fivethirtyeight--2020-06-24--What Path Is The Trump Presidency On Now?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight ’ s weekly politics chat .
The transcript below has been lightly edited .
sarah ( Sarah Frostenson , politics editor ) : Soon after President Trump was inaugurated , FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver laid out 14 possible paths his presidency might take — ranging from him shifting to the middle and emerging as a fairly popular unifier to him resigning in disgrace or being impeached .
And while going through all 14 paths at this point is a little overwhelming , it ’ s still a useful way to think about the trajectory Trump finds himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a real question of whether the economy will have sufficiently recovered from a recession ( Scenario 9 ) by November .
But by the same token , it seems pretty unlikely that Trump cedes control to anyone in his administration in any meaningful way ( Scenario 5 ) .
If anything , the fact that former National Security Advisor John Bolton is the latest former administration official to speak out against him underscores just how comfortable Trump is with not listening to anyone .
So maybe the answer is Trump is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1 and 6 , where he defies conventional norms and jeopardizes democratic values ( firing Geoffrey Berman , the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating major crimes in the influential Southern District of New York , is just the latest example ) .
But will it be in a way where he still manages to appeal to enough of the electorate to win reelection ?
His approval rating and recent polls would suggest this may not be a winning tactic , but with his recent rally in Tulsa , we ’ re definitely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ path is Trump on now ?
nrakich ( Nathaniel Rakich , elections analyst ) : So I think we should start with the caveat that , clearly , Trump isn ’ t on any one specific path .
The last three and a half years have just been too unpredictable .
But I think there are elements of several of Nate ’ s paths that have come true .
For example , “ 1 .
Trump keeps on Trumpin ’ and the country remains evenly divided ” seems pretty accurate , but Nate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ sort of work ” and would “ make for a very competitive 2018 and 2020 ” does not seem to be coming true .
nrakich : LOL , Sarah , have you met me ?
julia_azari ( Julia Azari , political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor ) : I am here to out-cop-out Nathaniel and point out two important variables in the 14 scenarios : Trump himself , and the rest of the political environment .
And I don ’ t think they play an equal role in each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nate ’ s original framework to think about how the Trump administration has shaped up and also what ’ s happened in the rest of politics .
That being said , I think we should still consider the “ things fall apart ” genre and why what ’ s happening now looks a bit different , as well as Nate ’ s original Scenario 8 — “ Trump is consumed by scandal.
” nrakich : Exactly , Julia .
Trump has faced a lot of scandals .
He has presided over a pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violated democratic norms and values .
He was impeached .
But Trump ’ s popularity hasn ’ t cratered in response ( although it is dipping ) .
Nate ’ s scenarios kind of assumed that if bad things happened under Trump ’ s watch , he would become extremely unpopular .
But that hasn ’ t happened in these polarized times .
( He ’ s only pretty unpopular . )
sarah : I agree .
Scenario 8 in Nate ’ s original article implied scandal would sink Trump , but it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as you ’ re saying , Nathaniel , it doesn ’ t mean Trump ’ s approval rating is indestructible — even if it is weirdly steady .
This passage from Geoffrey Skelley ’ s piece on Trump ’ s latest dip in his approval rating has really stuck with me .
The downward movement in his approval rating belies the notion that nothing matters when it comes to public opinion of this president — his actions and events can , in fact , affect his standing .
And for that reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in real danger .
julia_azari : Right , so things have kinda fallen apart : We have a recession .
We have a pandemic .
A few weeks ago we had national protests with curfews and Trump making some very authoritarian statements .
And at one point , I think Trump might have entertained going fully authoritarian — which was a path in Nate ’ s original scenarios — but the rest of the political system pushed back .
I don ’ t mean to suggest that anyone is here to save norms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seen in the Trump presidency is that systems are resistant to change , and a lot of people have incentives to push back against changes .
The political system has worked largely as expected , too .
For instance , party loyalty kicked in as we expected during the impeachment process .
perry ( Perry Bacon Jr. , senior writer ) : That ’ s key here — congressional Republicans and the party overall have been so loyal to Trump .
