fivethirtyeight--2020-01-23--Republican Voters Increasingly Back The GOP’s Move To Block Impeachment Witnesses

On Tuesday , the impeachment trial of President Trump featured hours of acrimonious debate over whether witnesses should be called and what a fair process would look like .
Now , as the House impeachment managers begin to present their case against Trump , the latest iteration of our survey with Ipsos , where we use Ipsos ’ s KnowledgePanel to poll the same respondents every few weeks , found that a solid majority ( 58 percent ) of Americans continue to think that Trump committed an impeachable offense .
As in our poll released three weeks ago , more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s enough evidence to remove Trump from office for his actions relating to the Ukraine scandal ( 52 percent ) and for his refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry and efforts to block witnesses from complying with subpoenas ( 53 percent ) .
Similarly , a majority ( 54 percent ) of Americans say they would approve of the Senate voting to remove Trump from office .
Almost exactly the same share ( 55 percent ) oppose the idea of dismissing impeachment charges entirely .
But as is the case with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is a big partisan divide , with Democrats much more likely to support removing Trump from office than Republicans , and Republicans much likelier to support dismissing the charges than Democrats .
Even though the impeachment process is now in its final phase , we still haven ’ t seen big changes in how respondents feel about many of the questions we ’ ve been tracking .
But in our latest survey , we did see that among people who ’ ve responded to all five waves of our survey , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ statistically significant ) uptick in the share of respondents who think Trump committed an impeachable offense ( from 55 percent in November to 58 percent now ) .
This group isn ’ t quite as big as the 1,600 respondents who filled out our most recent survey , but it ’ s still quite large — nearly 1,200 people — and the fact that they have responded to all five survey waves means that we can get a pretty detailed picture of how their views have changed over time .
Any shift in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , given how narrowly Americans are divided and how steady their views have been , according both to our polling with Ipsos and our tracker of polls that ask about impeachment .
We also found that Republicans in our panel are increasingly supportive of Trump and skeptical of key elements of the Democrats ’ case against him .
For example , the share of Republicans who strongly approve of the way Trump is handling the impeachment process has risen since November , from 27 percent to 36 percent .
And a smaller share @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be inappropriate to withhold military aid from Ukraine while demanding an investigation into the Bidens , or for Trump to cover up his actions relating to Ukraine — signaling that Republicans may increasingly be on Trump ’ s side .
The partisan divide on witnesses is widening On Tuesday night , Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer forced a series of votes on whether to subpoena the Trump administration and State Department for more documents , and whether to compel top aides to testify .
And while those efforts failed , the topic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is likely to come up again after House Democrats and Trump ’ s legal team present their arguments .
As in our previous survey , we found that a majority ( 59 percent ) of Americans still support hearing new witnesses and testimony , while 37 percent want to keep the focus solely on the evidence introduced in the House hearings .
But although the top line number hasn ’ t really shifted , Democrats and Republicans have become much more polarized over the past couple of weeks on this issue .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and 48 percent of Republicans supported bringing in new witnesses .
But now the share of Democrats who want new witnesses has risen to 74 percent , while the share of Republicans who say the same has fallen to 41 percent .
Republican voters ’ swift change of heart on this issue could make it politically easier for Senate Republicans to vote against calling new witnesses , which remains one of the big open questions in the trial .
Moderate senators like Maine ’ s Susan Collins may still feel pressure to support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , rank-and-file Republicans seem to be just fine with a rapid trial that includes no new evidence or testimony .
Few think the Senate is impartial At the beginning of the impeachment trial , senators swore an oath to “ do impartial justice.
” What that means in practice , though , is pretty much up to them , in part because there ’ s no way to disqualify a senator for bias .
Nevertheless , according to our survey released three weeks ago , the vast majority ( 86 percent ) of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impartial jurors , while just 10 percent thought they should be guided by their party on how to vote .
In our new survey , though , we asked respondents what they thought the senators will do — and we found a similarly vast divide : Only 29 percent of Americans think the senators will attempt to be impartial jurors , while 68 percent believe senators ’ votes will be guided by their party .
This cynicism about how senators will approach the impeachment trial did bring us , however , a rare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( 71 percent ) and Republicans ( 65 percent ) agreed that senators will probably be guided by party over conscience .
That echoes a finding we ’ ve seen in previous waves of our survey — when it comes to impeachment , partisans can ’ t agree on anything except the fact that the process has been partisan .
Both parties think impeachment will help them In our past few surveys , we ’ ve consistently found that respondents are divided on whether the fate of Trump ’ s presidency should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Our most recent survey , for instance , found that half of Americans think voters in the upcoming election should determine Trump ’ s fate , while 47 percent believe he should be removed from office by the Senate .
But our survey also found that Americans are divided about whether being impeached will affect Trump ’ s chance of being reelected in November : 35 percent believe it won ’ t have any impact on his chances of being reelected , while 32 percent say it will hurt him and 29 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Perhaps unsurprisingly , though , Republicans and Democrats both tend to think that their side will benefit electorally from the impeachment fight .
Only 13 percent of Democrats believe that impeaching Trump will help him get reelected in November , while 37 percent say it won ’ t make a difference and 47 percent say his reelection chances will be hurt .
Nearly half ( 49 percent ) of Republicans , meanwhile , say Trump ’ s reelection chances will be helped by impeachment , while 33 percent believe it won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it will hurt his chance of reelection .
So it ’ s not just perspectives on how the trial should unfold that are polarized — Americans are also divided by party on what impeachment will mean for the 2020 election .
We ’ ll be keeping track of whether those opinions change as the process draws to a close over the next few weeks .

On Tuesday, the impeachment trial of President Trump featured hours of acrimonious debate over whether witnesses should be called and what a fair process would look like. Now, as the House impeachment managers begin to present their case against Trump, the latest iteration of our survey with Ipsos, where we use Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel to poll the same respondents every few weeks, found that a solid majority (58 percent) of Americans continue to think that Trump committed an impeachable offense.
As in our poll released three weeks ago, more than half of Americans also believe there’s enough evidence to remove Trump from office for his actions relating to the Ukraine scandal (52 percent) and for his refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry and efforts to block witnesses from complying with subpoenas (53 percent). Similarly, a majority (54 percent) of Americans say they would approve of the Senate voting to remove Trump from office. Almost exactly the same share (55 percent) oppose the idea of dismissing impeachment charges entirely.
But as is the case with pretty much every aspect of impeachment, there is a big partisan divide, with Democrats much more likely to support removing Trump from office than Republicans, and Republicans much likelier to support dismissing the charges than Democrats.
A majority would approve of removing Trump from office Share of respondents in an Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight poll who said they would approve of Trump being removed from office, and the share who support dismissing charges against Trump party Approve of Trump being removed from office Support dismissing charges against trump All 54.0% – 41.3% – Democratic 85.9 – 17.0 – Republican 18.1 – 73.2 – Table shows responses to two different questions, so answers should not add up to 100 percent.
Even though the impeachment process is now in its final phase, we still haven’t seen big changes in how respondents feel about many of the questions we’ve been tracking. But in our latest survey, we did see that among people who’ve responded to all five waves of our survey, there’s been an ever-so-slight (but statistically significant) uptick in the share of respondents who think Trump committed an impeachable offense (from 55 percent in November to 58 percent now). This group isn’t quite as big as the 1,600 respondents who filled out our most recent survey, but it’s still quite large — nearly 1,200 people — and the fact that they have responded to all five survey waves means that we can get a pretty detailed picture of how their views have changed over time. Any shift in perspectives on impeachment is noteworthy, too, given how narrowly Americans are divided and how steady their views have been, according both to our polling with Ipsos and our tracker of polls that ask about impeachment.
We also found that Republicans in our panel are increasingly supportive of Trump and skeptical of key elements of the Democrats’ case against him. For example, the share of Republicans who strongly approve of the way Trump is handling the impeachment process has risen since November, from 27 percent to 36 percent. And a smaller share of Republicans now say that it would be inappropriate to withhold military aid from Ukraine while demanding an investigation into the Bidens, or for Trump to cover up his actions relating to Ukraine — signaling that Republicans may increasingly be on Trump’s side.
The partisan divide on witnesses is widening
On Tuesday night, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer forced a series of votes on whether to subpoena the Trump administration and State Department for more documents, and whether to compel top aides to testify. And while those efforts failed, the topic of whether new witnesses should be called is likely to come up again after House Democrats and Trump’s legal team present their arguments.
As in our previous survey, we found that a majority (59 percent) of Americans still support hearing new witnesses and testimony, while 37 percent want to keep the focus solely on the evidence introduced in the House hearings. But although the top line number hasn’t really shifted, Democrats and Republicans have become much more polarized over the past couple of weeks on this issue. In late December, 65 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans supported bringing in new witnesses. But now the share of Democrats who want new witnesses has risen to 74 percent, while the share of Republicans who say the same has fallen to 41 percent.
Republican voters’ swift change of heart on this issue could make it politically easier for Senate Republicans to vote against calling new witnesses, which remains one of the big open questions in the trial. Moderate senators like Maine’s Susan Collins may still feel pressure to support bringing in new witnesses, but increasingly, rank-and-file Republicans seem to be just fine with a rapid trial that includes no new evidence or testimony.
Few think the Senate is impartial
At the beginning of the impeachment trial, senators swore an oath to “do impartial justice.” What that means in practice, though, is pretty much up to them, in part because there’s no way to disqualify a senator for bias. Nevertheless, according to our survey released three weeks ago, the vast majority (86 percent) of Americans think senators should attempt to be impartial jurors, while just 10 percent thought they should be guided by their party on how to vote.
In our new survey, though, we asked respondents what they thought the senators will do — and we found a similarly vast divide: Only 29 percent of Americans think the senators will attempt to be impartial jurors, while 68 percent believe senators’ votes will be guided by their party.
This cynicism about how senators will approach the impeachment trial did bring us, however, a rare moment of unity, as most Democrats (71 percent) and Republicans (65 percent) agreed that senators will probably be guided by party over conscience. That echoes a finding we’ve seen in previous waves of our survey — when it comes to impeachment, partisans can’t agree on anything except the fact that the process has been partisan.
Both parties think impeachment will help them
In our past few surveys, we’ve consistently found that respondents are divided on whether the fate of Trump’s presidency should be determined by voters or by the Senate. Our most recent survey, for instance, found that half of Americans think voters in the upcoming election should determine Trump’s fate, while 47 percent believe he should be removed from office by the Senate. But our survey also found that Americans are divided about whether being impeached will affect Trump’s chance of being reelected in November: 35 percent believe it won’t have any impact on his chances of being reelected, while 32 percent say it will hurt him and 29 percent say it will help him.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, Republicans and Democrats both tend to think that their side will benefit electorally from the impeachment fight. Only 13 percent of Democrats believe that impeaching Trump will help him get reelected in November, while 37 percent say it won’t make a difference and 47 percent say his reelection chances will be hurt. Nearly half (49 percent) of Republicans, meanwhile, say Trump’s reelection chances will be helped by impeachment, while 33 percent believe it won’t make a difference and 16 percent say it will hurt his chance of reelection.
So it’s not just perspectives on how the trial should unfold that are polarized — Americans are also divided by party on what impeachment will mean for the 2020 election. We’ll be keeping track of whether those opinions change as the process draws to a close over the next few weeks.


