fivethirtyeight--2020-10-13--What Pollsters Have Changed Since 2016 — And What Still Worries Them About 2020

If you ask Americans whether they trust the polls , many seem unable to let go of what happened in 2016 .
Polls taken since then have generally found that a majority of Americans have at least some doubts about what polls say .
But as FiveThirtyEight wrote in the run-up to the 2016 election , Donald Trump was always a normal polling error behind Hillary Clinton .
And that ’ s essentially what happened in 2016 : Trump beat his polls by just a few points in just a few states .
The presidential polls were , simply , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less accurate , although as editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote after the election , it was “ still within the ‘ normal ’ range of accuracy.
” That doesn ’ t mean there weren ’ t plenty of polling lessons to be gleaned from 2016 , though .
The importance of education in predicting a person ’ s political preferences was a big one .
And so to better understand those takeaways , we contacted 21 well-known pollsters to find out how they adjusted their methodologies , if at all , and what concerns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the end , 15 got back to us — a 71 percent response rate that pollsters only dream of in this day and age .
Here ’ s what they had to say .
More pollsters are weighting by education and using new ways to reach respondents Nearly every pollster we talked to has made some kind of modification since the last general election .
Some changes were precipitated by what happened in 2016 , while others were driven by the challenges facing the polling industry , such as low response rates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of high-quality polling .
But one thing came up again and again in our interviews : Pollsters told us they were now weighting their samples by education , because one key takeaway from 2016 was just how important someone ’ s level of educational attainment was in predicting their vote .
“ In mid-2016 , we changed our weights by education , moving the percentage of high school or less respondents up while dropping the college-plus down , ” said Jeff Horwitt , a senior vice president at Hart Research , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Journal poll .
It was the middle of the election cycle , but already Horwitt and his team were concerned that they might be underestimating the share of the electorate who didn ’ t have a four-year college degree , and therefore , missing some of Trump ’ s support .
They were right to be concerned , too .
A real problem for the polling industry writ large was the underrepresentation of voters with little or no college education .
Some pollsters such as Ipsos and the Pew Research Center have taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weighting for educational attainment within racial groups .
This change could be especially important in state-level polling in 2020 , as Trump primarily outperformed polls in states that had large populations of white Americans who didn ’ t have a bachelor ’ s degree .
“ This year we are ensuring that we include the combination of education and race/ethnicity in our sampling , ” said Cliff Young , president of U.S. public affairs at Ipsos .
Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray cautioned , however , that weighting by education isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ noted that weighting by education in a postmortem analysis of their own polling in 2016 had only “ a small impact on accuracy and on its own [ did ] not explain the supposed polling miss in 2016.
” Still , weighting by education was , by far , the most common methodology change pollsters reported .
As for other changes since 2016 , Marist College Institute for Public Opinion director Lee Miringoff told us they ’ re paying closer attention to where their respondents live — that is , are they mostly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metropolitan area ?
“ This has resulted in not only a better balance of geography , ” said Miringoff , “ but has solved the need to weight by education in most cases.
” Given that population density is strongly correlated to how Democratic or Republican an area is — the more people live in a place , the more Democratic it tends to be — this is an important consideration for pollsters as well .
NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls are even weighted by the share of respondents from urban , suburban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make sure we are fully representing rural Americans , ” said Horwitt , adding that it also “ removes another factor which can contribute to poll-to-poll variation.
” A number of pollsters have also changed the way they recruit respondents to make sure they are reaching every pocket of the population .
Courtney Kennedy , Pew Research Center ’ s director of survey research , explained that Pew has moved away from conducting polls by live phone calls that use random-digit dialing to reach respondents to an address-based approach in which Pew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ snail mail to recruit them .
Horwitt also told us that NBC News/Wall Street Journal no longer uses random-digit dialing ; instead , they draw their samples from lists of registered voters , which allows them to “ calibrate the mix of respondents between Republicans , independents and Democrats on each survey.
” Pollsters that reach respondents by phone are also relying more on cellphones .
Some older voters still primarily use a landline , but 96 percent of Americans reported owning a cellphone in 2019 , according to Pew Research .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the share of people they reach by cellphone .
Suffolk ’ s Political Research Center director David Paleologos told us , for example , that they have increased the share of their samples contacted by cellphone from 80 percent to 88 percent .
However , calling more cellphones isn ’ t without its downsides .
For starters , it ’ s expensive , as federal law prevents pollsters from using auto-dialing technology to reach mobile devices .
So some pollsters like Cygnal , Public Policy Polling , Emerson College and SurveyUSA also use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We find that younger people , but also men and people in urban areas , would much rather answer a poll by text than be called on the phone , ” said Tom Jensen , PPP ’ s director .
In fact , many pollsters are using a combination of approaches to reach the widest slice of voters .
“ We now operate , on any given day , with four different methodologies in use , ” explained SurveyUSA CEO Jay Leve , including live telephone calls , automated phone calls , online @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The rise of online polling is also part of this story .
Spencer Kimball , Emerson College ’ s polling director , said they have moved away from just using automated phone calls and now use a mixed approach with an online panel component .
We also asked pollsters what , if anything , they were still worried about in 2020 , regarding either their own polls or the polling industry writ large .
Interestingly — but perhaps unsurprisingly , given all the work they ’ ve put into avoiding the errors of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Marketing ’ s president , Doug Kaplan , told us he is worried about missing “ the so-called hidden Trump vote.
” In fact , Marist ’ s Miringoff is worried about the opposite : “ I ’ m concerned that the industry may be fighting the last war.
” To Miringoff , the obsession with weighting polls by education has obscured other underlying problems , such as a heavier reliance on listed telephone numbers or online methods rather than the traditional method of polling people : random-digit dialing , which Miringoff and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more of a truly representative sample .
Two other pollsters had a different view , though .
“ What I worry about as a whole for the polling industry is this continued belief that live phone polls are the gold standard , ” Cygnal ’ s CEO , Brent Buchanan , told us .
SurveyUSA ’ s Leve agreed .
“ I make no case that the online research studies that SurveyUSA conducts are superior to those conducted by a different methodology , ” he said .
“ But I do argue that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FiveThirtyEight ’ s own research has found that , while live-caller polls face undeniable challenges , they remain more accurate than online polls . )
The most common worries for 2020 polling , though , stemmed from the pandemic .
Several pollsters said they worried that pollsters would estimate turnout incorrectly .
“ This is a perennial difficulty for pollsters and survey researchers , which the pandemic is making even thornier , ” CBS News ’ s Kabir Khanna explained .
Quinnipiac University Poll director Doug Schwartz offered an example : “ With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who tell pollsters that they ’ re voting but then their area experiences a spike in cases around Election Day , and they no longer feel safe going to the polls.
” And Emerson ’ s Kimball and Morning Consult chief research officer Kyle Dropp both pointed out that voters ’ increased access to mail voting makes turnout extra unpredictable .
And since polls are only as good as their turnout model , this could lead to some polling misses this fall .
( In fact , FiveThirtyEight ’ s model even built @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year because of the possibility that the pandemic will disrupt usual turnout patterns . )
Similarly , multiple pollsters expressed concern that , as Pew ’ s Kennedy put it , “ 2020 polls might ultimately look ‘ off ’ not because they were , but because something went awry with the counting of the votes.
” ( Pollsters aren ’ t alone in fearing this ; according to a recent YouGov/The Economist survey , only 13 percent of registered voters have a great deal of confidence that the election will be held @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bit of confidence , and 34 percent have a moderate amount of confidence . )
Monmouth ’ s Murray made the point that plenty of factors are outside of pollsters ’ control .
“ Our polls might be accurate in terms of how the election would turn out if everyone who actually votes has their vote counted , ” he explained .
“ But what happens if a large number of mail ballots are rejected , or polling places are closed or lines are so long that voters go home ?
” Quinnipiac @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jensen had similar concerns , although they were cautiously optimistic that the effect would be minimal .
“ These kinds of things haven ’ t had a major impact on polls in the past , ” said Schwartz .
“ But with so many possible factors , and so many states so close , it ’ s possible that the accuracy of polls may be impacted.
” But plenty of pollsters , including Jensen and Gary Langer of Langer Research , the primary pollster for ABC News/Washington Post , also said that this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really keeping them up at night .
“ I feel pretty good about the polling in 2020 largely because the polling was so accurate in 2018 , and I believe we are still fundamentally in the same political climate that we were then , ” Jensen said .
“ The low level of undecideds in the presidential race also greatly reduces the chances of a dramatic late shift in the numbers.
” Suffolk ’ s Paleologos pointed to the fact that national polls were actually quite accurate in 2016 and that the states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polled by high-quality pollsters in the final week of the campaign ; if they had been , perhaps we ’ d have seen Trump ’ s win coming .
By contrast , “ there is more polling in battleground states this year , and that is especially true for some of the Upper Midwest states that proved decisive in 2016 , ” said Pew ’ s Kennedy .
“ There has also been an uptick in the volume of state polling done by major , reputable polling organizations that use more rigorous methods.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ years of hand-wringing , the polls will show they were all right after all .