Trump has had scandals and mistakes that I think rival or perhaps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His handling of the coronavirus pandemic .
Everything with Ukraine .
But my perception is that prominent Republicans have been less willing to criticize Trump than they were with Bush .
Party loyalty under Trump has been extremely strong .
He is fairly unpopular overall , but very popular within the Republican Party .
For instance , Trump is way down in the polls right now , yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is taking the same stance as Trump on Confederate monuments — that too many of them are being taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ position for a party trying to win elections .
julia_azari : Right , the party environment has changed .
nrakich : ( Yeah , as a side note , I was thinking about this chat we did in December 2019 about the most consequential episodes in Trump ’ s presidency .
That was only six months ago , and yet it feels like the list we settled on is totally defunct . )
sarah : Something I think we ’ re all dancing around now is that Trump has fewer paths to choose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had outlined 14 potential paths , but Trump ’ s options feel far more limited now .
julia_azari : Yeah .
I mean , the path where Trump pivots is not happening — which was evident very early on .
nrakich : The Trump-controlled part of his path seems to be more or less decided at this point .
The thing that ’ s left is the political-environment-controlled part .
And , of course , whether he wins reelection , which will be a part of how we assess whether Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quibble with even that characterization .
If something doesn ’ t work for 3.5 years but then we have a fast economic recovery or something and he hits 47 percent approval just in time to win reelection … did his path really “ work ” ?
julia_azari : So in one of the pivot scenarios , Nate wrote that maybe one conclusion from the 2016 election was that Trump is actually pretty good at politics .
I think this deserves some unpacking — Trump is clearly good at building a base , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislative coalition-building , national politics , etc .
perry : Trump has been brilliant in terms of consolidating power within the Republican Party .
For example , he basically pushed Sen. Jeff Flake out of the Senate .
He has interjected himself into gubernatorial primaries to get his favorites to win .
He has forced people out of his administration who would not do his bidding .
Being a Republican is about being loyal to Trump in a way that being a Democrat was not about being loyal to Obama from 2009 to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when you take out the Republican Party , the results fall apart pretty quickly .
perry : In a country this divided , I would argue being good at base politics is quite important .
The media and other institutions in American politics , like the courts , are always trying to remain nonpartisan .
So Trump ’ s approach basically forces out intra-party critics .
It means the media can ’ t easily say , “ Even Republicans think Trump is doing something strange here.
” That gives him more power .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ within the Republican Party .
julia_azari : Right , but power to do what ?
Trump governs mostly by executive order , in part because Congress is divided and in part because even when it wasn ’ t , no one could clarify an agenda and turn slogans into an actual governing coalition .
nrakich : I agree that Trump may care most about being loved by a segment of the population and having Republicans depend on him for their political livelihood .
But I think Trump is bad at politics .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personal following ( this was always true , by the way — it was his MO as a reality TV star ! )
, but that ’ s not the same as governing effectively or winning elections .
perry : And for three and a half years , he was close to maintaining power for eight years in America .
julia_azari : So I think the sum total of what you ’ re both saying is that Trump has mostly succeeded at his goals , and those goals were pretty tangentially related to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been fairly effective at what Trump wanted to do , which is hold power .
nrakich : I think we need to be more specific than just “ power.
” That word can mean a lot of things .
But I get what you ’ re saying .
perry : What I ’ m saying is pre-pandemic , Trump was at slightly below 50/50 odds of winning reelection .
And that was not because he was good at governing — as defined as achieving policy goals — but because he commanded 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ electorate or so .
So if Trump is only going to lose reelection because of the pandemic and the recession , then that means he wasn ’ t too bad at politics .
nrakich : Perry , we ’ ve had this discussion before , but I think Trump was an underdog even before the pandemic .
sarah : Yeah , I was going to ask… how much do we actually think the pandemic , the recession and now the protests have altered Trump ’ s reelection odds ?
They definitely don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this point .
nrakich : The events of the last month — which are probably impossible to disentangle — seem to have meaningfully hurt Trump ’ s reelection odds .