fivethirtyeight--2020-01-22--Election Update: It’s Cherry-Picking Season

As of our most recent Election Update this weekend , I noted that polls since last week ’ s debate had been — this is a scientific term — “ pretty weird.
” Well , it ’ s time to revise that statement .
There have been a whole bunch of new polls over the past couple of days .
And they ’ ve been not just pretty weird … but really weird .
As far as I ’ m concerned , that means it ’ s exactly the sort of time when it ’ s helpful to take an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On balance , national polls have been pretty good for Bernie Sanders — but there ’ s a lot of variation from survey to survey .
On Wednesday morning , for instance , a CNN poll came out showing him leading Joe Biden nationally and having gained 7 percentage points from the previous CNN poll in December .
But a couple of hours later , YouGov ’ s weekly tracking poll came out showing Sanders in third place — or having lost ground since last week ’ s debate .
If you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about which poll is “ right ” and which one is “ wrong ” — well , that ’ s just not how we do things around here .
And any such claims would be a bit ridiculous given the inherently high margin of error on primary polls .
Primary and caucus polling is always a struggle , so the hope is that by accounting for a wider range of pollsters and methods , an average will prove to be a bit less wrong than any individual poll might be .
At a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increases the sample size , which is a relevant factor since primary polls often use considerably smaller sample sizes than general election ones .
What you don ’ t want to do , of course , is to cherry-pick data .
There ’ s actually been quite a bit of post-debate polling , and if Sanders had actually gained 7 points nationally , as the CNN poll shows , we would have seen more signs of it by now .
It would be an equally big mistake , however , to “ throw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
CNN has not shown especially strong results for Sanders before , and CNN ’ s pollster , SSRS , is reasonably highly rated .
It ’ s a sign that a pollster is doing honest work when it ’ s willing to publish a poll that differs a bit from the consensus .
So stick the CNN poll in the average instead … and you ’ ll see there ’ s still some good signs for Sanders .
In fact , at 20.4 percent , Sanders is in his strongest position in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ State polls have been much more of a mixed bag , with Sanders having fallen slightly in our Iowa and New Hampshire polling averages since the debate — but we ’ ll cover those in the next section .
A bit more about those national polls first .
In addition , to CNN and YouGov , Morning Consult and Monmouth University also released national polls on Wednesday morning .
These join earlier post-debate national polls from SurveyUSA and Ipsos .
Here ’ s a table showing those polls for the top six candidates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ table showing the change from the previous pre-debate poll for each pollster .
Note that the pre-debate poll wasn ’ t necessarily that recent ; the last time that SurveyUSA had polled the race nationally was in November , for instance .
In the tables , you can see how a simple average of the six most recent polls compares to the much fancier FiveThirtyEight polling average : They ’ re really pretty darn similar .
There are some differences , though .
For instance , it ’ s worth noting that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1086 ) as many respondents as Monmouth ( 372 ) and more than twice as many as CNN ( 500 ) ; our averages account for that by giving SurveyUSA more weight .
House effects are also something of a factor ; for instance , SurveyUSA tends to show good numbers for Biden , Morning Consult tends to show good numbers for Sanders , YouGov tends to show good numbers for Elizabeth Warren ; and Ipsos tends to show poor numbers for all candidates except Sanders .
Those explain some of the differences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ none of this really matters that much .
As you can see , the FiveThirtyEight average and a simple average of the six post-debate polls produce highly similar results .
Likewise , the average change in the polls is pretty similar regardless of which method you use .
Take a simple average of the change in Sanders ’ s numbers since the last time these six pollsters surveyed the field , and he ’ s gained 2.0 percentage points since the debate .
Similarly , he ’ s gained 1.7 percentage points in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , calculated since Jan. 14 , the day of the debate .
Michael Bloomberg has also gained ground regardless of what method you choose and is close to catching Pete Buttigieg in our national average .
State polls haven ’ t been great for Sanders , though There have also been quite a few state polls since the debate , however , and they don ’ t tell a terribly consistent story with the national polls .
They ’ re actually on the weak side for Sanders .
Iowa polls from Neighborhood Research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both conducted since the debate , have Sanders in 5th and 4th place , respectively in the Hawkeye state .
But Sanders does have some decent excuses here ; the David Binder poll has generally been one of his worst ones in Iowa , and the Neighborhood Research poll has a small sample size and is from a Republican pollster that hasn ’ t previously released data in Iowa ( as such , it receives a relatively small weight in our model ) .
Nonetheless , based on recent Iowa polls — both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would appear to be Biden ’ s state to lose more than Sanders ’ s .
Biden has been ahead or tied for the lead in 4 of the 5 Iowa polls since the new year , as compared with just two for Sanders .
( Although one of the polls that had Sanders ahead was the highly-rated Selzer & Co .
poll . )
In fact , Sanders has basically slipped into a three-way tie for second place in Iowa with Warren and Buttigieg .
In New Hampshire , true to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weird .
Two new polls conducted wholly or partially since the debate , from Emerson College and Suffolk University , each show Sanders leading there — but having lost ground relative to the previous editions of the same polls .
Instead , these polls show growth for candidates outside of the top three , such as Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar .
And in the case of the Suffolk poll , there are also a large number of undecided voters .
( Sanders , despite being the leading candidate in the Suffolk poll , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the poll . )
Sanders leads in our New Hampshire polling average , but no candidate should feel particularly secure in the Granite State .
Wednesday also saw the release of polling in four delegate-rich Midwestern swing states from a consortium of universities there , Baldwin Wallace University , Oakland University and Ohio Northern University .
Sanders led in Wisconsin , but Biden held leads in Ohio , Michigan and Pennsylvania .
How much do national polls matter ?
Overall , our forecast just hasn ’ t changed that much since we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden has a 43 percent chance of a delegate majority , followed by Sanders at 20 percent , Warren at 14 percent and Buttigieg at 8 percent .
The chance of no candidate winning a majority of delegates is 15 percent .
Technically , Biden is up very slightly and Sanders is down very slightly since we first launched the forecast , but the differences are small and not worth spending a ton of time worrying about .
If you look carefully , though , you can see how the model tends to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or at least it does so right now , with Iowa set to vote in less than two weeks ) .
For example , Sanders did gain ground in the model following the release of the Selzer poll of Iowa on Jan. 10 , but — despite his standing in national polls improving — he ’ s given those gains back because of an underwhelming series of polls in Iowa and New Hampshire .
You might be wondering : How does the model even use national polls ?
There is no national primary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have several uses in the model .
To simplify , here are the three most important ones : • • We use national polls to calculate a trendline adjustment , which can influence states that haven ’ t been polled recently .
For instance , if there are no recent polls of Oregon , but Sanders has gained 3 points in national polls since the last time Oregon was polled , the model will assume he ’ s gained ground in Oregon , too .
• National polls are used as a baseline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potentially receive after winning or finishing strongly in a state .
The twist is that the higher a candidate ’ s standing in national polls , the less her bounce after winning a state ( and the more she might decline after losing a state ) .
Empirically , the bounce that a candidate gets after winning a state depends strongly on expectations , and national polls are a good proxy for voter and media expectations .
Less abstractly , the fact that Sanders is now seen as a national front-runner means that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden in Iowa — he might gain less ground following a win there , and lose more ground nationally if he finishes in anything other than first place or a strong second .
Warren or Buttigieg , on the other hand , would probably be seen more as underdogs , and those sort of candidates have historically gotten bigger bounces after winning Iowa .
• In various implicit and explicit ways , national polls help the model to predict the outcome of states where there isn ’ t much polling .
So basically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
3 tend to help a candidate in the model when their national polls are strong , but factor No .
2 ( rising expectations ) actually hurts them .
To be clear , our experience with the model so far — keep in mind that this is the first time we ’ ve run a full-fledged primary forecast — is that No .
1 and No .
3 usually outweigh No .
2 .
In other words , a candidate would usually prefer to gain ground in national polls , as far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there is some ambiguity about the influence of national polls in the model , especially when there is a lot of recent state polling and so the timeline adjustment ( No .
1 ) doesn ’ t have as much impact .
Essentially , this leaves us with three plausible interpretations of the post-debate polling : • National polls tell the true story of the race , and the slightly quirky set of recent Iowa and New Hampshire polls since the debate are misleading .
If so , Sanders should expect to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowa and New Hampshire polls .
This would be good news for Sanders .
• All of this is noise , and none of the candidates ’ positions have changed much since the debate .
This would be neutral news for Sanders .
• Whether or not Sanders is gaining in national polls , Iowa and New Hampshire have their own dynamics , and Sanders does not appear to be closing strongly there .
This would be bad news for Sanders .
Polling since the debate just doesn ’ t provide a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stories is correct .
So we ’ ll have to wait and see if the picture clears up by the weekend .