If you ask Americans whether they trust the polls, many seem unable to let go of what happened in 2016. Polls taken since then have generally found that a majority of Americans have at least some doubts about what polls say. But as FiveThirtyEight wrote in the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump was always a normal polling error behind Hillary Clinton.
And that’s essentially what happened in 2016: Trump beat his polls by just a few points in just a few states. The presidential polls were, simply, not that off. State-level polling was less accurate, although as editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote after the election, it was “still within the ‘normal’ range of accuracy.”
That doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of polling lessons to be gleaned from 2016, though. The importance of education in predicting a person’s political preferences was a big one. And so to better understand those takeaways, we contacted 21 well-known pollsters to find out how they adjusted their methodologies, if at all, and what concerns them most about polling in 2020. In the end, 15 got back to us — a 71 percent response rate that pollsters only dream of in this day and age. Here’s what they had to say.
More pollsters are weighting by education and using new ways to reach respondents
Nearly every pollster we talked to has made some kind of modification since the last general election. Some changes were precipitated by what happened in 2016, while others were driven by the challenges facing the polling industry, such as low response rates to phone calls and the greater cost of high-quality polling.
But one thing came up again and again in our interviews: Pollsters told us they were now weighting their samples by education, because one key takeaway from 2016 was just how important someone’s level of educational attainment was in predicting their vote. “In mid-2016, we changed our weights by education, moving the percentage of high school or less respondents up while dropping the college-plus down,” said Jeff Horwitt, a senior vice president at Hart Research, one of the pollsters for the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. It was the middle of the election cycle, but already Horwitt and his team were concerned that they might be underestimating the share of the electorate who didn’t have a four-year college degree, and therefore, missing some of Trump’s support. They were right to be concerned, too. A real problem for the polling industry writ large was the underrepresentation of voters with little or no college education.
Some pollsters such as Ipsos and the Pew Research Center have taken weighting by education a step further by weighting for educational attainment within racial groups. This change could be especially important in state-level polling in 2020, as Trump primarily outperformed polls in states that had large populations of white Americans who didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. “This year we are ensuring that we include the combination of education and race/ethnicity in our sampling,” said Cliff Young, president of U.S. public affairs at Ipsos.
Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray cautioned, however, that weighting by education isn’t a silver bullet. He noted that weighting by education in a postmortem analysis of their own polling in 2016 had only “a small impact on accuracy and on its own [did] not explain the supposed polling miss in 2016.” Still, weighting by education was, by far, the most common methodology change pollsters reported.
As for other changes since 2016, Marist College Institute for Public Opinion director Lee Miringoff told us they’re paying closer attention to where their respondents live — that is, are they mostly concentrated in a city or outside a metropolitan area? “This has resulted in not only a better balance of geography,” said Miringoff, “but has solved the need to weight by education in most cases.” Given that population density is strongly correlated to how Democratic or Republican an area is — the more people live in a place, the more Democratic it tends to be — this is an important consideration for pollsters as well.
NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls are even weighted by the share of respondents from urban, suburban and rural areas. “This helps to make sure we are fully representing rural Americans,” said Horwitt, adding that it also “removes another factor which can contribute to poll-to-poll variation.”
A number of pollsters have also changed the way they recruit respondents to make sure they are reaching every pocket of the population. Courtney Kennedy, Pew Research Center’s director of survey research, explained that Pew has moved away from conducting polls by live phone calls that use random-digit dialing to reach respondents to an address-based approach in which Pew first gets in touch with respondents by snail mail to recruit them. Horwitt also told us that NBC News/Wall Street Journal no longer uses random-digit dialing; instead, they draw their samples from lists of registered voters, which allows them to “calibrate the mix of respondents between Republicans, independents and Democrats on each survey.”
Pollsters that reach respondents by phone are also relying more on cellphones. Some older voters still primarily use a landline, but 96 percent of Americans reported owning a cellphone in 2019, according to Pew Research. So some pollsters like Suffolk University are upping the share of people they reach by cellphone. Suffolk’s Political Research Center director David Paleologos told us, for example, that they have increased the share of their samples contacted by cellphone from 80 percent to 88 percent.
However, calling more cellphones isn’t without its downsides. For starters, it’s expensive, as federal law prevents pollsters from using auto-dialing technology to reach mobile devices. So some pollsters like Cygnal, Public Policy Polling, Emerson College and SurveyUSA also use SMS texting to reach respondents. “We find that younger people, but also men and people in urban areas, would much rather answer a poll by text than be called on the phone,” said Tom Jensen, PPP’s director.
In fact, many pollsters are using a combination of approaches to reach the widest slice of voters. “We now operate, on any given day, with four different methodologies in use,” explained SurveyUSA CEO Jay Leve, including live telephone calls, automated phone calls, online with pre-recruited respondents and text messaging. The rise of online polling is also part of this story. Spencer Kimball, Emerson College’s polling director, said they have moved away from just using automated phone calls and now use a mixed approach with an online panel component.
Will 2020 polls reveal a new problem?
We also asked pollsters what, if anything, they were still worried about in 2020, regarding either their own polls or the polling industry writ large. Interestingly — but perhaps unsurprisingly, given all the work they’ve put into avoiding the errors of 2016 — only one pollster, Gravis Marketing’s president, Doug Kaplan, told us he is worried about missing “the so-called hidden Trump vote.”
In fact, Marist’s Miringoff is worried about the opposite: “I’m concerned that the industry may be fighting the last war.” To Miringoff, the obsession with weighting polls by education has obscured other underlying problems, such as a heavier reliance on listed telephone numbers or online methods rather than the traditional method of polling people: random-digit dialing, which Miringoff and many other established pollsters believe results in more of a truly representative sample.
Two other pollsters had a different view, though. “What I worry about as a whole for the polling industry is this continued belief that live phone polls are the gold standard,” Cygnal’s CEO, Brent Buchanan, told us. SurveyUSA’s Leve agreed. “I make no case that the online research studies that SurveyUSA conducts are superior to those conducted by a different methodology,” he said. “But I do argue that they are not inherently inferior.” (FiveThirtyEight’s own research has found that, while live-caller polls face undeniable challenges, they remain more accurate than online polls.)
The most common worries for 2020 polling, though, stemmed from the pandemic. Several pollsters said they worried that pollsters would estimate turnout incorrectly. “This is a perennial difficulty for pollsters and survey researchers, which the pandemic is making even thornier,” CBS News’s Kabir Khanna explained. Quinnipiac University Poll director Doug Schwartz offered an example: “With the coronavirus, there may be voters who tell pollsters that they’re voting but then their area experiences a spike in cases around Election Day, and they no longer feel safe going to the polls.” And Emerson’s Kimball and Morning Consult chief research officer Kyle Dropp both pointed out that voters’ increased access to mail voting makes turnout extra unpredictable. And since polls are only as good as their turnout model, this could lead to some polling misses this fall. (In fact, FiveThirtyEight’s model even built in an extra layer of uncertainty this year because of the possibility that the pandemic will disrupt usual turnout patterns.)
Similarly, multiple pollsters expressed concern that, as Pew’s Kennedy put it, “2020 polls might ultimately look ‘off’ not because they were, but because something went awry with the counting of the votes.” (Pollsters aren’t alone in fearing this; according to a recent YouGov/The Economist survey, only 13 percent of registered voters have a great deal of confidence that the election will be held fairly; 18 percent have quite a bit of confidence, and 34 percent have a moderate amount of confidence.)
Monmouth’s Murray made the point that plenty of factors are outside of pollsters’ control. “Our polls might be accurate in terms of how the election would turn out if everyone who actually votes has their vote counted,” he explained. “But what happens if a large number of mail ballots are rejected, or polling places are closed or lines are so long that voters go home?” Quinnipiac’s Schwartz and PPP’s Jensen had similar concerns, although they were cautiously optimistic that the effect would be minimal. “These kinds of things haven’t had a major impact on polls in the past,” said Schwartz. “But with so many possible factors, and so many states so close, it’s possible that the accuracy of polls may be impacted.”
But plenty of pollsters, including Jensen and Gary Langer of Langer Research, who conducts some polls for ABC News/Washington Post, also said that this year’s polling wasn’t really keeping them up at night. “I feel pretty good about the polling in 2020 largely because the polling was so accurate in 2018, and I believe we are still fundamentally in the same political climate that we were then,” Jensen said. “The low level of undecideds in the presidential race also greatly reduces the chances of a dramatic late shift in the numbers.”
Suffolk’s Paleologos pointed to the fact that national polls were actually quite accurate in 2016 and that the states with the biggest polling errors were not polled by high-quality pollsters in the final week of the campaign; if they had been, perhaps we’d have seen Trump’s win coming. By contrast, “there is more polling in battleground states this year, and that is especially true for some of the Upper Midwest states that proved decisive in 2016,” said Pew’s Kennedy. “There has also been an uptick in the volume of state polling done by major, reputable polling organizations that use more rigorous methods.”
So, perhaps, after four years of hand-wringing, the polls will show they were all right after all.
CORRECTION (Oct. 14, 2020, 2:20 p.m.): A previous version of this article described Langer Research as the primary pollster for ABC News/Washington Post. The Washington Post has its own polling staff, so we have updated the article to better reflect Langer Research’s relationship with the Post.


fivethirtyeight--2020-10-13--Why The Amy Coney Barrett Hearings Are Verging On The Absurd