We don ’ t have a model yet , but I can give it to you in terms of a polling average .
On May 24 , Biden led by 5.8 points in national polls .
As of Tuesday , he led by 9.3 points .
perry : Trump ’ s reelection odds , it seems to me , went from like 45 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In April , The New York Times ’ s Nate Cohn , who is a great elections analyst , wrote about Trump ’ s strength in swing states .
And the entire Democratic primary seemed to be , “ Who can beat Trump , ” which suggests to me not everyone perceived him as easy to defeat .
So it really does seem to me that the pandemic and the resulting recession have rewritten his entire presidency .
Trump was running on economic success , which he claimed credit for even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
And that was an argument that was kind of working .
So in some ways , Trump ’ s path was to do crazy things but focus on the economy and say , “ Whatever I tweet , I get things done.
” And that was a decent path until COVID-19 .
nrakich : I think the fact that electability was such a big deal during the primary reflects the perception — among Democrats , maybe you ’ d call it paranoia — that Trump would be a formidable opponent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ down by around 6 points to Biden .
sarah : Huh , so maybe Trump isn ’ t that bad at politics .
Maybe the external environmental factors have just become too much for Trump to course-correct in any real way ?
nrakich : I certainly agree with Perry that the pandemic and recession have rewritten Trump ’ s presidency .
But things have just gone from bad to worse for him .
The economy used to be a plausible thing for him to campaign on , although it was really the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t even have that .
perry : Trump is not great at politics — he barely won in 2016 .
But he if loses in a landslide in 2020 , that may be more about COVID-19 than his political skills .
julia_azari : Right .
I think it ’ s worth noting that Jeb Bush , Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton would all be struggling politically right now .
They probably would not have dismantled the unit in the National Security Council dedicated to pandemic preparedness and might have had a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limited control over events like the political environment , particularly when a recession is involved .
That ’ s an interesting question , Nathaniel .
What could change between now and November ?
nrakich : Seems to me like quite a bit ?
The pandemic could be totally under control and the economy could be roaring back .
Or we could be in the middle of a second wave and the unemployment rate could be in the 20s .
Not to mention , all the possibilities that exist in a normal year : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ God forbid , a terrorist attack .
sarah : So how much does Trump ’ s path matter moving forward ?
Do external factors matter more ?
nrakich : Yeah , Sarah , I think at this point external factors matter more .
Trump has shown us who he is and how he ’ s governing .
perry : I think the most important thing is not any actual event , but rather how many Republican elites and voters decide to break with Trump .
Will more of each say “ this incident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the incident was similar to something Trump did in 2017 ?
I don ’ t think Trump will do anything different , but I think people might react differently to his behavior , with four more years of his presidency looming .
julia_azari : Yeah .
I agree that this is a big variable , and not the focus of the original paths .
perry : If it ’ s clear the ship is going down , people will want to get off of it .
Loyalty to the king does not matter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dethroned .

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Soon after President Trump was inaugurated, FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver laid out 14 possible paths his presidency might take — ranging from him shifting to the middle and emerging as a fairly popular unifier to him resigning in disgrace or being impeached.
And while going through all 14 paths at this point is a little overwhelming, it’s still a useful way to think about the trajectory Trump finds himself on now. For instance, there’s a real question of whether the economy will have sufficiently recovered from a recession (Scenario 9) by November. But by the same token, it seems pretty unlikely that Trump cedes control to anyone in his administration in any meaningful way (Scenario 5). If anything, the fact that former National Security Advisor John Bolton is the latest former administration official to speak out against him underscores just how comfortable Trump is with not listening to anyone.
So maybe the answer is Trump is verging on some hybrid version of Scenarios 1 and 6, where he defies conventional norms and jeopardizes democratic values (firing Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating major crimes in the influential Southern District of New York, is just the latest example). But will it be in a way where he still manages to appeal to enough of the electorate to win reelection? His approval rating and recent polls would suggest this may not be a winning tactic, but with his recent rally in Tulsa, we’re definitely in full-swing reelection phase.
