy is doing. Instead, we found that media coverage often follows public opinion.
We used nearly 40 years of data from the University of Michigan’s surveys of consumers, a long-running survey that asks Americans their views of the economy, to create a monthly index of Americans’ level of concern about the economy. We then compared that index to a measure of how 24 different media outlets covered the economy during that same time period, including big national newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post as well as regional papers like the Houston Chronicle. Systematically measuring media outlets’ coverage in nearly half a million newspaper articles and television transcripts proved a bit more challenging. But similar to our approach with the economic survey data, we created an index, this time using words associated with positive or negative economies — words like “bear,” “drop,” “jobless,” and “layoff,” as well as “bull,” “growth,” and “invest” — to score the tone of economic stories published by these outlets.
And if we drill down into one of the most prominent media outlets we analyzed, The New York Times, we find no indication that media coverage is shaping public opinion. A telltale sign of media influence would have been if the tone of the Times’s economic coverage shifted before public perception does. But as you can see in the chart below, that didn’t really happen. Instead, the public’s perceptions of the economy more often seemed to lead news coverage rather than lag behind it. For instance, during key moments such as in the run-up to the Great Recession in 2008, the public grew more pessimistic well before the Times’s tone shifted.
In fact, this was the case across the 24 media outlets we analyzed. There were some outlets for which we found that the tone of media coverage consistently led public perceptions of the economy, but overall, we found no strong evidence that media coverage pushed Americans as a whole to perceive the economy in one way or the other.
Given how much attention politicians devote to the tone of media coverage, these results may seem surprising. But we’re actually not the only researchers to conclude that public perceptions aren’t heavily influenced by how the media frames the economy. H. Brandon Haller and Helmut Norpoth, for instance, found that citizens’ perceptions of the economy didn’t vary much based on their news consumption habits.
Still, other studies find evidence that the influence can run in both directions, with the tone of media coverage sometimes anticipating public perceptions. For example, Stuart Soroka, Dominik Stecula and Christopher Wlezien found that public perceptions can anticipate media coverage, but also that media coverage can actually lead public perceptions of how the economy has performed but not perceptions of how it will perform. After examining the tone of economic coverage in the four highest-circulation national newspapers, though, Amber Boydstun, Benjamin Highton, and Suzanna Linn conclude that media coverage can predict how Americans view the economy even after accounting for the state of the economy itself.
On two key points, then, academic research has been consistent: Public perceptions of the economy can get out ahead of media coverage, and public perceptions are also closely connected to actual economic conditions. This suggests that there are critical limits to the media’s influence on public perceptions, which is consistent with other research that shows the impact of elite opinion is often overstated.
In other words, when the economy shifts directions, the news media’s capacity to reshape public perceptions of the economy is limited at best. It’s easy to pick up a newspaper and assume that its writers and editors can shape public opinion, but that doesn’t seem to be true of the economy. Rather, the public reacts to real-world economic conditions, not media spin.
Would it hurt the economy to let people die from coronavirus? l FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-04-07--Scientists Don’t Know If Hydroxychloroquine Is Useful — Or Even Safe — For Coronavirus Patients

President Trump has touted hydroxychloroquine , an antimalarial drug , as a way to fight COVID-19 .
But without proper @ @ @ @ @ t know the risks of giving this drug , or any other medication , to @ @ @

Scientists Don’t Know If Hydroxychloroquine Is Useful — Or Even Safe — For Coronavirus Patients
President Trump has touted hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, as a way to fight COVID-19. But without proper testing, we don’t know the risks of giving this drug, or any other medication, to coronavirus patients.