In her first day of questioning from senators , Supreme Court nominee Amy Comey Barrett wouldn ’ t say how she would rule on abortion cases .
Or Obamacare cases .
Or gun rights cases .
Or really anything else .
She wouldn ’ t even say how she would rule if President Trump tried to move the election to another date , as he suggested he might do earlier this year .
( There is no real indication that Trump will follow through on that idea . )
Barrett ’ s refusal to offer her views on virtually every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all judicial nominees from both parties do that .
But that approach turned Tuesday ’ s hearings into … OK , I ’ ll just say it : a farce .
Barrett is a one-time clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and describes him as a role model .
She ’ s aligned herself with anti-abortion causes and groups .
She ’ s been championed by the conservative Federalist Society , was part of a group of a conservative judges appointed by the Trump administration at the lower-court level and has issued a number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an appeals court judge .
Her repeatedly implying that she is not sure how she would rule on some of these hot-button issues is misleading — even if it ’ s par for the course in present-day judicial confirmation processes .
Democratic senators repeatedly asking Barrett about her views on these questions was a pointless exercise , as a result .
It seemed , for example , like Sen. Dianne Feinstein , of California , thought that if she asked Barrett for her views on abortion enough times that Barrett would somehow be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of course , stuck with the non-committal approach .
We left the hearing , therefore , largely where we began it in terms of our picture of what kind of justice Barrett might be : She would likely vote to further dismantle Obamacare , uphold abortion limits that would make it impossible to get an abortion in some states , invalidate most regulations on guns and back corporations over individuals in most legal matters .
She does not seem inclined to recuse herself from a case involving Trump ’ s election , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wants Barrett confirmed , in part , to rule in his favor if election-related issues reach the Supreme Court .
But , again , all of that was largely clear before the hearing .
Barrett didn ’ t say anything on Tuesday to contradict our understanding of her ideological leanings based on her past rulings , past statements and biography .
So it ’ s still a good bet that Barrett , if confirmed , would be to the ideological right of both Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the six Republicans on the court .
So there wasn ’ t much legal news on Tuesday , and there wasn ’ t much electoral news either .
In theory , a Supreme Court nomination process taking place three weeks before the end of the general election and with people across the country already voting might have some electoral impact .
And perhaps this process overall will affect the election — polls show that a clear majority of Americans believe that the winner of the election should choose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ themselves appear unlikely to have an effect , at least so far .
Barrett didn ’ t promise to reverse Roe v. Wade or strike down Obamacare — or , less plausibly , say she would vote to keep Obamacare and/or Roe in place .
She didn ’ t say anything to annoy Republicans or win over Democrats .
And , of course , that was the point .

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

In her first day of questioning from senators, Supreme Court nominee Amy Comey Barrett wouldn’t say how she would rule on abortion cases. Or Obamacare cases. Or gun rights cases. Or really anything else. She wouldn’t even say how she would rule if President Trump tried to move the election to another date, as he suggested he might do earlier this year. (There is no real indication that Trump will follow through on that idea.)
Barrett’s refusal to offer her views on virtually every issue wasn’t surprising — almost all judicial nominees from both parties do that. But that approach turned Tuesday’s hearings into … OK, I’ll just say it: a farce.
Barrett is a one-time clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and describes him as a role model. She’s aligned herself with anti-abortion causes and groups. She’s been championed by the conservative Federalist Society, was part of a group of conservative judges appointed by the Trump administration at the lower-court level and has issued a number of conservative rulings in her time as an appeals court judge. Her repeatedly implying that she is not sure how she would rule on some of these hot-button issues is misleading — even if it’s par for the course in present-day judicial confirmation processes.
Democratic senators repeatedly asking Barrett about her views on these questions was a pointless exercise, as a result. It seemed, for example, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, of California, thought that if she asked Barrett for her views on abortion enough times that Barrett would somehow be tricked or guilted into answering. Barrett, of course, stuck with the non-committal approach.
We left the hearing, therefore, largely where we began it in terms of our picture of what kind of justice Barrett might be: She would likely vote to further dismantle Obamacare, uphold abortion limits that would make it impossible to get an abortion in some states, invalidate most regulations on guns and back corporations over individuals in most legal matters. She does not seem inclined to recuse herself from a case involving Trump’s election, even as the president has implied that he wants Barrett confirmed, in part, to rule in his favor if election-related issues reach the Supreme Court.
But, again, all of that was largely clear before the hearing. Barrett didn’t say anything on Tuesday to contradict our understanding of her ideological leanings based on her past rulings, past statements and biography. So it’s still a good bet that Barrett, if confirmed, would be to the ideological right of both Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — making her one of the more conservative members of the six Republicans on the court.
So there wasn’t much legal news on Tuesday, and there wasn’t much electoral news either. In theory, a Supreme Court nomination process taking place three weeks before the end of the general election and with people across the country already voting might have some electoral impact. And perhaps this process overall will affect the election — polls show that a clear majority of Americans believe that the winner of the election should choose Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement. But the hearings themselves appear unlikely to have an effect, at least so far. Barrett didn’t promise to reverse Roe v. Wade or strike down Obamacare — or, less plausibly, say she would vote to keep Obamacare and/or Roe in place. She didn’t say anything to annoy Republicans or win over Democrats. And, of course, that was the point.
What to watch for during Supreme Court confirmation hearings | FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-10-13--Why Democratic Senate Candidates Are Competitive In Red States Like Alaska, Kansas And Montana

Democrats have a relatively clear path to securing a majority in the U.S. Senate : Win seats in Arizona , Colorado , Maine and North Carolina — all states where the Democratic candidate is favored .
Carrying these four states , and winning the presidency , would take Democrats from 47 seats currently to 50 seats — Democrat Doug Jones is likely to lose his reelection race in Alabama — with a Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking 51st vote .
Democrats also have about even odds of picking up a seat in Iowa .
But 50 or 51 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so Democrats would need to keep essentially all their members in line on key votes .
And there are still some relatively conservative Democrats in the Senate , such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona .
But Democrats also have a real chance at a bigger Senate majority — that is , if they can win seats in some redder states where they ’ re underdogs but have a meaningful chance of pulling off an upset .
It ’ s worth thinking about two groups of states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a story last week , is in the South : Democrats could win Senate races in Georgia , South Carolina , Mississippi and Texas because those states have large numbers of voters of color .
But those states are challenging for Democrats because they ’ re “ inelastic , ” with few swing voters who are really persuadable ( in this case , lots of white evangelical Protestants and white voters with conservative views on racial issues who rarely if ever vote for Democratic candidates ) .
The second group of red states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Senate races — Alaska , Kansas and Montana — is basically the opposite : very white but not as evangelical or racially conservative .
These are more elastic states , where voters are more likely to swing between the two parties according to national political dynamics .
President Trump is very likely to carry all three of these states , and Joe Biden ’ s campaign really isn ’ t competing in any of them .
Besides that , these are not swing states — Democrats last won the presidential race in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Montana , it was 1992 .
That said , a big reason why Democrats are competitive in these states at the Senate level is that Trump isn ’ t doing that well in them .
( Or , alternatively , Biden is doing fairly well in them . )
The broader anti-Trump wave has hit Alaska , Kansas and Montana too .
Polls suggest that the president will win in these three states comfortably , but by several percentage points less than he carried them in 2016 .
( He won Kansas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago , and Alaska by about 15 . )
Trump ’ s net job approval rating has declined in all three states since the start of his term .
Let ’ s take a more in-depth look at these races .
We have ordered them from Democrats ’ best chances to their worst .
Democrats have a 31 in 100 chance , according to FiveThirtyEight ’ s Senate forecast for Montana ; the Cook Political Report rates this race as a “ tossup.
” Between Alaska , Kansas and Montana , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the best chance of pulling off an upset .
That ’ s true for two reasons .
First , Montana is not that Republican-leaning .
Barack Obama and his campaign tried hard to win Montana in 2008 and lost there by just about 2 points .
Montanans reelected Democrat Jon Tester as the state ’ s other senator in 2018 .
And the state has had a Democratic governor since 2005 ( Brian Schweitzer , then Steve Bullock ) .
Second , Democrats have a strong candidate in the Senate race : Gov @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections in Montana three times ( once as attorney general and twice as governor ) .
It ’ s likely that Bullock would be the favorite here if this were an open seat .
Of course , it ’ s not an open seat .
Bullock is challenging incumbent Sen. Steve Daines , who has voted nearly in lock step with Trump and hasn ’ t had any major controversies over the past four years .
So , the most likely scenario here is that Trump wins the state and that essentially everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , lifting the incumbent to victory .
On the other hand , if it ’ s a particularly good night for Democrats , Montana ’ s Senate seat is one of the likelier reach seats that could come along for the ride .
Democrats have a 26 in 100 chance , according to our Senate forecast for Kansas ; the Cook Political Report rates this race as “ Lean Republican.
” The biggest factor working in Democrats ’ favor in Kansas is that no incumbent Republican is running for this seat .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old , is retiring . )
And , as we mentioned above , it ’ s simply easier to win an open seat than to oust an incumbent .
Democrats have a few other things going for them too .
For one , their candidate in Kansas , state senator Barbara Bollier , is an ideal person to appeal to longtime Republicans who may be frustrated with the Trump-era GOP .
She is one of those people herself .
Bollier served as a Republican member of the state ’ s House and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when she remained in office but switched parties and became a Democrat .
Bollier ’ s switch was not a surprise — she had been part of a group of more moderate Republicans who embraced Democratic gubernatorial candidate ( and now Kansas governor ) Laura Kelly and argued that Kansas ’ s GOP had moved too far to the right .
Bollier had also been critical of Trump .
Kansas may also be leaning a bit more blue in the Trump era .
The GOP brand in Kansas has been hobbled by not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sam Brownback , whose large tax cuts and large cuts to government programs were deeply unpopular , and by Kansas ’ s former secretary of state Kris Kobach , who has been heavily involved in GOP efforts in Kansas and across the country to limit immigration and make it harder to vote .
The result has been a modestly friendlier playing field for Democrats .
In 2018 , Sharice Davids won the congressional district in the Kansas City area , becoming the state ’ s first Democratic U.S. House member since 2010 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago .
But Republicans are still favorites in Kansas because … well , it ’ s still a red state .
Additionally , they have a strong Senate candidate in congressman Roger Marshall , who isn ’ t particularly tied to Brownback , Kobach or Trump .
In fact , Marshall defeated Kobach in the Kansas Senate primary in August in part because national Republican groups spent heavily on television commercials boosting Marshall .
GOP officials intervened because they were worried Kobach would lose in 2020 , as he did in 2018 when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 22 in 100 chance , according to our Senate forecast for Alaska ; the Cook Political Report rates this race as “ Lean Republican.
” There are four reasons this race could be close .
First , Alaska voters , like those in Montana , aren ’ t as consistently Republican-leaning as you might think based on how the state votes in presidential elections alone .
Democrats won this Senate seat in 2008 before losing it in 2014 .
And in 2010 , Alaskans reelected Lisa Murkowski , who was running as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Party nominee , Joe Miller .
( Miller had won the GOP primary by running to Murkowski ’ s right . )
The state ’ s governor from 2015 to 2019 was Bill Walker , a Republican-turned-independent who aligned with the state ’ s Democrats .
Second , Al Gross , the Democratic candidate in Alaska , might appeal to the state ’ s voters because he , like Murkowski and Walker , is running against a Republican candidate but is not a traditional Democrat .
The doctor and commercial fisherman is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) and before this race didn ’ t have many formal ties to the Democratic Party .
( He did run for and win the Democratic nomination for this seat and is being backed by the groups allied with the Democratic Party . )
Third , incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan and the broader Republican Party may have been caught off guard in Alaska .
It was obvious that Bullock was a strong candidate in Montana , and open seats like the one in Kansas are always hard to defend , so the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be competitive .
But Gross ’ s strong fundraising , the millions being pumped into his campaign by Democratic-aligned super PACs , and the close poll numbers in this state weren ’ t easy to foresee a year ago .
Finally , a local issue might hurt Sullivan .
He has received campaign donations from people involved in a project to build a large gold and copper mine in an area near Bristol Bay .
The project , known as Pebble Mine , is fairly unpopular with Alaskans .
Last month , secret @ @ @ @ @ @ @ executives implied that Sullivan would support the project ( or at least not publicly oppose it ) once his reelection contest was over .
After those recordings emerged , Sullivan issued a statement emphatically opposing the mining project .
( His comments before had been more circumspect . )
But Gross is still attacking the incumbent on this issue .
All that said , Sullivan is the favorite .
He ’ s an incumbent Republican in a GOP-leaning state .
A few polls have been released that find Gross within striking distance , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alaska in total — less so than in Montana and Kansas .
Personally , I ’ d be surprised if Democrats won any of these three races .
Like South Carolina , it ’ s pretty hard for a Democratic Senate candidate to win in these states , particularly Kansas .
But it ’ s an indication of how blue 2020 is shaping up to be that Democrats have a chance of winning in all three of these states .
And if they do pull off upsets in Alaska , Kansas or Montana @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate with a few votes to spare .