So what path is Trump on now?
nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): So I think we should start with the caveat that, clearly, Trump isn’t on any one specific path. The last three and a half years have just been too unpredictable. But I think there are elements of several of Nate’s paths that have come true.
For example, “1. Trump keeps on Trumpin’ and the country remains evenly divided” seems pretty accurate, but Nate’s supposition that that path would “sort of work” and would “make for a very competitive 2018 and 2020” does not seem to be coming true.
sarah: That feels like … a cop-out.
nrakich: LOL, Sarah, have you met me?
julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): I am here to out-cop-out Nathaniel and point out two important variables in the 14 scenarios: Trump himself, and the rest of the political environment.
And I don’t think they play an equal role in each scenario. So I would actually adjust Nate’s original framework to think about how the Trump administration has shaped up and also what’s happened in the rest of politics.
That being said, I think we should still consider the “things fall apart” genre and why what’s happening now looks a bit different, as well as Nate’s original Scenario 8 — “Trump is consumed by scandal.”
nrakich: Exactly, Julia. Trump has faced a lot of scandals. He has presided over a pandemic and civil unrest. He has routinely violated democratic norms and values. He was impeached. But Trump’s popularity hasn’t cratered in response (although it is dipping).
Nate’s scenarios kind of assumed that if bad things happened under Trump’s watch, he would become extremely unpopular. But that hasn’t happened in these polarized times. (He’s only pretty unpopular.)
sarah: I agree. Scenario 8 in Nate’s original article implied scandal would sink Trump, but it really hasn’t. That said, as you’re saying, Nathaniel, it doesn’t mean Trump’s approval rating is indestructible — even if it is weirdly steady. This passage from Geoffrey Skelley’s piece on Trump’s latest dip in his approval rating has really stuck with me.
The downward movement in his approval rating belies the notion that nothing matters when it comes to public opinion of this president — his actions and events can, in fact, affect his standing. And for that reason, his reelection chances could now be in real danger.
julia_azari: Right, so things have kinda fallen apart: We have a recession. We have a pandemic. A few weeks ago we had national protests with curfews and Trump making some very authoritarian statements.
And at one point, I think Trump might have entertained going fully authoritarian — which was a path in Nate’s original scenarios — but the rest of the political system pushed back.
I don’t mean to suggest that anyone is here to save norms, but one thing we’ve seen in the Trump presidency is that systems are resistant to change, and a lot of people have incentives to push back against changes. The political system has worked largely as expected, too. For instance, party loyalty kicked in as we expected during the impeachment process.
perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): That’s key here — congressional Republicans and the party overall have been so loyal to Trump.
Trump has had scandals and mistakes that I think rival or perhaps even top George W. Bush’s. His handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Everything with Ukraine.
But my perception is that prominent Republicans have been less willing to criticize Trump than they were with Bush. Party loyalty under Trump has been extremely strong. He is fairly unpopular overall, but very popular within the Republican Party. For instance, Trump is way down in the polls right now, yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is taking the same stance as Trump on Confederate monuments — that too many of them are being taken down.
This is not a great position for a party trying to win elections.
julia_azari: Right, the party environment has changed.
nrakich: (Yeah, as a side note, I was thinking about this chat we did in December 2019 about the most consequential episodes in Trump’s presidency. That was only six months ago, and yet it feels like the list we settled on is totally defunct.)
sarah: Something I think we’re all dancing around now is that Trump has fewer paths to choose from, right? Initially, Nate had outlined 14 potential paths, but Trump’s options feel far more limited now.
julia_azari: Yeah. I mean, the path where Trump pivots is not happening — which was evident very early on.
nrakich: The Trump-controlled part of his path seems to be more or less decided at this point. The thing that’s left is the political-environment-controlled part.
And, of course, whether he wins reelection, which will be a part of how we assess whether Trump’s path “worked.”