As of our most recent Election Update this weekend, I noted that polls since last week’s debate had been — this is a scientific term — “pretty weird.”
Well, it’s time to revise that statement. There have been a whole bunch of new polls over the past couple of days. And they’ve been not just pretty weird … but really weird. As far as I’m concerned, that means it’s exactly the sort of time when it’s helpful to take an average instead of fixating on individual polls.
On balance, national polls have been pretty good for Bernie Sanders — but there’s a lot of variation from survey to survey. On Wednesday morning, for instance, a CNN poll came out showing him leading Joe Biden nationally and having gained 7 percentage points from the previous CNN poll in December. But a couple of hours later, YouGov’s weekly tracking poll came out showing Sanders in third place — or having lost ground since last week’s debate.
If you’ve come looking for confident assertions about which poll is “right” and which one is “wrong” — well, that’s just not how we do things around here. And any such claims would be a bit ridiculous given the inherently high margin of error on primary polls. Primary and caucus polling is always a struggle, so the hope is that by accounting for a wider range of pollsters and methods, an average will prove to be a bit less wrong than any individual poll might be. At a bare minimum, averaging or aggregating polls increases the sample size, which is a relevant factor since primary polls often use considerably smaller sample sizes than general election ones.
What you don’t want to do, of course, is to cherry-pick data. There’s actually been quite a bit of post-debate polling, and if Sanders had actually gained 7 points nationally, as the CNN poll shows, we would have seen more signs of it by now.
It would be an equally big mistake, however, to “throw out” or ignore the CNN poll. CNN has not shown especially strong results for Sanders before, and CNN’s pollster, SSRS, is reasonably highly rated. It’s a sign that a pollster is doing honest work when it’s willing to publish a poll that differs a bit from the consensus. So stick the CNN poll in the average instead … and you’ll see there’s still some good signs for Sanders.
National polls show Sanders and Bloomberg gaining, others flat
In fact, at 20.4 percent, Sanders is in his strongest position in our national polling average since April. State polls have been much more of a mixed bag, with Sanders having fallen slightly in our Iowa and New Hampshire polling averages since the debate — but we’ll cover those in the next section. A bit more about those national polls first.
In addition, to CNN and YouGov, Morning Consult and Monmouth University also released national polls on Wednesday morning. These join earlier post-debate national polls from SurveyUSA and Ipsos. Here’s a table showing those polls for the top six candidates:
Biden leads, Sanders second in post-debate national polls Where the top six candidates stand in six national polls, after the last debate Post-debate toplines Pollster Biden Sanders Warren Buttigieg Bloomberg Klobuchar CNN/SSRS 24 27 14 11 5 4 Ipsos 19 20 12 6 9 2 Monmouth 30 23 14 9 6 5 Morning Consult 29 24 15 8 10 3 SurveyUSA 32 21 14 9 9 2 YouGov 28 18 21 8 6 4 Simple avg. 27.0 22.2 15.0 8.5 7.5 3.3 FiveThirtyEight avg. 26.6 20.4 15.8 7.6 7.3 3.2 Current FiveThirtyEight national polling average and most recent polls, as of Jan. 22
And here’s a companion table showing the change from the previous pre-debate poll for each pollster. Note that the pre-debate poll wasn’t necessarily that recent; the last time that SurveyUSA had polled the race nationally was in November, for instance.
National polls show gains for Sanders, Bloomberg How the top six candidates’ standing changed from each pollster’s previous pre-debate poll Pollster Biden Sanders Warren Buttigieg Bloomberg Klobuchar CNN/SSRS -2.0 +7.0 -2.0 +3.0 +0.0 +1.0 Ipsos -4.0 +0.0 -3.0 +1.0 +1.0 +1.0 Monmouth +4.0 +2.0 -3.0 -2.0 +4.0 +1.0 Morning Consult +0.0 +1.0 +1.0 +0.0 +2.0 +0.0 SurveyUSA +2.0 +4.0 -1.0 -2.0 +6.0 +0.0 YouGov +1.0 -2.0 +2.0 +1.0 +1.0 +1.0 Raw avg. change +0.2 +2.0 -1.0 +0.2 +2.3 +0.7 FiveThirtyEight avg. change* -0.1 +1.7 -0.3 +0.2 +1.5 +0.1 *Calculated change in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average since Jan. 14
In the tables, you can see how a simple average of the six most recent polls compares to the much fancier FiveThirtyEight polling average: They’re really pretty darn similar. There are some differences, though. For instance, it’s worth noting that the SurveyUSA poll had about three times (1086) as many respondents as Monmouth (372) and more than twice as many as CNN (500); our averages account for that by giving SurveyUSA more weight. House effects are also something of a factor; for instance, SurveyUSA tends to show good numbers for Biden, Morning Consult tends to show good numbers for Sanders, YouGov tends to show good numbers for Elizabeth Warren; and Ipsos tends to show poor numbers for all candidates except Sanders. Those explain some of the differences between the polls, too.
But none of this really matters that much. As you can see, the FiveThirtyEight average and a simple average of the six post-debate polls produce highly similar results. Likewise, the average change in the polls is pretty similar regardless of which method you use. Take a simple average of the change in Sanders’s numbers since the last time these six pollsters surveyed the field, and he’s gained 2.0 percentage points since the debate. Similarly, he’s gained 1.7 percentage points in the fancy version of the FiveThirtyEight average, calculated since Jan. 14, the day of the debate. Michael Bloomberg has also gained ground regardless of what method you choose and is close to catching Pete Buttigieg in our national average.
State polls haven’t been great for Sanders, though
There have also been quite a few state polls since the debate, however, and they don’t tell a terribly consistent story with the national polls. They’re actually on the weak side for Sanders. Iowa polls from Neighborhood Research and Media and David Binder Research, both conducted since the debate, have Sanders in 5th and 4th place, respectively in the Hawkeye state. But Sanders does have some decent excuses here; the David Binder poll has generally been one of his worst ones in Iowa, and the Neighborhood Research poll has a small sample size and is from a Republican pollster that hasn’t previously released data in Iowa (as such, it receives a relatively small weight in our model).
Nonetheless, based on recent Iowa polls — both before and after the debate — Iowa would appear to be Biden’s state to lose more than Sanders’s. Biden has been ahead or tied for the lead in 4 of the 5 Iowa polls since the new year, as compared with just two for Sanders. (Although one of the polls that had Sanders ahead was the highly-rated Selzer & Co. poll.) In fact, Sanders has basically slipped into a three-way tie for second place in Iowa with Warren and Buttigieg.
Iowa and N.H. trends have been medicore for Sanders How the top five candidates’ polling averages in Iowa and New Hampshire changed, before and after the last debate Iowa New Hampshire Candidate Jan. 14* Current Change Jan. 14 Current Change Biden 20.1 21.4 +1.3 21.8 17.9 -3.9 Sanders 19.9 17.8 -2.1 20.1 19.5 -0.6 Warren 14.9 16.4 +1.5 16.0 13.8 -2.2 Buttigieg 17.4 16.6 -0.8 13.1 13.9 +0.8 Klobuchar 6.7 8.4 +1.7 4.7 7.1 +2.4 * Polling average as of the day before the debate.
In New Hampshire, true to the theme, the polling has also been weird. Two new polls conducted wholly or partially since the debate, from Emerson College and Suffolk University, each show Sanders leading there — but having lost ground relative to the previous editions of the same polls. Instead, these polls show growth for candidates outside of the top three, such as Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. And in the case of the Suffolk poll, there are also a large number of undecided voters. (Sanders, despite being the leading candidate in the Suffolk poll, has only 16 percent of the vote in the poll.) Sanders leads in our New Hampshire polling average, but no candidate should feel particularly secure in the Granite State.
Wednesday also saw the release of polling in four delegate-rich Midwestern swing states from a consortium of universities there, Baldwin Wallace University, Oakland University and Ohio Northern University. Sanders led in Wisconsin, but Biden held leads in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
How much do national polls matter?
Overall, our forecast just hasn’t changed that much since we first released it two weeks ago. Biden has a 43 percent chance of a delegate majority, followed by Sanders at 20 percent, Warren at 14 percent and Buttigieg at 8 percent. The chance of no candidate winning a majority of delegates is 15 percent. Technically, Biden is up very slightly and Sanders is down very slightly since we first launched the forecast, but the differences are small and not worth spending a ton of time worrying about.
If you look carefully, though, you can see how the model tends to privilege state polls over national polls (or at least it does so right now, with Iowa set to vote in less than two weeks). For example, Sanders did gain ground in the model following the release of the Selzer poll of Iowa on Jan. 10, but — despite his standing in national polls improving — he’s given those gains back because of an underwhelming series of polls in Iowa and New Hampshire.
You might be wondering: How does the model even use national polls? There is no national primary, after all. But national polls have several uses in the model. To simplify, here are the three most important ones:
We use national polls to calculate a trendline adjustment, which can influence states that haven’t been polled recently. For instance, if there are no recent polls of Oregon, but Sanders has gained 3 points in national polls since the last time Oregon was polled, the model will assume he’s gained ground in Oregon, too. National polls are used as a baseline to calibrate the bounce a candidate will potentially receive after winning or finishing strongly in a state. The twist is that the higher a candidate’s standing in national polls, the less her bounce after winning a state (and the more she might decline after losing a state). Empirically, the bounce that a candidate gets after winning a state depends strongly on expectations, and national polls are a good proxy for voter and media expectations. Less abstractly, the fact that Sanders is now seen as a national front-runner means that — as is also the case with Biden in Iowa — he might gain less ground following a win there, and lose more ground nationally if he finishes in anything other than first place or a strong second. Warren or Buttigieg, on the other hand, would probably be seen more as underdogs, and those sort of candidates have historically gotten bigger bounces after winning Iowa. In various implicit and explicit ways, national polls help the model to predict the outcome of states where there isn’t much polling.
So basically, factors No. 1 and No. 3 tend to help a candidate in the model when their national polls are strong, but factor No. 2 (rising expectations) actually hurts them. To be clear, our experience with the model so far — keep in mind that this is the first time we’ve run a full-fledged primary forecast — is that No. 1 and No. 3 usually outweigh No. 2. In other words, a candidate would usually prefer to gain ground in national polls, as far as the model is concerned. Still, there is some ambiguity about the influence of national polls in the model, especially when there is a lot of recent state polling and so the timeline adjustment (No. 1) doesn’t have as much impact.
Essentially, this leaves us with three plausible interpretations of the post-debate polling:
National polls tell the true story of the race, and the slightly quirky set of recent Iowa and New Hampshire polls since the debate are misleading. If so, Sanders should expect to do better in the next set of Iowa and New Hampshire polls. This would be good news for Sanders.
All of this is noise, and none of the candidates’ positions have changed much since the debate. This would be neutral news for Sanders.
Whether or not Sanders is gaining in national polls, Iowa and New Hampshire have their own dynamics, and Sanders does not appear to be closing strongly there. This would be bad news for Sanders.
Polling since the debate just doesn’t provide a lot of clarity on which one of these stories is correct. So we’ll have to wait and see if the picture clears up by the weekend.
Is our primary system democratic?