Democrats have a relatively clear path to securing a majority in the U.S. Senate: Win seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina — all states where the Democratic candidate is favored. Carrying these four states, and winning the presidency, would take Democrats from 47 seats currently to 50 seats — Democrat Doug Jones is likely to lose his reelection race in Alabama — with a Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking 51st vote. Democrats also have about even odds of picking up a seat in Iowa.
But 50 or 51 votes would be an extremely narrow majority, so Democrats would need to keep essentially all their members in line on key votes. And there are still some relatively conservative Democrats in the Senate, such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. But Democrats also have a real chance at a bigger Senate majority — that is, if they can win seats in some redder states where they’re underdogs but have a meaningful chance of pulling off an upset. It’s worth thinking about two groups of states. One, as we explained in a story last week, is in the South: Democrats could win Senate races in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas because those states have large numbers of voters of color. But those states are challenging for Democrats because they’re “inelastic,” with few swing voters who are really persuadable (in this case, lots of white evangelical Protestants and white voters with conservative views on racial issues who rarely if ever vote for Democratic candidates).
The second group of red states where Democrats look at least somewhat competitive in Senate races — Alaska, Kansas and Montana — is basically the opposite: fairly white but not as evangelical or racially conservative. These are more elastic states, where voters are more likely to swing between the two parties according to national political dynamics.
Elasticity score for every state and the District of Columbia Updated for 2020 State Elasticity New Hampshire 1.28 Rhode Island 1.26 Vermont 1.23 Maine 1.17 Massachusetts 1.17 Hawaii 1.15 Iowa 1.13 North Dakota 1.11 Idaho 1.10 West Virginia 1.10 New Mexico 1.09 Colorado 1.09 Connecticut 1.09 Nevada 1.08 Alaska 1.07 Arizona 1.07 Oregon 1.07 Wisconsin 1.06 Washington 1.06 Montana 1.05 Kansas 1.04 Florida 1.04 New Jersey 1.04 South Dakota 1.03 Michigan 1.03 Ohio 1.02 Nebraska 1.02 Utah 1.02 Arkansas 1.02 Texas 1.02 Missouri 1.01 Minnesota 1.01 Indiana 1.00 Kentucky 1.00 Tennessee 0.98 Illinois 0.98 Pennsylvania 0.97 California 0.96 New York 0.96 Wyoming 0.95 North Carolina 0.94 Louisiana 0.93 Oklahoma 0.93 Virginia 0.92 Delaware 0.90 South Carolina 0.88 Maryland 0.87 Georgia 0.84 Alabama 0.81 Mississippi 0.79 District of Columbia 0.62 Elasticity scores reflect how much a state’s polls would be expected to change based on a change in national polls. For instance, if Idaho’s elasticity score is 1.1, a 5-point swing in national polls would be expected to produce a 5.5-point swing in Idaho. Sources: Exit Polls, Cooperative Congressional Election Study
President Trump is very likely to carry all three of these states, and Joe Biden’s campaign really isn’t competing in any of them. Besides that, these are not swing states — Democrats last won the presidential race in Alaska and Kansas in 1964, and in Montana, it was 1992.
That said, a big reason why Democrats are competitive in these states at the Senate level is that Trump isn’t doing that well in them. (Or, alternatively, Biden is doing fairly well in them.) The broader anti-Trump wave has hit Alaska, Kansas and Montana too. Polls suggest that the president will win in these three states comfortably, but by several percentage points less than he carried them in 2016. (He won Kansas and Montana by about 20 points four years ago, and Alaska by about 15.) Trump’s net job approval rating has declined in all three states since the start of his term.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at these races. We have ordered them from Democrats’ best chances to their worst.
Montana
Democrats have a 31 in 100 chance, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast for Montana; the Cook Political Report rates this race as a “tossup.”
Between Alaska, Kansas and Montana, this is the race where Democrats probably have the best chance of pulling off an upset. That’s true for two reasons. First, Montana is not that Republican-leaning. Barack Obama and his campaign tried hard to win Montana in 2008 and lost there by just about 2 points. Montanans reelected Democrat Jon Tester as the state’s other senator in 2018. And the state has had a Democratic governor since 2005 (Brian Schweitzer, then Steve Bullock).
Second, Democrats have a strong candidate in the Senate race: Gov. Bullock. He has won statewide elections in Montana three times (once as attorney general and twice as governor). It’s likely that Bullock would be the favorite here if this were an open seat.
Of course, it’s not an open seat. Bullock is challenging incumbent Sen. Steve Daines, who has voted nearly in lock step with Trump and hasn’t had any major controversies over the past four years. So, the most likely scenario here is that Trump wins the state and that essentially everyone who votes for Trump also supports Daines, lifting the incumbent to victory. On the other hand, if it’s a particularly good night for Democrats, Montana’s Senate seat is one of the likelier reach seats that could come along for the ride.
Kansas
Democrats have a 26 in 100 chance, according to our Senate forecast for Kansas; the Cook Political Report rates this race as “Lean Republican.”
The biggest factor working in Democrats’ favor in Kansas is that no incumbent Republican is running for this seat. (Pat Roberts, who is 84 years old, is retiring.) And, as we mentioned above, it’s simply easier to win an open seat than to oust an incumbent.
Democrats have a few other things going for them too. For one, their candidate in Kansas, state senator Barbara Bollier, is an ideal person to appeal to longtime Republicans who may be frustrated with the Trump-era GOP. She is one of those people herself. Bollier served as a Republican member of the state’s House and then Senate from 2010 to December 2018, when she remained in office but switched parties and became a Democrat. Bollier’s switch was not a surprise — she had been part of a group of more moderate Republicans who embraced Democratic gubernatorial candidate (and now Kansas governor) Laura Kelly and argued that Kansas’s GOP had moved too far to the right. Bollier had also been critical of Trump.
Kansas may also be leaning a bit more blue in the Trump era. The GOP brand in Kansas has been hobbled by not only Trump but also by former governor Sam Brownback, whose large tax cuts and large cuts to government programs were deeply unpopular, and by Kansas’s former secretary of state Kris Kobach, who has been heavily involved in GOP efforts in Kansas and across the country to limit immigration and make it harder to vote.
The result has been a modestly friendlier playing field for Democrats. In 2018, Sharice Davids won the congressional district in the Kansas City area, becoming the state’s first Democratic U.S. House member since 2010. And Kelly was elected governor two years ago.
But Republicans are still favorites in Kansas because … well, it’s still a red state. Additionally, they have a strong Senate candidate in congressman Roger Marshall, who isn’t particularly tied to Brownback, Kobach or Trump. In fact, Marshall defeated Kobach in the Kansas Senate primary in August in part because national Republican groups spent heavily on television commercials boosting Marshall. GOP officials intervened because they were worried Kobach would lose in 2020, as he did in 2018 when facing Kelly for governor.
Alaska
Democrats have a 22 in 100 chance, according to our Senate forecast for Alaska; the Cook Political Report rates this race as “Lean Republican.”
There are four reasons this race could be close. First, Alaska voters, like those in Montana, aren’t as consistently Republican-leaning as you might think based on how the state votes in presidential elections alone. Democrats won this Senate seat in 2008 before losing it in 2014. And in 2010, Alaskans reelected Lisa Murkowski, who was running as a write-in candidate against the official Republican Party nominee, Joe Miller. (Miller had won the GOP primary by running to Murkowski’s right.) The state’s governor from 2015 to 2019 was Bill Walker, a Republican-turned-independent who aligned with the state’s Democrats.
Second, Al Gross, the Democratic candidate in Alaska, might appeal to the state’s voters because he, like Murkowski and Walker, is running against a Republican candidate but is not a traditional Democrat. The doctor and commercial fisherman is a registered independent (so not a Democrat) and before this race didn’t have many formal ties to the Democratic Party. (He did run for and win the Democratic nomination for this seat and is being backed by the groups allied with the Democratic Party.)
Third, incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan and the broader Republican Party may have been caught off guard in Alaska. It was obvious that Bullock was a strong candidate in Montana, and open seats like the one in Kansas are always hard to defend, so the GOP was prepared for those races to be competitive. But Gross’s strong fundraising, the millions being pumped into his campaign by Democratic-aligned super PACs, and the close poll numbers in this state weren’t easy to foresee a year ago.
Finally, a local issue might hurt Sullivan. He has received campaign donations from people involved in a project to build a large gold and copper mine in an area near Bristol Bay. The project, known as Pebble Mine, is fairly unpopular with Alaskans. Last month, secret recordings were released in which Pebble Mine executives implied that Sullivan would support the project (or at least not publicly oppose it) once his reelection contest was over. After those recordings emerged, Sullivan issued a statement emphatically opposing the mining project. (His comments before had been more circumspect.) But Gross is still attacking the incumbent on this issue.
All that said, Sullivan is the favorite. He’s an incumbent Republican in a GOP-leaning state. A few polls have been released that find Gross within striking distance, but we have very little polling in Alaska in total — less so than in Montana and Kansas.
Personally, I’d be surprised if Democrats won any of these three races. Like South Carolina, it’s pretty hard for a Democratic Senate candidate to win in these states, particularly Kansas. But it’s an indication of how blue 2020 is shaping up to be that Democrats have a chance of winning in all three of these states. And if they do pull off upsets in Alaska, Kansas or Montana, Democrats might win control of the Senate with a few votes to spare.
CORRECTION (Oct. 15, 2020, 6:05 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly described Alaska as a “very white” state. About 72 percent of all Alaskan voters in the 2020 election will likely be non-Hispanic white, roughly in line with the country overall. (The original version of the second footnote said 75 percent of Alaskan voters in this election would be non-Hispanic white, but that number comes from the 2016 election and is likely to be lower this year.) Accordingly, we have updated the text to say Alaska is “fairly white.”
How Trump could still win reelection l FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast


fivethirtyeight--2020-10-13--You Can’t Learn Much From One COVID-19 Patient — Even When That Patient Is President Trump

Oct. 8 marked a major milestone in what we know about the efficacy of remdesivir , the experimental antiviral medication that was the first therapy drug to be issued an emergency use authorization for COVID-19 in the United States .
On that day , the results of a major medical trial — double-blind , placebo-controlled and involving more than 1,000 patients — were finally published in the New England Journal of Medicine .
The study found that the drug really does seem to shorten the number of days it takes to recover from COVID-19 , and it even had fewer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
However , researchers also showed the drug was not exactly a game-changer .
It didn ’ t significantly reduce mortality , for example .
Overall , though , the study was good news .
One day earlier , a 74-year-old COVID-19 patient who took remdesivir returned to work in his regular office .
That bit was probably good personal news for one man , but if you want to know how well remdesivir works — and what it means for you , if you were to get the coronavirus — the former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Even if that man is the leader of the free world .
He may have taken a combination of experimental drugs , but President Trump ’ s hospital stay was not an experiment .
We have learned nothing about COVID-19 or its treatments by watching what happened to him .
That ’ s true whether you ’ re tempted to look at his experience for proof that COVID-19 isn ’ t that big of a deal , or if you ’ re hunting Twitter for evidence that the drugs he took are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state .
From the moment the president inhaled particles of virus , his illness carried not just a physical risk to himself , but also a moral hazard to a country desperate for solid answers about an infectious disease that has been resolutely hard to pin down for over seven months .
COVID-19 has presented us with one liminal space after another .
It ’ s been nearly impossible to neatly chart the probable course of the pandemic , prevent the virus ’ s spread and even count the number of Americans who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and qualifications .
So when the president of the United States became one of the infected , it seemed like there was , at the least , an opportunity to offer a little bit of clarity — to pin one thing down in the public conversation over the coronavirus and get everybody on the same page about the seriousness of the disease and its risks .
Understanding one person ’ s case was never going to help us understand the disease as a whole , but we can barely even do that .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ transparency about what exactly has happened — and when — has left the country unable to agree on what really happened .
It ’ s still unclear when the president first tested positive .
There appears to have been no contact tracing and reporting of the president ’ s contacts who may have contracted the virus ; if there ’ s been any , it ’ s been left to the media and private citizens .
It ’ s difficult to untangle how sick he actually was from rosy public statements — that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be positive and upbeat .
Trump is not the first president to be cagey about his physical health .
( Although , one would think there is a little more reason to be transparent when the disease in question is contagious .
President Kennedy wasn ’ t spreading Addison ’ s Disease around the Rose Garden . )
In this case , though , the lack of clarity from the White House has tangled up with the lack of clarity about the virus itself .
If you were confused about whether the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , wait until you find out that ’ s not really the right question to ask .
Partly , though , the problem with expecting Trump ’ s illness to clarify the murky waters of COVID-19 is expecting any one person ’ s illness to cut through the muck .
That is just not how science works .
As the CEO of Regeneron — the manufacturer of the experimental antibodies Trump also took — put it on Face the Nation last weekend : “ The president ’ s case is a case of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we call a case report , and it is evidence of what ’ s happening , but it ’ s kind of the weakest evidence that you can get.
” That evidence is weak because medical science doesn ’ t work the same way as our system of government — you can ’ t just pick individuals to represent the biology of society as a whole .
Our bodies are all a little bit different .
Our circumstances are all a little bit different .
If a patient takes a drug and recovers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medicine actually works , or you just tried it on someone who would have recovered anyway ?
How do you tell whether the medicine is safe , or the patient is just more tolerant of its effects than the average person ?
The answer is that you run the test again and again , on more and more people .
And you make sure that some of them are told they got the drug even though they really didn ’ t , so we can also distinguish between the benefits of the medication @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under suggestion .
That ’ s how science weeds out the outliers and comes to know , as best it can , whether a medicine truly works .
It ’ s not perfect , but it ’ s better than the alternative .
This research isn ’ t about a strong leader , it ’ s about the community .
But the president of the United States is kind of the ultimate outlier .
Even among older white men , he is not typical .
He is far wealthier .
He has access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has handlers and on-call physicians and a literal hospital suite made just for him .
And this particular president is probably not even all that representative — in temperament , habits and life history — of even your average older white male president .
If he were , he might not have contracted the virus at all .
What happens to him is never going to tell us what a run-in with COVID-19 is likely to look like .
What happens to him is never going to tell us whether a medicine worked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to tell us about the side effects of remdesivir , the Regeneron antibody cocktail or dexamethasone .
And all that is especially true when we ’ re talking about a virus that can tear through a family with seemingly random abandon — killing some , hospitalizing others and barely registering as an illness with others .
No politician can be our figurehead here .
Demagoguery doesn ’ t work for the study of infectious disease .