Although I would quibble with even that characterization. If something doesn’t work for 3.5 years but then we have a fast economic recovery or something and he hits 47 percent approval just in time to win reelection … did his path really “work”?
julia_azari: So in one of the pivot scenarios, Nate wrote that maybe one conclusion from the 2016 election was that Trump is actually pretty good at politics. I think this deserves some unpacking — Trump is clearly good at building a base, but I think he’s bad at legislative coalition-building, national politics, etc.
perry: Trump has been brilliant in terms of consolidating power within the Republican Party.
For example, he basically pushed Sen. Jeff Flake out of the Senate. He has interjected himself into gubernatorial primaries to get his favorites to win.
He has forced people out of his administration who would not do his bidding. Being a Republican is about being loyal to Trump in a way that being a Democrat was not about being loyal to Obama from 2009 to 2017.
julia_azari: Right. But then when you take out the Republican Party, the results fall apart pretty quickly.
perry: In a country this divided, I would argue being good at base politics is quite important.
The media and other institutions in American politics, like the courts, are always trying to remain nonpartisan. So Trump’s approach basically forces out intra-party critics. It means the media can’t easily say, “Even Republicans think Trump is doing something strange here.” That gives him more power. He has been great at accumulating power within the Republican Party.
julia_azari: Right, but power to do what?
Trump governs mostly by executive order, in part because Congress is divided and in part because even when it wasn’t, no one could clarify an agenda and turn slogans into an actual governing coalition.
nrakich: I agree that Trump may care most about being loved by a segment of the population and having Republicans depend on him for their political livelihood. But I think Trump is bad at politics. He’s good at building a loyal personal following (this was always true, by the way — it was his MO as a reality TV star!), but that’s not the same as governing effectively or winning elections.
perry: And for three and a half years, he was close to maintaining power for eight years in America.
julia_azari: So I think the sum total of what you’re both saying is that Trump has mostly succeeded at his goals, and those goals were pretty tangentially related to governing.
perry: Yes. Trump has been fairly effective at what Trump wanted to do, which is hold power.
nrakich: I think we need to be more specific than just “power.” That word can mean a lot of things. But I get what you’re saying.
perry: What I’m saying is pre-pandemic, Trump was at slightly below 50/50 odds of winning reelection. And that was not because he was good at governing — as defined as achieving policy goals — but because he commanded 100 percent loyalty with 50 percent of the electorate or so.
So if Trump is only going to lose reelection because of the pandemic and the recession, then that means he wasn’t too bad at politics.
nrakich: Perry, we’ve had this discussion before, but I think Trump was an underdog even before the pandemic.
sarah: Yeah, I was going to ask… how much do we actually think the pandemic, the recession and now the protests have altered Trump’s reelection odds? They definitely don’t seem to have helped him at this point.
nrakich: The events of the last month — which are probably impossible to disentangle — seem to have meaningfully hurt Trump’s reelection odds. We don’t have a model yet, but I can give it to you in terms of a polling average. On May 24, Biden led by 5.8 points in national polls. As of Tuesday, he led by 9.3 points.
perry: Trump’s reelection odds, it seems to me, went from like 45 percent earlier this year to 20 percent. In April, The New York Times’s Nate Cohn, who is a great elections analyst, wrote about Trump’s strength in swing states. And the entire Democratic primary seemed to be, “Who can beat Trump,” which suggests to me not everyone perceived him as easy to defeat. So it really does seem to me that the pandemic and the resulting recession have rewritten his entire presidency. Trump was running on economic success, which he claimed credit for even if he had little do to do with it. And that was an argument that was kind of working.
So in some ways, Trump’s path was to do crazy things but focus on the economy and say, “Whatever I tweet, I get things done.”
And that was a decent path until COVID-19.
nrakich: I think the fact that electability was such a big deal during the primary reflects the perception — among Democrats, maybe you’d call it paranoia — that Trump would be a formidable opponent. But he basically spent all of 2019 down by around 6 points to Biden.