fivethirtyeight--2020-01-22--Politics Podcast: How Senators Are Making Their Political Calculations In The Impeachment Trial

President Trump ’ s impeachment trial is underway , and the political strategies of both Democrats and Republicans are on @ @ @ @ @ installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , Perry Bacon Jr. and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux discuss those @ @ @ @ @ will cross party lines in the final vote .
You can listen to the episode @ @ @ @ @ ” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the @ @ @ @ @ podcast platform .
If you are new to podcasts , learn how to listen .
@ @ @ @ @ Mondays and Thursdays .
Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating @ @ @ @ @ Have a comment , question or suggestion for “ good polling vs. bad polling ” @ @ @ @ @ email , on Twitter or in the comments .

President Trump’s impeachment trial is underway, and the political strategies of both Democrats and Republicans are on clear display. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Perry Bacon Jr. and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux discuss those strategies and whether any senators will cross party lines in the final vote.
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.


fivethirtyeight--2020-01-22--What Went Down During Rep. Adam Schiff’s Opening Arguments In The Senate Impeachment Trial

What Went Down During Rep. Adam Schiff ’ s Opening Arguments In The Senate Impeachment Trial

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fivethirtyeight--2020-01-23--There Has To Be A Better Way To Pick Presidential Nominees … Right?

Not all democracies are the same .
Sure , the bedrock principle — governing according to the will of the people — is consistent , but there are lots of structural decisions that influence who “ the people ” are and how their diverse wishes are tallied .
Those decisions have consequences , influencing who runs for office , how they campaign and how they ultimately govern .
Take our presidential primary system as an example .
How we seek to find a consensus within parties in the U.S. is , as we ’ ve covered in past episodes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world ’ s democracies .
It ’ s accidental and arguably doesn ’ t always do a great job of finding a consensus .
So is there a better way of doing things ?
Throughout the month of January , the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast has been exploring the system we use to choose presidential candidates in an audio documentary series .
In the first installment , we looked at the accidental way our modern primary system came to be .
In the second , we explored its consequences .
In this , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ask how things could be different .
To answer that question , we look at how other democracies choose their candidates and ask political scientists how they would design a candidate selection system from scratch .
To hear the episode click play above or subscribe to the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast .
You can also learn more about our primary system on the FiveThirtyEight Youtube channel .
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 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good polling vs. bad polling ” ?
Get in touch by email , on Twitter or in the comments .