Oct. 8 marked a major milestone in what we know about the efficacy of remdesivir, the experimental antiviral medication that was the first therapy drug to be issued an emergency use authorization for COVID-19 in the United States. On that day, the results of a major medical trial — double-blind, placebo-controlled and involving more than 1,000 patients — were finally published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study found that the drug really does seem to shorten the number of days it takes to recover from COVID-19, and it even had fewer serious side effects than the placebo control. However, researchers also showed the drug was not exactly a game-changer. It didn’t significantly reduce mortality, for example. Overall, though, the study was good news.
One day earlier, a 74-year-old COVID-19 patient who took remdesivir returned to work in his regular office. That bit was probably good personal news for one man, but if you want to know how well remdesivir works — and what it means for you, if you were to get the coronavirus — the former matters a lot more than the latter. Even if that man is the leader of the free world.
He may have taken a combination of experimental drugs, but President Trump’s hospital stay was not an experiment. We have learned nothing about COVID-19 or its treatments by watching what happened to him. That’s true whether you’re tempted to look at his experience for proof that COVID-19 isn’t that big of a deal, or if you’re hunting Twitter for evidence that the drugs he took are having an outsized impact on his mental state.
From the moment the president inhaled particles of virus, his illness carried not just a physical risk to himself, but also a moral hazard to a country desperate for solid answers about an infectious disease that has been resolutely hard to pin down for over seven months. COVID-19 has presented us with one liminal space after another. It’s been nearly impossible to neatly chart the probable course of the pandemic, prevent the virus’s spread and even count the number of Americans who have died without a pile of asterisks and qualifications. So when the president of the United States became one of the infected, it seemed like there was, at the least, an opportunity to offer a little bit of clarity — to pin one thing down in the public conversation over the coronavirus and get everybody on the same page about the seriousness of the disease and its risks.
But that didn’t happen.
Understanding one person’s case was never going to help us understand the disease as a whole, but we can barely even do that. The White House’s lack of transparency about what exactly has happened — and when — has left the country unable to agree on what really happened. It’s still unclear when the president first tested positive. There appears to have been no contact tracing and reporting of the president’s contacts who may have contracted the virus; if there’s been any, it’s been left to the media and private citizens. It’s difficult to untangle how sick he actually was from rosy public statements — that his doctor admitted were deliberately spun to be positive and upbeat.
Trump is not the first president to be cagey about his physical health. (Although, one would think there is a little more reason to be transparent when the disease in question is contagious. President Kennedy wasn’t spreading Addison’s Disease around the Rose Garden.) In this case, though, the lack of clarity from the White House has tangled up with the lack of clarity about the virus itself. If you were confused about whether the president tested negative before his first post-hospitalization rally, wait until you find out that’s not really the right question to ask.
Partly, though, the problem with expecting Trump’s illness to clarify the murky waters of COVID-19 is expecting any one person’s illness to cut through the muck. That is just not how science works. As the CEO of Regeneron — the manufacturer of the experimental antibodies Trump also took — put it on Face the Nation last weekend: “The president’s case is a case of one, and that’s what we call a case report, and it is evidence of what’s happening, but it’s kind of the weakest evidence that you can get.”
That evidence is weak because medical science doesn’t work the same way as our system of government — you can’t just pick individuals to represent the biology of society as a whole. Our bodies are all a little bit different. Our circumstances are all a little bit different. If a patient takes a drug and recovers, how do you tell whether the medicine actually works, or you just tried it on someone who would have recovered anyway? How do you tell whether the medicine is safe, or the patient is just more tolerant of its effects than the average person?
The answer is that you run the test again and again, on more and more people. And you make sure that some of them are told they got the drug even though they really didn’t, so we can also distinguish between the benefits of the medication and the power of our own bodies under suggestion. That’s how science weeds out the outliers and comes to know, as best it can, whether a medicine truly works. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative. This research isn’t about a strong leader, it’s about the community.
But the president of the United States is kind of the ultimate outlier. Even among older white men, he is not typical. He is far wealthier. He has access to much better health care. He has handlers and on-call physicians and a literal hospital suite made just for him. And this particular president is probably not even all that representative — in temperament, habits and life history — of even your average older white male president. If he were, he might not have contracted the virus at all. What happens to him is never going to tell us what a run-in with COVID-19 is likely to look like. What happens to him is never going to tell us whether a medicine worked. What happens to him is never going to tell us about the side effects of remdesivir, the Regeneron antibody cocktail or dexamethasone.
And all that is especially true when we’re talking about a virus that can tear through a family with seemingly random abandon — killing some, hospitalizing others and barely registering as an illness with others.
No politician can be our figurehead here. Demagoguery doesn’t work for the study of infectious disease.


fivethirtyeight--2020-10-12--How President Trump Could Still Win Reelection

In this episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , the crew considers how President Trump might pull off getting reelected @ @ @ @ @ is going in the Sun Belt states .

In this episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew considers how President Trump might pull off getting reelected and how the 2020 race is going in the Sun Belt states.


fivethirtyeight--2020-10-14--How Conservative Is Amy Coney Barrett?

How Conservative Is Amy Coney Barrett?

Just how conservative is Amy Coney Barrett ?
It ’ s a question we ’ ve asked before with other appellate judges who have been nominated to the Supreme Court — most recently with Justice Brett Kavanaugh — but it ’ s surprisingly difficult to answer with any precision .
On the one hand , we know that Barrett ’ s appointment would mean a huge rightward shift on the court , as she is far more ideologically conservative than the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg .
But on the other hand , we don ’ t really know how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s confirmed .
We can look to her track record on the 7th U.S .
Circuit Court of Appeals , though , for clues .
Barrett has served on that court for almost three years now , and two different analyses of her rulings point to the same conclusion : Barrett is one of the more conservative judges on the circuit — and maybe even the most conservative .
University of Virginia law professors Joshua Fischman and Kevin Cope analyzed more than 1,700 cases that the 7th Circuit has heard since Barrett joined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where Barrett cast a vote , and according to their analysis , Barrett is part of a cluster of conservative judges at the rightmost edge of the 7th Circuit .
However , even though her ideological estimate was furthest to the right of the judges currently on the 7th Circuit , Barrett was statistically indistinguishable from the three other Trump appointees and three judges appointed by other Republicans , including prominent conservative Judges Diane Sykes and Frank Easterbrook .
“ [ Barrett is ] clearly near the right side of the conservative spectrum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us .
“ She ’ s not off the charts , though — she ’ s in line with other well-known , well-respected conservative judges on the court.
” But there are some differences between Barrett and her current conservative colleagues .
Fischman and Cope also dug into how judges ruled on various types of issues and found that Barrett is closer to the middle of the court on cases involving employment discrimination , labor and criminal defendants , but much more conservative in cases involving civil rights — a category that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights and civil rights claims against government employees , but also includes hot-button issues like gun rights , voting rights and abortion rights .
Barrett ’ s record on abortion has come under a lot of scrutiny , but Fischman noted that she might also be especially conservative on gun rights .
She only heard a handful of cases involving Second Amendment rights during her time on the 7th Circuit , but she came out strongly against several of her conservative colleagues in a case involving a law stripping felons of their gun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t allow such a blanket ban .
Those views could be especially relevant on the Supreme Court , which hasn ’ t heard a major case involving gun rights in almost a decade .
We can also look at how Barrett has ruled in special cases known as “ en banc ” hearings , which are used when there ’ s a serious disagreement among the judges about an outcome , or when circuit precedent is being reconsidered .
These cases are not very common — Barrett , for instance , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ panels in her three years on the court — but they can offer a clearer snapshot of a judge ’ s ideology , as judges often have more freedom in how they rule in these cases , in part because they are not constrained by circuit precedent as they normally would be .
En banc hearings are also more comparable to cases the Supreme Court might hear because the legal issues are knottier .
And they ’ re more similar to how the Supreme Court works , because they require all the circuit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them into smaller panels of three judges , which is how the appeals court normally operates .
An analysis of 7th Circuit en banc cases by Tom Clark , a political science professor at Emory University , mirrored what Fischman and Cope found : After just six cases , Barrett fell on the rightmost edge of the court , along with two other Trump appointees and Sykes .
( There was considerably more uncertainty in her estimate , though , since Clark ’ s model was drawing on less data for judges who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time . )
“ Things could be different with more data , of course , ” said Clark .
But overall , he thought her ideological profile was remarkably clear .
“ She ’ s voting very consistently in these cases so far .
Even with this small number of cases , she ’ s showing up on the far right edge of the court.
” It ’ s hard , of course , to directly extrapolate from Barrett ’ s record as an appellate judge to how she might rule as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s reasonable to expect she will be reliably conservative .
That said , Barrett has not always ruled in line with fellow conservatives on the 7th Circuit , and even the conservative justices on the Supreme Court disagree with each other on some topics or differ on which issues are more important .
It remains to be seen just how persuadable Barrett might be if she ’ s confirmed , or how her perspective might change after a few years on the bench .
This is important , too , because to keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right on hot-button issues , Chief Justice John Roberts may try to peel off another conservative vote .
Whether Barrett might be amenable to such overtures is hard to say , but we do know that during her time on the 7th Circuit , Fischman and Cope found that she has voted in a liberal direction about 20 percent of the time when at least one Democratic nominee is on the panel but only about 9 percent of the time when the panel is composed of three Republican nominees .
That could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arguments of her more liberal colleagues — or that she is choosing not to dissent in some cases for the sake of collegiality .
Either way , though , it ’ s a sign that she does vote slightly differently depending on the composition of the panel , rather than being consistently conservative regardless of who she ’ s voting with .
Clifford W. Berlow , a partner at the law firm Jenner & Block who specializes in appellate litigation , said that this is in line with the 7th Circuit ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circuit .
“ I don ’ t think you ’ ve seen from Barrett or any of the other [ Trump appointees ] the sort of scathing , scorched-earth dissents or biting concurrences that you might see in some other circuits , ” Berlow said .
He added that he wouldn ’ t be surprised if Barrett carried this sense of collegiality with her to the Supreme Court .
Overall , though , it ’ s plain from Barrett ’ s record why Republicans are eager to confirm her before the election and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ With only a few years under her belt as a judge , she ’ s established herself as one of the most conservative members of a court that already has a lot of Republican appointees .
If she ’ s confirmed , it seems fairly safe to assume that she would continue that pattern — even if she ’ s occasionally willing to break from her fellow conservatives .