(Now is the part where I insert the caveat that everything is still subject to change with more than four months until the election, regardless of whether Trump is down 9 or 6 points.)
sarah: Huh, so maybe Trump isn’t that bad at politics. Maybe the external environmental factors have just become too much for Trump to course-correct in any real way?
nrakich: I certainly agree with Perry that the pandemic and recession have rewritten Trump’s presidency. But things have just gone from bad to worse for him. The economy used to be a plausible thing for him to campaign on, although it was really the only arrow in his quiver. Now he doesn’t even have that.
perry: Trump is not great at politics — he barely won in 2016. But he if loses in a landslide in 2020, that may be more about COVID-19 than his political skills.
julia_azari: Right. I think it’s worth noting that Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton would all be struggling politically right now. They probably would not have dismantled the unit in the National Security Council dedicated to pandemic preparedness and might have had a more coherent response, but presidents have limited control over events like the political environment, particularly when a recession is involved.
That’s an interesting question, Nathaniel. What could change between now and November?
nrakich: Seems to me like quite a bit? The pandemic could be totally under control and the economy could be roaring back. Or we could be in the middle of a second wave and the unemployment rate could be in the 20s.
Not to mention, all the possibilities that exist in a normal year: A bad debate. A scandal. God forbid, a terrorist attack.
sarah: So how much does Trump’s path matter moving forward? Do external factors matter more?
nrakich: Yeah, Sarah, I think at this point external factors matter more. Trump has shown us who he is and how he’s governing.
perry: I think the most important thing is not any actual event, but rather how many Republican elites and voters decide to break with Trump. Will more of each say “this incident was the last straw” even if the incident was similar to something Trump did in 2017?
I don’t think Trump will do anything different, but I think people might react differently to his behavior, with four more years of his presidency looming.
julia_azari: Yeah. I agree that this is a big variable, and not the focus of the original paths.
perry: If it’s clear the ship is going down, people will want to get off of it.
Loyalty to the king does not matter if the king is going to be dethroned.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: Progressives challenge the Democratic establishment


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-25--Why Biden’s Polling Lead Is Different From Clinton’s In 2016

There are still 131 days — an eternity in politics — to go before the general election , but as of right now , former Vice President Joe Biden has a commanding lead over President Trump .
Last week , we unveiled FiveThirtyEight ’ s polling average for the 2020 presidential election , which adjusts for things like the quality or recency of the poll .
( If you ’ re curious , you can read more about how it ’ s calculated here . )
And as of Wednesday , June 24 , Biden leads Trump nationally 50.9 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 9.6 points ) .
So although it ’ s still early ( and the race can still change ) , we thought it would be good to set a marker for what the state of the race is at this point .
So here are a few takeaways from our polling averages : First , Biden ’ s lead has clearly widened in the past month .
He now leads by more than 9 points , but on May 25 , Biden led by an average of only 5.8 points ( 48.9 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day , though , police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis , touching off weeks of protests nationwide .
Americans gave Trump poor marks for his heavy-handed response , such as his administration ’ s use of the military to clear protesters from in front of the White House so he could pose for a photo .
In addition , voter approval of Trump ’ s handling of the coronavirus pandemic continues to sink , and the president has faced several other controversies in the past week or so .
So while we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much these events might be driving Biden ’ s increasing advantage in the polls , it seems probable that recent events have hurt Trump ’ s reelection chances .
But some people have dismissed Biden ’ s lead by pointing out that Hillary Clinton also led in most polls of the 2016 election ( Clinton , obviously , ended up losing to Trump ) .
While this is true , Clinton ’ s lead was much smaller .
Applying our current polling-average methodology to 2016 polls , Clinton led national polls by an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the 2016 election , and 3.8 points on Election Day itself .
So while a normal-sized polling error was enough to throw the 2016 election to Trump , it would take a much bigger — and much unlikelier — polling error for Trump to be ahead right now .
Of course , Trump became president because he won the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote .
But if Biden wins the popular vote by 9.6 points , his current lead , Trump would be extremely unlikely to pull off the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ averages , Biden currently leads in states worth 368 electoral votes , far more than the 270 needed to win .
However , the Electoral College looks like it could still give Trump an advantage , just like it did four years ago .