Not all democracies are the same. Sure, the bedrock principle — governing according to the will of the people — is consistent, but there are lots of structural decisions that influence who “the people” are and how their diverse wishes are tallied. Those decisions have consequences, influencing who runs for office, how they campaign and how they ultimately govern.
Take our presidential primary system as an example. How we seek to find a consensus within parties in the U.S. is, as we’ve covered in past episodes of The Primaries Project, unique among the world’s democracies. It’s accidental and arguably doesn’t always do a great job of finding a consensus. So is there a better way of doing things?
Throughout the month of January, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast has been exploring the system we use to choose presidential candidates in an audio documentary series. In the first installment, we looked at the accidental way our modern primary system came to be. In the second, we explored its consequences. In this, the final installment of the series, we ask how things could be different.
To answer that question, we look at how other democracies choose their candidates and ask political scientists how they would design a candidate selection system from scratch. To hear the episode click play above or subscribe to the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast. You can also learn more about our primary system on the FiveThirtyEight Youtube channel.
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.
Is our primary system democratic?


fivethirtyeight--2020-01-23--Election Update: What Are The Chances Of A Brokered Convention?

A brokered convention is not a likely occurrence , exactly .
But it ’ s not unlikely , either .
It ’ s roughly as likely as the Tennessee Titans beating the Baltimore Ravens earlier this month , or Donald Trump winning the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote .
According to the FiveThirtyEight primary model , there ’ s a 15 percent chance that no Democrat wins a majority of pledged delegates : So does that mean we ’ d be headed to a BrOkErEd CoNvEnTiOn — the first brokered convention of the modern primary era , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ necessarily .
It ’ s time for a little bit of a detour into a brokered convention explainer .
( As a bonus , there is a Venn diagram coming . )
What is a brokered convention , exactly ?
And is it the same as a contested convention ?
First , consider the rather precise phrasing that our model uses .
It forecasts the chance that a candidate wins “ more than half of pledged delegates.
” To be more exact , it forecasts the chance a candidate wins a majority of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the day on June 6 , when the last state or territory ( the Virgin Islands ) votes .
Winning a majority of pledged delegates is not quite the same thing as winning the nomination .
Nor does the failure of any candidate to win the majority of delegates by June 6 necessarily imply a contested or brokered convention .
This is because of a dirty little secret : Democratic delegates are pledged to certain candidates based on the results of primaries and caucuses .
But they are not actually legally bound to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first ballot .
In theory , this means Democratic delegates could subvert the will of the voters and deny a candidate who had won the majority of pledged delegates the nomination .
But this is highly unlikely .
( Barring , perhaps , a candidate dropping out between June 6 and the convention because of a scandal or health problem . )
Among other things , candidates pick their own pledged delegates which increases the chance that delegates will be loyal .
It is reasonably likely , however , that a candidate who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pledged delegates on June 6 could nonetheless wind up with one before the convention in Milwaukee .
Consider a case like this … after the Virgin Islands votes on June 6 , the pledged delegate count is as follows : • the remaining 10 percent are scattered between other candidates .
Our model would treat this as a “ no majority ” outcome .
Basically , the model doesn ’ t consider anything that happens beyond June 6 , including the possibility that delegates vote for a candidate other than the one they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happen in a case like this is that — in recognition of Warren ’ s fairly emphatic plurality — Sanders would ask his delegates to vote for Warren on the first ballot .
Or , heck , maybe Biden would too .
The delegates , of course , wouldn ’ t be under any obligation to follow Sanders ’ s or Biden ’ s instructions .
But if enough of them did , Warren could win a majority of delegates on the first ballot .
Moreover , all of this might be decided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the convention itself would be anticlimactic .
I should pause here to note that the definitions of “ contested convention ” and “ brokered convention ” — and whether those terms mean slightly different things or are entirely synonymous !
— are open to debate .
“ Brokered convention ” is sometimes regarded as an outmoded term because it implies the use of brokers — which isn ’ t a terribly good description of the convention process as it exists today .
Rather , a contested convention could be a relatively open process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wheeling and dealing behind closed doors — having most of the agency to determine the outcome .
With that said , unless one is trying to be very precise , I don ’ t have any problem with using “ brokered convention ” as a near-synonym for “ contested convention.
” As to the best definition of a contested convention , I have stronger feelings about that .
I ’ d say a contested convention is a case where the nomination outcome is genuinely in doubt at the time the convention begins .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ bit of subjectivity ( what does “ genuinely in doubt ” mean ? )
.
The problem is that the most common alternative definition — that a contested convention is any convention that requires multiple ballots — doesn ’ t capture the spirit of a contested convention very well .
That ’ s because there could be situations where a convention nominally required multiple ballots to resolve , but the outcome wasn ’ t contentious .
Say in the scenario above — where Warren had won a clear plurality of pledged delegates — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ensure party unity behind Warren would be to have Biden and Sanders delegates respect the original primary and caucus vote on the first ballot and vote for Biden and Sanders .
Then everybody would get behind Warren as a show of force on the second ballot .
Moreover , say all of this was scripted and widely disclosed to the press weeks ahead of the convention .
It ’ s hard to think of this being a contested convention in any meaningful respect .
Conversely , it ’ s possible to imagine the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the relevant negotiations to resolve the deadlock take place before the first ballot is cast .
Say , for instance , that after the Virgin Islands , the delegate count was Sanders 32 percent , Biden 28 percent , Amy Klobuchar 25 percent , and Warren 15 percent .
There ’ s a lot of doubt about the identity of the nominee when everyone gathers in Milwaukee .
But Biden offers Klobuchar the vice presidency in exchange for Klobuchar instructing her delegates to vote for Biden on the first ballot .
Klobuchar agrees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ along , so Biden is nominated with 53 percent of the vote on the first ballot .
To me , that ought to count as a contested convention , even though it technically required only one ballot .
Got all that ?
Here ’ s a Venn Diagram to help : Again , the key thing to remember here is that the model ’ s no-pledged-delegate-majority scenario does not necessarily imply a contested or brokered convention .
It ’ s probably fairly close to an upper bound on the likelihood of a contested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of no majority of pledged delegates on June 6 might imply , I don ’ t know , only a 10 or 12 percent chance of an actual contested convention , as I ’ d define it .
The best time for Democrats to avoid a contested convention is before Super Tuesday Whether it ’ s 10 percent , 12 percent or 15 percent , I suspect the probability our model spits out for a contested convention will strike some of you as high and others of you as low .
On the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historically been a sucker ’ s bet .
Pundits and reporters love to speculate about the possibility .
But out of 18 competitive nomination processes since 1972 , none has resulted in what ’ s uniformly regarded as a contested convention , although some arguably were .
( I think the 1976 Republican race probably meets the definition of a nomination whose outcome was uncertain when the convention began .
Even that was 44 years ago , however . )
On the other hand , a number of other nominations — including the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close to resulting in contested conventions .
The 2016 Republican convention could also plausibly have been contested if Republicans had used Democrats ’ rules .
( Trump got a big boost from winner-take-all and winner-take-most states , which Democratic rules do not allow for ) .
Moreover , the 2020 Democratic primary is among the more open-ended nomination processes we ’ ve seen , with at least four — and possibly five ( if you count Klobuchar ) — plausible winners of Iowa .
But it isn ’ t necessarily the most open-ended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 Republican nominations were all fairly similar , as were the 1988 , 1992 and 2004 Democratic nominations , and none of those produced contested conventions .
The once-very-large number of candidates doesn ’ t seem terribly relevant any more either ; many candidates have already dropped out , and several of the ones that remain have little to no chance of accumulating delegates .
Still , it ’ s not hard to imagine cases where the primary is at a stalemate between three or more candidates .
And that ’ s key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or more Democrats to continue accumulating delegates on a sustained basis .
There are three main factors that work to prevent such a scenario from happening , however : • First , Democratic rules only award delegates to candidates who get at least 15 percent of the vote in particular states or districts .
It ’ s not a perfectly bright line — if you ’ re at , say , 14 percent , you ’ ll still likely get delegates in some districts but not others .
But it ’ s a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Tulsi Gabbard can command 5 to 6 percent of the vote with their own relatively distinct constituencies — but it won ’ t net them any delegates .
• Second , the early states serve to winnow the field .
Only Biden and to a lesser extent Sanders are comfortably above 15 percent in national polls , and even they ’ re not so far above as to necessarily be in a position to stay there following poor showings in the early states .