Just how conservative is Amy Coney Barrett?
It’s a question we’ve asked before with other appellate judges who have been nominated to the Supreme Court — most recently with Justice Brett Kavanaugh — but it’s surprisingly difficult to answer with any precision. On the one hand, we know that Barrett’s appointment would mean a huge rightward shift on the court, as she is far more ideologically conservative than the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But on the other hand, we don’t really know how conservative Barrett would be if she’s confirmed.
We can look to her track record on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though, for clues. Barrett has served on that court for almost three years now, and two different analyses of her rulings point to the same conclusion: Barrett is one of the more conservative judges on the circuit — and maybe even the most conservative.
University of Virginia law professors Joshua Fischman and Kevin Cope analyzed more than 1,700 cases that the 7th Circuit has heard since Barrett joined the court in 2017, including 378 where Barrett cast a vote, and according to their analysis, Barrett is part of a cluster of conservative judges at the rightmost edge of the 7th Circuit.
However, even though her ideological estimate was furthest to the right of the judges currently on the 7th Circuit, Barrett was statistically indistinguishable from the three other Trump appointees and three judges appointed by other Republicans, including prominent conservative Judges Diane Sykes and Frank Easterbrook. “[Barrett is] clearly near the right side of the conservative spectrum on the court,” Fischman told us. “She’s not off the charts, though — she’s in line with other well-known, well-respected conservative judges on the court.”
But there are some differences between Barrett and her current conservative colleagues. Fischman and Cope also dug into how judges ruled on various types of issues and found that Barrett is closer to the middle of the court on cases involving employment discrimination, labor and criminal defendants, but much more conservative in cases involving civil rights — a category that is mainly composed of cases involving prisoners’ rights and civil rights claims against government employees, but also includes hot-button issues like gun rights, voting rights and abortion rights.
Barrett is particularly conservative on civil rights issues Share of decisions in which Amy Coney Barrett voted conservatively, compared to all judges on 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, since 2017 conservative share of decisions Type of cases Barrett 7th Circuit Diff. Discrimination + labor 83.8% 83.2% +0.6 Criminal + habeas corpus 87.9 86.2 +1.6 Civil rights 83.2 77.6 +5.6 Each decision was coded as liberal or conservative, where “liberal” generally meant a decision was in favor of a criminal defendant or against the state. Decisions that were part liberal and part conservative were coded as a fraction of a decision for each side. Does not include about a thousand cases that could not be classified as liberal or conservative. Source: Fischman & Cope
Barrett’s record on abortion has come under a lot of scrutiny, but Fischman noted that she might also be especially conservative on gun rights. She only heard a handful of cases involving Second Amendment rights during her time on the 7th Circuit, but she came out strongly against several of her conservative colleagues in a case involving a law stripping felons of their gun rights, arguing that the Second Amendment doesn’t allow such a blanket ban. Those views could be especially relevant on the Supreme Court, which hasn’t heard a major case involving gun rights in almost a decade.
We can also look at how Barrett has ruled in special cases known as “en banc” hearings, which are used when there’s a serious disagreement among the judges about an outcome, or when circuit precedent is being reconsidered. These cases are not very common — Barrett, for instance, has only sat on six en banc panels in her three years on the court — but they can offer a clearer snapshot of a judge’s ideology, as judges often have more freedom in how they rule in these cases, in part because they are not constrained by circuit precedent as they normally would be. En banc hearings are also more comparable to cases the Supreme Court might hear because the legal issues are knottier. And they’re more similar to how the Supreme Court works, because they require all the circuit judges to vote together rather than splitting them into smaller panels of three judges, which is how the appeals court normally operates.
An analysis of 7th Circuit en banc cases by Tom Clark, a political science professor at Emory University, mirrored what Fischman and Cope found: After just six cases, Barrett fell on the rightmost edge of the court, along with two other Trump appointees and Sykes. (There was considerably more uncertainty in her estimate, though, since Clark’s model was drawing on less data for judges who have been on the court for less time.)
“Things could be different with more data, of course,” said Clark. But overall, he thought her ideological profile was remarkably clear. “She’s voting very consistently in these cases so far. Even with this small number of cases, she’s showing up on the far right edge of the court.”
It’s hard, of course, to directly extrapolate from Barrett’s record as an appellate judge to how she might rule as a Supreme Court justice, but it’s reasonable to expect she will be reliably conservative. That said, Barrett has not always ruled in line with fellow conservatives on the 7th Circuit, and even the conservative justices on the Supreme Court disagree with each other on some topics or differ on which issues are more important. It remains to be seen just how persuadable Barrett might be if she’s confirmed, or how her perspective might change after a few years on the bench.
This is important, too, because to keep the Supreme Court from moving quickly to the right on hot-button issues, Chief Justice John Roberts may try to peel off another conservative vote. Whether Barrett might be amenable to such overtures is hard to say, but we do know that during her time on the 7th Circuit, Fischman and Cope found that she has voted in a liberal direction about 20 percent of the time when at least one Democratic nominee is on the panel but only about 9 percent of the time when the panel is composed of three Republican nominees. That could indicate that Barrett is open to the arguments of her more liberal colleagues — or that she is choosing not to dissent in some cases for the sake of collegiality. Either way, though, it’s a sign that she does vote slightly differently depending on the composition of the panel, rather than being consistently conservative regardless of who she’s voting with.
Clifford W. Berlow, a partner at the law firm Jenner & Block who specializes in appellate litigation, said that this is in line with the 7th Circuit’s general reputation as a polite, respectful circuit. “I don’t think you’ve seen from Barrett or any of the other [Trump appointees] the sort of scathing, scorched-earth dissents or biting concurrences that you might see in some other circuits,” Berlow said. He added that he wouldn’t be surprised if Barrett carried this sense of collegiality with her to the Supreme Court.
Overall, though, it’s plain from Barrett’s record why Republicans are eager to confirm her before the election and why Democrats are dead-set against her. With only a few years under her belt as a judge, she’s established herself as one of the most conservative members of a court that already has a lot of Republican appointees. If she’s confirmed, it seems fairly safe to assume that she would continue that pattern — even if she’s occasionally willing to break from her fellow conservatives.
What to watch for during Supreme Court confirmation hearings | FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-10-14--Will Georgia Turn Blue?

Will Georgia Turn Blue?

For all the turmoil in the country this year , our presidential election forecast has been remarkably stable .
Dating back to June 1 , the first date that we ran the forecast , only two states had flipped between Donald Trump and Joe Biden at any point : North Carolina and Ohio .
On Wednesday , though , they were joined by a third state , Georgia , where for the first time all year , Joe Biden is the favorite — the ever-so-slight favorite !
— in our forecast .
Of course , it ’ s a bit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when FiveThirtyEight ’ s forecasts are probabilistic .
With the addition of a new Quinnipiac University poll showing him 7 percentage points ahead there — more about that poll in a moment — Biden ’ s chances in Georgia rose from 46 percent to 51 percent .
( They ’ ve since fallen to an even 50/50 . )
So a ) that ’ s not really that big of a change and b ) the race is tossup ; Trump could easily re-emerge as the nominal favorite ( turning Georgia red again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time that you ’ re reading this .
In another sense , though , the shift in Georgia should come as no surprise .
Consider : • In 2016 , Trump won Georgia by only 5 points in an election where he lost the popular vote by 2 points nationally .
Thus , Georgia was only 7 points more Republican than the country as a whole .
• In 2018 , Brian Kemp won Georgia ’ s gubernatorial election by 1 point over Stacey Abrams , in an election where Democrats won the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 9 points .
Thus , Georgia was 10 points redder than the country overall .
And if Georgia is 7 to 10 points more Republican than the country as a whole , then you might expect it to turn blue with Biden having a 10-point lead in national polls , as he currently does .
Our model has been a bit more skeptical about Biden ’ s Georgia chances , though , for a couple of important reasons .
First , the state is relatively inelastic , meaning that it tends not to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a whole does .
That ’ s because there haven ’ t traditionally been a lot of swing voters in Georgia .
Republicans have a base of conservative , religious , white voters ; Democrats have a base of Black voters , plus younger white , Asian and Hispanic voters in Atlanta and in college towns .
The Republican base has historically been slightly larger , though , so while Democrats could get to 45 percent or 48 percent or 49 percent statewide … 50 percent has been hard .
Second , Georgia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Cost of Voting Index , a measure of how easy it is to vote in each state , those laws have gotten stricter since 2016 .
Our research shows that enacting stricter voting laws tends to hurt Democrats , too , which is factored into our estimates of the partisan baselines in each state .
So even as Atlanta ’ s suburbs have been shifting blue — leading to a win by Democrat Lucy McBath in the 6th Congressional District in the upscale northern suburbs of Atlanta in 2018 — these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats to overcome to achieve statewide wins .
That ’ s why even though Biden had already been ahead in our Georgia polling average , our forecast — which also accounts for these other factors and also slightly discounts Biden ’ s current national lead — still had Trump slightly favored in Georgia .
Then came the Quinnipiac poll .
What should you make of a poll that has one candidate 7 points ahead when everybody else has the race tied , or virtually so ?
Well , you should … throw it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s good when high-quality pollsters such as Quinnipiac are willing to deviate from the consensus ; it means they ’ re not herding toward what everybody else says .
At the same time , Quinnipiac has produced perhaps the best set of numbers for Biden of any major pollster .
Another recent release of Quinnipiac polls had Biden ahead by 11 points in Florida , 13 points in Pennsylvania and 5 points in Iowa , far better than the FiveThirtyEight averages in each state .
I ’ m not one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crosstabs and declare whether a particular firm ’ s approach is right or wrong .
Unless there ’ s something egregious , I think the right approach is to trust the process of averaging the polls .
At the same time , a 7-point lead coming from Quinnipiac doesn ’ t mean quite the same thing as it would from a pollster like , say , Monmouth University , which has tended to show results for Biden that are near to or slightly worse than the consensus .
( Monmouth ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the debate — had shown Trump slightly ahead . )
Our model tries to account for all of these tendencies with our house effects adjustment ; it accounted for the fact that Quinnipiac had previously shown Biden ahead by 3 points in Georgia , for instance , at a time when Trump was leading in our polling average there .
Still , a 7-point lead for Biden was enough to impress our model , even coming from Quinnipiac .
Next question : Although Georgia could obviously go either way , could it actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other words , could it be the tipping-point state , the one that nets Biden or Trump his 270th electoral vote ?
That ’ s pretty unlikely : The model says there ’ s only a 2.4 percent chance that Georgia is the tipping point .
That ’ s because if Biden has won Georgia , he ’ ll probably also have won at least one of its neighbors , North Carolina or Florida , where he has somewhat clearer leads in polls .
And if Biden wins North Carolina or Florida , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without Georgia .
In theory , Georgia could matter if Biden completely collapsed in the Midwest : If he lost Michigan and Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Wiscosnin then Biden could still win the Electoral College by flipping Georgia and North Carolina and Florida while holding the other states that Hillary Clinton won .
Again , though , we ’ re talking about some long-shot scenarios .
But where Georgia could be of great importance is in the U.S. Senate , where it actually has two races : a standard Class II Senate election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democrat Jon Ossoff , and a special election where the appointed Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler is defending her seat against challengers from both parties .
Georgia requires runoffs if no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote , so the Perdue-Ossoff race could potentially require a runoff if the Libertarian candidate gets enough votes there .
And the special election is very likely to require a runoff , since it has more than a dozen candidates and no candidate is polling particularly close to 50 percent of the vote there .
Recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the special election , too .
One Democrat — Raphael Warnock , the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church — has consolidated the large majority of the Democratic vote following endorsements from Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats .
He is very likely to advance to the runoff , based on recent polls .
Meanwhile , the second runoff slot is a bitter feud between Loeffler and another Republican , Rep. Doug Collins , who have been trying to outcompete one another by bragging about how conservative they are and how much they support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an increasingly purple state where Trump isn ’ t that popular .
And indeed , Loffler and Collins have fallen behind Warnock in some recent polls that test one-on-one matchups .
Our model tries to consider all of these complexities — as well as the likelihood that the environment might not be as favorable for Democrats in January as it is in November — and now has Warnock with a 50 percent chance of eventually winning , Loeffler with a 29 percent chance and Collins with a 21 percent chance .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lieberman , have virtually zero chance .
In the regular Georgia Senate race , Perdue has a 72 percent chance and Ossoff a 28 percent chance , per our “ Deluxe ” forecast .
There ’ s around a one-in-four chance that race will require a runoff , too , which could mean there could be two uncalled Senate until the runoff is held on Jan. 5 .
So there are certainly no sure things for Democrats in Georgia .
But the fact that a formerly red state has become perhaps the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bad sign for Republicans .