Meanwhile , Warren and Buttigieg ( who isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would almost certainly be in trouble in the absence of early state wins .
• And third , our model assumes that candidates are reasonably likely to drop out if they don ’ t have a shot at the nomination , even if they could complicate life for other candidates .
This is the most debatable assumption , so we ’ ll revisit it in a bit .
More precisely , the key to Democrats ensuring there ’ s not a contested convention is for a lot of this winnowing to take place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either candidates fall below 15 percent because their supporters shift to other candidates or they drop out .
Remember : What happens in the early states doesn ’ t matter very much to the overall delegate math .
Iowa , New Hampshire , Nevada and South Carolina collectively account for only about 4 percent of Democratic delegates .
But Super Tuesday accounts for roughly one-third of all pledged delegates .
So if three or more candidates are still winning delegates as of Super Tuesday , that doesn ’ t necessarily make a contested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make it a more distinct possibility .
Our model hopes to sort its way through all of these scenarios , so let ’ s look at the output from 10,000 simulations in our model run as of late Thursday morning .
For each simulation , I tallied up which candidates the model forecasted as having at least 15 percent of the vote ( after allocating undecided voters proportionally ) as of Mar .
2 — the day before Super Tuesday .
This is a good proxy for how many candidates might be expected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delegates on Super Tuesday .
Here ’ s a table listing those scenarios , grouping the simulations by how many candidates had at least 15 percent of the vote in each one ; as a shorthand , I ’ ll refer to these as viable candidates .
( I acknowledge this table might be slightly on the confusing side , but let me show you the numbers and we ’ ll go from there . )
First of all , it ’ s unlikely that the first four states will completely winnow the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first row in the table , only 4 percent of simulations resulted in their being only one viable candidate as of Mar .
2 .
That means even if someone — say , Biden — totally sweeps the early states , someone else will probably hang around .
But if it were the case that we had just one viable candidate as of Mar .
2 , that results in a delegate majority more than 99 percent of the time .
On the other hand , the early states narrowing the field @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occurrence .
In 52 percent of simulations , that ’ s what we got : exactly two viable candidates heading into Super Tuesday .
By far the most likely combinations are Sanders + Biden ( a 24 percent chance ) or Warren + Biden ( 13 percent ) .
Some of what you ’ re seeing here is related to the model accounting for “ lanes.
” In other words , it ’ s likely that either Sanders or Warren survive the early states — and it ’ s possible that they both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s only the two of them and not also Biden or one more of the moderates ( Buttiigeg , Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg ) .
But in these two-candidates scenarios , it should be fairly easy for Democrats to avoid a contested convention .
In these simulations , in fact , someone got a majority of pledged delegates 94 percent of the time .
It ’ s not completely out of the question that two candidates could divide up the map almost evenly , in which case a third or fourth candidate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could act as a spoiler .
— but it ’ s unlikely .
However , three-viable-candidate scenarios still occurred 41 percent of the time .
And the most likely one — Sanders + Warren + Biden — occurred in 19 percent of all simulations .
Combinations involving Buttigieg and two of the other three leading candidates are also plausible if Buttigieg wins Iowa or New Hampshire .
There are also see a few scenarios in the table involving Bloomberg if he gains ground before Super Tuesday .
And in these cases , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s still less likely than you might assume .
About 74 percent of Sanders + Warren + Biden scenarios result in someone winning a majority of pledged delegates , for example .
That could be true for a variety of reasons .
It could be because one candidate is way ahead of the other two .
Or it could be because someone has a poor Super Tuesday and drops out after that .
Or it could be because Democratic voters gravitate toward one candidate late in the process to avoid a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of did late in 2016 when they coalesced around Trump .
There ’ s also a slight fudge factor in the Democratic delegate math that could be at play here .
If a candidate drops out between when a state ’ s primary occurred and when statewide delegates are actually assigned — which can occur weeks , or even months , after the primary pending on the state — those delegates are reassigned to other candidates still in the running .
This doesn ’ t make a huge difference but it does help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate who is very close to the majority threshold .
The probabilities listed as calculated by our model ( and as described in this article ) account for this reallocation process .
Finally , there are those unlikely scenarios when there are still four or more viable candidates before Super Tuesday ; these occur only about 4 percent of the time .
Why so unlikely ?
First of all , it ’ s because it would entail the field getting more crowded than it is right now ; currently , only 3 candidates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have at least 15 percent of the vote nationally or are anywhere close to it .
So this scenario where there are four viable candidates is pretty unlikely , because if someone else joins this group , it probably means that someone else struggled .
Say Buttigieg were to win Iowa , for instance .
That necessitates Warren not winning it — in which case she might need a lot of other things to go right to stay above 15 percent nationally .
Even still , these four-candidate scenarios produce someone winning a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time .
Keep in mind that part of this is because four candidates still in the running doesn ’ t necessarily mean they ’ re all on equal footing .
If national polls before Super Tuesday are something like Sanders 42 percent , Biden 20 percent , Warren 15 percent , Buttigeg 15 percent , then — well , a lot of things could happen — but Sanders is going to wind up with a majority a lot of the time .
Why our model might be underestimating contested convention odds Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impressive … or maybe you don ’ t .
Maybe you ’ re worried about the chance of garbage in , garbage out .
The model is trying to take a lot of history and encode it into a statistical form , which is what most statistical models do .
But the risk , of course , is if candidates don ’ t behave the way that they have in the past , our model could misestimate the likelihood of a variety of different scenarios .
In particular , the model is somewhat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drop out .
And small changes in our assumptions about this could make a reasonably large difference .
For instance , although as of Thursday morning , the model had a candidate failing to win a majority of pledged delegates in “ only ” 15 percent of all simulations , there were a lot of close calls .
In another 11 percent of simulations , the winning candidate got more than 50 percent of pledged delegates but under 55 percent .
And in a further 11 percent of simulations , the winner had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but still under 60 percent .
One assumption that could be sensitive is the chance that candidates drop out while they ’ re still a threat to accumulate delegates .
So I looked at how often our model predicted candidates to drop out when : ( i ) they were polling at least 15 percent nationally at the time they quit ; and ( ii ) whether it was before Apr .
28 , when New York , Pennsylvania , Maryland , Connecticut , Delaware and Rhode Island vote — the last truly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calendar : • Biden quit under these circumstances in 12 percent of simulations ; • And for other candidates , this rarely happened .
In other words , the model has a candidate quitting when they still have a chance to accumulate more delegates — even though they might have little or no chance to actually win the nomination — about 30 percent of the time .
Should we be worried about that ?
Well , the model ’ s estimates of candidates ’ likelihood of dropping out are derived from historic data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t usually drop out when they have a real shot at winning .
But they don ’ t necessarily hang on until the bitter end either .
So far in 2020 , that pattern has held , too .
Candidates mostly have quit ( think Cory Booker or Kamala Harris or Julián Castro ) when their situations became dire but not necessarily totally , embarrassingly hopeless .
On the other hand , there are at least some reasons to think some candidates might hang around longer this time .
Biden and the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an effort to stop Sanders , with the party establishment starting to fret ( to put it mildly ) about the possibility of Sanders winning .
Meanwhile , Sanders hung around until the last states voted in 2016 and could do so again , perhaps out of the hopes of forging some alliance with Warren .
Then there ’ s Bloomberg , whose strategy is hard to figure out , but which mostly seems to hinge on accumulating a sizeable number of delegates on Super Tuesday and beyond .
So far , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent he ’ d need in national polls and in Super Tuesday states .
But at the rate he ’ s spending , it isn ’ t that crazy to imagine him continuing to grow in the polls and accumulating delegates in some states , even if he ’ s little threat to actually win the nomination .
This sort of delegate accumulation or spoiler strategy doesn ’ t have a ton of recent precedent and isn ’ t necessarily something the model is equipped to handle terribly well .
But in any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a contested convention would be that much more likely .
Of course , all of this is getting a little bit ahead of ourselves .
Okay , let ’ s be honest — way ahead of ourselves .
But the delegate math , including the possibility of a contested convention , is something that affects every candidate ’ s strategy from the very start of the race .
Our advice is not to assume there will be a contested convention just because things look a little chaotic at the moment — many primaries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the race .
But at the same time , you shouldn ’ t dismiss the possibility out of hand just because there hasn ’ t been one recently .

Election Update: What Are The Chances Of A Brokered Convention? Less likely than you might think, but more likely than our model assumes
A brokered convention is not a likely occurrence, exactly. But it’s not unlikely, either. It’s roughly as likely as the Tennessee Titans beating the Baltimore Ravens earlier this month, or Donald Trump winning the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. According to the FiveThirtyEight primary model, there’s a 15 percent chance that no Democrat wins a majority of pledged delegates:
So does that mean we’d be headed to a BrOkErEd CoNvEnTiOn — the first brokered convention of the modern primary era, which began in 1972?
Well, not necessarily. It’s time for a little bit of a detour into a brokered convention explainer. (As a bonus, there is a Venn diagram coming.)
What is a brokered convention, exactly? And is it the same as a contested convention?
First, consider the rather precise phrasing that our model uses. It forecasts the chance that a candidate wins “more than half of pledged delegates.” To be more exact, it forecasts the chance a candidate wins a majority of pledged delegates as of the end of the day on June 6, when the last state or territory (the Virgin Islands) votes.
Winning a majority of pledged delegates is not quite the same thing as winning the nomination. Nor does the failure of any candidate to win the majority of delegates by June 6 necessarily imply a contested or brokered convention.
This is because of a dirty little secret: Democratic delegates are pledged to certain candidates based on the results of primaries and caucuses. But they are not actually legally bound to vote for them, even on the first ballot.
In theory, this means Democratic delegates could subvert the will of the voters and deny a candidate who had won the majority of pledged delegates the nomination. But this is highly unlikely. (Barring, perhaps, a candidate dropping out between June 6 and the convention because of a scandal or health problem.) Among other things, candidates pick their own pledged delegates which increases the chance that delegates will be loyal.
It is reasonably likely, however, that a candidate who didn’t have a majority of pledged delegates on June 6 could nonetheless wind up with one before the convention in Milwaukee. Consider a case like this … after the Virgin Islands votes on June 6, the pledged delegate count is as follows:
Elizabeth Warren has 45 percent of pledged delegates;
Joe Biden has 25 percent;
Bernie Sanders has 20 percent;
the remaining 10 percent are scattered between other candidates.
Our model would treat this as a “no majority” outcome. Basically, the model doesn’t consider anything that happens beyond June 6, including the possibility that delegates vote for a candidate other than the one they are pledged to. So what might happen in a case like this is that — in recognition of Warren’s fairly emphatic plurality — Sanders would ask his delegates to vote for Warren on the first ballot. Or, heck, maybe Biden would too. The delegates, of course, wouldn’t be under any obligation to follow Sanders’s or Biden’s instructions. But if enough of them did, Warren could win a majority of delegates on the first ballot. Moreover, all of this might be decided well in advance of Milwaukee, and the convention itself would be anticlimactic.
I should pause here to note that the definitions of “contested convention” and “brokered convention” — and whether those terms mean slightly different things or are entirely synonymous! — are open to debate.
“Brokered convention” is sometimes regarded as an outmoded term because it implies the use of brokers — which isn’t a terribly good description of the convention process as it exists today. Rather, a contested convention could be a relatively open process with individual delegates — not party bosses wheeling and dealing behind closed doors — having most of the agency to determine the outcome. With that said, unless one is trying to be very precise, I don’t have any problem with using “brokered convention” as a near-synonym for “contested convention.”
Is our primary system democratic?
As to the best definition of a contested convention, I have stronger feelings about that. I’d say a contested convention is a case where the nomination outcome is genuinely in doubt at the time the convention begins.
I realize that this introduces a little bit of subjectivity (what does “genuinely in doubt” mean?). The problem is that the most common alternative definition — that a contested convention is any convention that requires multiple ballots — doesn’t capture the spirit of a contested convention very well.
That’s because there could be situations where a convention nominally required multiple ballots to resolve, but the outcome wasn’t contentious. Say in the scenario above — where Warren had won a clear plurality of pledged delegates — everyone agreed that the best way to ensure party unity behind Warren would be to have Biden and Sanders delegates respect the original primary and caucus vote on the first ballot and vote for Biden and Sanders. Then everybody would get behind Warren as a show of force on the second ballot. Moreover, say all of this was scripted and widely disclosed to the press weeks ahead of the convention. It’s hard to think of this being a contested convention in any meaningful respect.
Conversely, it’s possible to imagine the outcome being genuinely in doubt — but the relevant negotiations to resolve the deadlock take place before the first ballot is cast. Say, for instance, that after the Virgin Islands, the delegate count was Sanders 32 percent, Biden 28 percent, Amy Klobuchar 25 percent, and Warren 15 percent. There’s a lot of doubt about the identity of the nominee when everyone gathers in Milwaukee. But Biden offers Klobuchar the vice presidency in exchange for Klobuchar instructing her delegates to vote for Biden on the first ballot. Klobuchar agrees and almost all of her delegates go along, so Biden is nominated with 53 percent of the vote on the first ballot. To me, that ought to count as a contested convention, even though it technically required only one ballot.
Got all that? Here’s a Venn Diagram to help:
Again, the key thing to remember here is that the model’s no-pledged-delegate-majority scenario does not necessarily imply a contested or brokered convention. It’s probably fairly close to an upper bound on the likelihood of a contested convention, but a 15 percent chance of no majority of pledged delegates on June 6 might imply, I don’t know, only a 10 or 12 percent chance of an actual contested convention, as I’d define it.
The best time for Democrats to avoid a contested convention is before Super Tuesday
Whether it’s 10 percent, 12 percent or 15 percent, I suspect the probability our model spits out for a contested convention will strike some of you as high and others of you as low.
On the one hand, a contested convention has historically been a sucker’s bet. Pundits and reporters love to speculate about the possibility. But out of 18 competitive nomination processes since 1972, none has resulted in what’s uniformly regarded as a contested convention, although some arguably were. (I think the 1976 Republican race probably meets the definition of a nomination whose outcome was uncertain when the convention began. Even that was 44 years ago, however.)
On the other hand, a number of other nominations — including the 2008 Democratic race — have come fairly close to resulting in contested conventions. The 2016 Republican convention could also plausibly have been contested if Republicans had used Democrats’ rules. (Trump got a big boost from winner-take-all and winner-take-most states, which Democratic rules do not allow for).
[Our Latest Forecast: Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary?]
Moreover, the 2020 Democratic primary is among the more open-ended nomination processes we’ve seen, with at least four — and possibly five (if you count Klobuchar) — plausible winners of Iowa. But it isn’t necessarily the most open-ended nomination; the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Republican nominations were all fairly similar, as were the 1988, 1992 and 2004 Democratic nominations, and none of those produced contested conventions. The once-very-large number of candidates doesn’t seem terribly relevant any more either; many candidates have already dropped out, and several of the ones that remain have little to no chance of accumulating delegates.
Still, it’s not hard to imagine cases where the primary is at a stalemate between three or more candidates. And that’s key: almost all no-majority scenarios require three or more Democrats to continue accumulating delegates on a sustained basis.
There are three main factors that work to prevent such a scenario from happening, however:
First, Democratic rules only award delegates to candidates who get at least 15 percent of the vote in particular states or districts. It’s not a perfectly bright line — if you’re at, say, 14 percent, you’ll still likely get delegates in some districts but not others. But it’s a fairly bright one. Maybe Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard can command 5 to 6 percent of the vote with their own relatively distinct constituencies — but it won’t net them any delegates.
bright line — if you’re at, say, 14 percent, you’ll still likely get delegates in some districts but not others. But it’s a bright one. Maybe Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard can command 5 to 6 percent of the vote with their own relatively distinct constituencies — but it won’t net them any delegates. Second, the early states serve to winnow the field. Only Biden and to a lesser extent Sanders are comfortably above 15 percent in national polls, and even they’re not so far above as to necessarily be in a position to stay there following poor showings in the early states. Meanwhile, Warren and Buttigieg (who isn’t above 15 percent nationally) would almost certainly be in trouble in the absence of early state wins.
above 15 percent in national polls, and even they’re not so far above as to necessarily be in a position to stay there following poor showings in the early states. Meanwhile, Warren and Buttigieg (who isn’t above 15 percent nationally) would almost certainly be in trouble in the absence of early state wins. And third, our model assumes that candidates are reasonably likely to drop out if they don’t have a shot at the nomination, even if they could complicate life for other candidates. This is the most debatable assumption, so we’ll revisit it in a bit.
More precisely, the key to Democrats ensuring there’s not a contested convention is for a lot of this winnowing to take place before Super Tuesday — that is, either candidates fall below 15 percent because their supporters shift to other candidates or they drop out.
Remember: What happens in the early states doesn’t matter very much to the overall delegate math. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina collectively account for only about 4 percent of Democratic delegates. But Super Tuesday accounts for roughly one-third of all pledged delegates. So if three or more candidates are still winning delegates as of Super Tuesday, that doesn’t necessarily make a contested convention a likelihood, but it does make it a more distinct possibility.