Will Georgia Turn Blue? Our model has been skeptical about Biden’s Georgia chances, but that may no longer be true.
For all the turmoil in the country this year, our presidential election forecast has been remarkably stable. Dating back to June 1, the first date that we ran the forecast, only two states had flipped between Donald Trump and Joe Biden at any point: North Carolina and Ohio. On Wednesday, though, they were joined by a third state, Georgia, where for the first time all year, Joe Biden is the favorite — the ever-so-slight favorite! — in our forecast.
Look which state just turned blue in the snake.https://t.co/ajG88SznSA pic.twitter.com/sHnroFJKtS — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 14, 2020
Of course, it’s a bit silly to talk about states switching sides when FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts are probabilistic. With the addition of a new Quinnipiac University poll showing him 7 percentage points ahead there — more about that poll in a moment — Biden’s chances in Georgia rose from 46 percent to 51 percent. (They’ve since fallen to an even 50/50.) So a) that’s not really that big of a change and b) the race is tossup; Trump could easily re-emerge as the nominal favorite (turning Georgia red again in the snake diagram) by the time that you’re reading this.
How does early voting affect the forecast? l FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast
In another sense, though, the shift in Georgia should come as no surprise. Consider:
In 2016, Trump won Georgia by only 5 points in an election where he lost the popular vote by 2 points nationally. Thus, Georgia was only 7 points more Republican than the country as a whole.
In 2018, Brian Kemp won Georgia’s gubernatorial election by 1 point over Stacey Abrams, in an election where Democrats won the popular vote for the U.S. House by 9 points. Thus, Georgia was 10 points redder than the country overall.
And if Georgia is 7 to 10 points more Republican than the country as a whole, then you might expect it to turn blue with Biden having a 10-point lead in national polls, as he currently does.
Our model has been a bit more skeptical about Biden’s Georgia chances, though, for a couple of important reasons. First, the state is relatively inelastic, meaning that it tends not to swing as much as the country as a whole does. That’s because there haven’t traditionally been a lot of swing voters in Georgia. Republicans have a base of conservative, religious, white voters; Democrats have a base of Black voters, plus younger white, Asian and Hispanic voters in Atlanta and in college towns. The Republican base has historically been slightly larger, though, so while Democrats could get to 45 percent or 48 percent or 49 percent statewide … 50 percent has been hard.
[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]
Second, Georgia has strict voting laws, and according to the Cost of Voting Index, a measure of how easy it is to vote in each state, those laws have gotten stricter since 2016. Our research shows that enacting stricter voting laws tends to hurt Democrats, too, which is factored into our estimates of the partisan baselines in each state.
So even as Atlanta’s suburbs have been shifting blue — leading to a win by Democrat Lucy McBath in the 6th Congressional District in the upscale northern suburbs of Atlanta in 2018 — these are still some fairly big hurdles for Democrats to overcome to achieve statewide wins. That’s why even though Biden had already been ahead in our Georgia polling average, our forecast — which also accounts for these other factors and also slightly discounts Biden’s current national lead — still had Trump slightly favored in Georgia.
Then came the Quinnipiac poll. What should you make of a poll that has one candidate 7 points ahead when everybody else has the race tied, or virtually so? Well, you should … throw it in the polling average. Generally speaking, it’s good when high-quality pollsters such as Quinnipiac are willing to deviate from the consensus; it means they’re not herding toward what everybody else says.
At the same time, Quinnipiac has produced perhaps the best set of numbers for Biden of any major pollster. Another recent release of Quinnipiac polls had Biden ahead by 11 points in Florida, 13 points in Pennsylvania and 5 points in Iowa, far better than the FiveThirtyEight averages in each state.
I’m not one to play poll doctor and dive into the crosstabs and declare whether a particular firm’s approach is right or wrong. Unless there’s something egregious, I think the right approach is to trust the process of averaging the polls. At the same time, a 7-point lead coming from Quinnipiac doesn’t mean quite the same thing as it would from a pollster like, say, Monmouth University, which has tended to show results for Biden that are near to or slightly worse than the consensus. (Monmouth’s most recent Georgia poll — taken before the debate — had shown Trump slightly ahead.)
How voting is going so far in 2020 | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast
Our model tries to account for all of these tendencies with our house effects adjustment; it accounted for the fact that Quinnipiac had previously shown Biden ahead by 3 points in Georgia, for instance, at a time when Trump was leading in our polling average there. Still, a 7-point lead for Biden was enough to impress our model, even coming from Quinnipiac.
Next question: Although Georgia could obviously go either way, could it actually be decisive in the election? In other words, could it be the tipping-point state, the one that nets Biden or Trump his 270th electoral vote?
That’s pretty unlikely: The model says there’s only a 2.4 percent chance that Georgia is the tipping point. That’s because if Biden has won Georgia, he’ll probably also have won at least one of its neighbors, North Carolina or Florida, where he has somewhat clearer leads in polls. And if Biden wins North Carolina or Florida, Trump is probably toast, with or without Georgia.
In theory, Georgia could matter if Biden completely collapsed in the Midwest: If he lost Michigan and Minnesota and Pennsylvania and Wiscosnin then Biden could still win the Electoral College by flipping Georgia and North Carolina and Florida while holding the other states that Hillary Clinton won. Again, though, we’re talking about some long-shot scenarios.
But where Georgia could be of great importance is in the U.S. Senate, where it actually has two races: a standard Class II Senate election between the Republican incumbent David Perdue and the Democrat Jon Ossoff, and a special election where the appointed Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler is defending her seat against challengers from both parties.
Georgia requires runoffs if no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote, so the Perdue-Ossoff race could potentially require a runoff if the Libertarian candidate gets enough votes there. And the special election is very likely to require a runoff, since it has more than a dozen candidates and no candidate is polling particularly close to 50 percent of the vote there.
Recent developments have been favorable to Democrats in the special election, too. One Democrat — Raphael Warnock, the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church — has consolidated the large majority of the Democratic vote following endorsements from Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats. He is very likely to advance to the runoff, based on recent polls. Meanwhile, the second runoff slot is a bitter feud between Loeffler and another Republican, Rep. Doug Collins, who have been trying to outcompete one another by bragging about how conservative they are and how much they support Trump. This is potentially toxic messaging in an increasingly purple state where Trump isn’t that popular. And indeed, Loffler and Collins have fallen behind Warnock in some recent polls that test one-on-one matchups.
Our model tries to consider all of these complexities — as well as the likelihood that the environment might not be as favorable for Democrats in January as it is in November — and now has Warnock with a 50 percent chance of eventually winning, Loeffler with a 29 percent chance and Collins with a 21 percent chance. The other candidates, such as Democrat Matt Lieberman, have virtually zero chance.
In the regular Georgia Senate race, Perdue has a 72 percent chance and Ossoff a 28 percent chance, per our “Deluxe” forecast. There’s around a one-in-four chance that race will require a runoff, too, which could mean there could be two uncalled Senate until the runoff is held on Jan. 5.
So there are certainly no sure things for Democrats in Georgia. But the fact that a formerly red state has become perhaps the most competitive battleground in the country is a bad sign for Republicans.