Our model hopes to sort its way through all of these scenarios, so let’s look at the output from 10,000 simulations in our model run as of late Thursday morning. For each simulation, I tallied up which candidates the model forecasted as having at least 15 percent of the vote (after allocating undecided voters proportionally) as of Mar. 2 — the day before Super Tuesday. This is a good proxy for how many candidates might be expected to pick up a material number of delegates on Super Tuesday.
Here’s a table listing those scenarios, grouping the simulations by how many candidates had at least 15 percent of the vote in each one; as a shorthand, I’ll refer to these as viable candidates. (I acknowledge this table might be slightly on the confusing side, but let me show you the numbers and we’ll go from there.)
How the field might winnow before Super Tuesday Viable candidates before Super Tuesday in 10,000 simulation runs, per FiveThirtyEight’s primary model as of Jan. 23 Viable Candidates Chance of happening Chance of delegate majority, conditional on this scenario All 1-candidate scenarios 4% >99% Biden only 2 >99 Sanders only 1 >99 Warren only <1 >99 All other 1-candidate scenarios <1 96 Viable Candidates Chance of happening Chance of delegate majority, conditional on this scenario All 2-candidate scenarios 51% 94% Sanders/Biden 24 93 Warren/Biden 13 94 Sanders/Warren 4 95 Biden/Buttigieg 4 94 Sanders/Buttigieg 3 94 Warren/Buttigieg 2 95 All other 2-candidate scenarios 1 96 Viable Candidates Chance of happening Chance of delegate majority, conditional on this scenario All 3-candidate scenarios 41% 76% Sanders/Warren/Biden 19 74 Sanders/Biden/Buttigieg 9 75 Warren/Biden/Buttigieg 5 82 Sanders/Warren/Buttigieg 3 79 Sanders/Biden/Bloomberg <1 72 Sanders/Warren/Bloomberg <1 79 Warren/Biden/Bloomberg <1 81 All other 3-candidate scenarios 3 77 Viable Candidates Chance of happening Chance of delegate majority, conditional on this scenario All 4+-candidate scenarios 4% 48% Sanders/Warren/Biden/Buttigieg 3 48 Sanders/Warren/Biden/Bloomberg <1 41 All other 4+-candidate scenarios 1 52 Candidates with at least 15 percent of the national vote, excluding undecideds, in national polls as of Mar. 2
First of all, it’s unlikely that the first four states will completely winnow the field. As you can see in the first row in the table, only 4 percent of simulations resulted in their being only one viable candidate as of Mar. 2. That means even if someone — say, Biden — totally sweeps the early states, someone else will probably hang around. But if it were the case that we had just one viable candidate as of Mar. 2, that results in a delegate majority more than 99 percent of the time.
On the other hand, the early states narrowing the field to two candidates is a fairly likely occurrence. In 52 percent of simulations, that’s what we got: exactly two viable candidates heading into Super Tuesday. By far the most likely combinations are Sanders + Biden (a 24 percent chance) or Warren + Biden (13 percent).
Some of what you’re seeing here is related to the model accounting for “lanes.” In other words, it’s likely that either Sanders or Warren survive the early states — and it’s possible that they both do — but fairly unlikely that it’s only the two of them and not also Biden or one more of the moderates (Buttiigeg, Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg).
But in these two-candidates scenarios, it should be fairly easy for Democrats to avoid a contested convention. In these simulations, in fact, someone got a majority of pledged delegates 94 percent of the time. It’s not completely out of the question that two candidates could divide up the map almost evenly, in which case a third or fourth candidate picking up a small handful of delegates could act as a spoiler. — but it’s unlikely.
However, three-viable-candidate scenarios still occurred 41 percent of the time. And the most likely one — Sanders + Warren + Biden — occurred in 19 percent of all simulations. Combinations involving Buttigieg and two of the other three leading candidates are also plausible if Buttigieg wins Iowa or New Hampshire. There are also see a few scenarios in the table involving Bloomberg if he gains ground before Super Tuesday.
And in these cases, a contested convention becomes quite thinkable — but it’s still less likely than you might assume. About 74 percent of Sanders + Warren + Biden scenarios result in someone winning a majority of pledged delegates, for example. That could be true for a variety of reasons. It could be because one candidate is way ahead of the other two. Or it could be because someone has a poor Super Tuesday and drops out after that. Or it could be because Democratic voters gravitate toward one candidate late in the process to avoid a contested convention — as Republican voters sort of did late in 2016 when they coalesced around Trump.
There’s also a slight fudge factor in the Democratic delegate math that could be at play here. If a candidate drops out between when a state’s primary occurred and when statewide delegates are actually assigned — which can occur weeks, or even months, after the primary pending on the state — those delegates are reassigned to other candidates still in the running. This doesn’t make a huge difference but it does help a bit at the margins for a candidate who is very close to the majority threshold. The probabilities listed as calculated by our model (and as described in this article) account for this reallocation process.
Finally, there are those unlikely scenarios when there are still four or more viable candidates before Super Tuesday; these occur only about 4 percent of the time. Why so unlikely?
First of all, it’s because it would entail the field getting more crowded than it is right now; currently, only 3 candidates (Biden, Sanders, Warren) have at least 15 percent of the vote nationally or are anywhere close to it. So this scenario where there are four viable candidates is pretty unlikely, because if someone else joins this group, it probably means that someone else struggled. Say Buttigieg were to win Iowa, for instance. That necessitates Warren not winning it — in which case she might need a lot of other things to go right to stay above 15 percent nationally.
Even still, these four-candidate scenarios produce someone winning a majority of pledged delegates just shy of the time. Keep in mind that part of this is because four candidates still in the running doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all on equal footing. If national polls before Super Tuesday are something like Sanders 42 percent, Biden 20 percent, Warren 15 percent, Buttigeg 15 percent, then — well, a lot of things could happen — but Sanders is going to wind up with a majority a lot of the time.
Why our model might be underestimating contested convention odds
Maybe you’ll find all of this impressive … or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re worried about the chance of garbage in, garbage out.
The model is trying to take a lot of history and encode it into a statistical form, which is what most statistical models do. But the risk, of course, is if candidates don’t behave the way that they have in the past, our model could misestimate the likelihood of a variety of different scenarios. In particular, the model is somewhat sensitive to the logic of when candidates drop out. And small changes in our assumptions about this could make a reasonably large difference.
For instance, although as of Thursday morning, the model had a candidate failing to win a majority of pledged delegates in “only” 15 percent of all simulations, there were a lot of close calls. In another 11 percent of simulations, the winning candidate got more than 50 percent of pledged delegates but under 55 percent. And in a further 11 percent of simulations, the winner had more than 55 percent of pledged delegates but still under 60 percent.
One assumption that could be sensitive is the chance that candidates drop out while they’re still a threat to accumulate delegates. So I looked at how often our model predicted candidates to drop out when: (i) they were polling at least 15 percent nationally at the time they quit; and (ii) whether it was before Apr. 28, when New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island vote — the last truly major opportunity to accumulate delegates on the calendar:
Biden quit under these circumstances in 12 percent of simulations;
Sanders in 11 percent of simulations;
Warren in 7 percent of simulations;
Buttigieg in 2 percent of simulations.
And for other candidates, this rarely happened.
In other words, the model has a candidate quitting when they still have a chance to accumulate more delegates — even though they might have little or no chance to actually win the nomination — about 30 percent of the time.
Should we be worried about that? Well, the model’s estimates of candidates’ likelihood of dropping out are derived from historic data — and historically, candidates don’t usually drop out when they have a real shot at winning. But they don’t necessarily hang on until the bitter end either. So far in 2020, that pattern has held, too. Candidates mostly have quit (think Cory Booker or Kamala Harris or Julián Castro) when their situations became dire but not necessarily totally, embarrassingly hopeless.
On the other hand, there are at least some reasons to think some candidates might hang around longer this time. Biden and the other moderates could stay in the race in an effort to stop Sanders, with the party establishment starting to fret (to put it mildly) about the possibility of Sanders winning. Meanwhile, Sanders hung around until the last states voted in 2016 and could do so again, perhaps out of the hopes of forging some alliance with Warren.
Then there’s Bloomberg, whose strategy is hard to figure out, but which mostly seems to hinge on accumulating a sizeable number of delegates on Super Tuesday and beyond. So far, he remains some ways away from the 15 percent he’d need in national polls and in Super Tuesday states. But at the rate he’s spending, it isn’t that crazy to imagine him continuing to grow in the polls and accumulating delegates in some states, even if he’s little threat to actually win the nomination. This sort of delegate accumulation or spoiler strategy doesn’t have a ton of recent precedent and isn’t necessarily something the model is equipped to handle terribly well. But in any event where Bloomberg increases in strength, a contested convention would be that much more likely.
Of course, all of this is getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. Okay, let’s be honest — way ahead of ourselves. But the delegate math, including the possibility of a contested convention, is something that affects every candidate’s strategy from the very start of the race. Our advice is not to assume there will be a contested convention just because things look a little chaotic at the moment — many primaries have looked chaotic at this stage of the race. But at the same time, you shouldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand just because there hasn’t been one recently.