It ’ s hard to see that advantage now because Biden leads in nearly every swing state , but if you look at each state ’ s polling average relative to the national polling average ( the rightmost column in the table below ) , you get a sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bluer than the country as a whole .
As you can see , by this metric , many of these states lean more toward Trump than the country does .
That means that , if the overall race tightens , those states could slide into Trump ’ s column , allowing him to once again win a majority of electoral votes even if Biden wins the national popular vote .
Right now , according to our polling averages , Florida would be the “ tipping point ” state of the election — the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 270th electoral vote .
( In other words , if Biden wins every state above Florida in the table , and Trump wins every state below Florida , both would still be short of 270 electoral votes .
So whoever won Florida would win the election . )
Biden currently leads by 7.4 points in Florida , according to our polling average there , which is 2.3 points less than his national lead .
That means Trump could win the state — and therefore , the way things are set up right now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden still leads the national average by up to 2.3 points on Election Day .
That said , it ’ s still early in the campaign , and the tipping point state will likely continue to shuffle around ( for example , Minnesota was the tipping-point state last week ) .
For now , though , it ’ s notable that the Midwestern swing states — namely , Michigan , Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are still a bit more Democratic-leaning than the emerging swing states in the Sun Belt , like Arizona , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s a similar story to 2016 , when the election was decided in the Midwest .
But based on these early polling averages , a few states seem to have gotten a bit more Democratic since the last election ( even accounting for the bluer national environment ) .
For example , Michigan ’ s polling average almost exactly mirrors the national polling average right now , despite Michigan voting 2.3 points to the right of the nation in 2016 .
It ’ s especially surprising to see Michigan so far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ table above , considering how similarly those three states voted in 2016 .
However , this could also just be noise in the data .
We ’ re still light on polls in many states ; for instance , we ’ ve seen a grand total of one Pennsylvania poll conducted this month .
So be sure to check back to see how the polling averages shift .
For now , though , things look pretty good for Biden .

There are still 131 days — an eternity in politics — to go before the general election, but as of right now, former Vice President Joe Biden has a commanding lead over President Trump. Last week, we unveiled FiveThirtyEight’s polling average for the 2020 presidential election, which adjusts for things like the quality or recency of the poll. (If you’re curious, you can read more about how it’s calculated here.) And as of Wednesday, June 24, Biden leads Trump nationally 50.9 percent to 41.3 percent (a margin of 9.6 points).
So although it’s still early (and the race can still change), we thought it would be good to set a marker for what the state of the race is at this point. So here are a few takeaways from our polling averages:
First, Biden’s lead has clearly widened in the past month. He now leads by more than 9 points, but on May 25, Biden led by an average of only 5.8 points (48.9 percent to 43.1 percent). On that day, though, police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, touching off weeks of protests nationwide. Americans gave Trump poor marks for his heavy-handed response, such as his administration’s use of the military to clear protesters from in front of the White House so he could pose for a photo. In addition, voter approval of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic continues to sink, and the president has faced several other controversies in the past week or so. So while we can’t say for sure how much these events might be driving Biden’s increasing advantage in the polls, it seems probable that recent events have hurt Trump’s reelection chances.
But some people have dismissed Biden’s lead by pointing out that Hillary Clinton also led in most polls of the 2016 election (Clinton, obviously, ended up losing to Trump). While this is true, Clinton’s lead was much smaller. Applying our current polling-average methodology to 2016 polls, Clinton led national polls by an average of about 4.0 points four months before the 2016 election, and 3.8 points on Election Day itself. So while a normal-sized polling error was enough to throw the 2016 election to Trump, it would take a much bigger — and much unlikelier — polling error for Trump to be ahead right now.
[Related: Biden Has A Historically Large Lead Over Trump, But It Could Disappear]
Of course, Trump became president because he won the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote. But if Biden wins the popular vote by 9.6 points, his current lead, Trump would be extremely unlikely to pull off the same trick. In our state-by-state polling averages, Biden currently leads in states worth 368 electoral votes, far more than the 270 needed to win.
However, the Electoral College looks like it could still give Trump an advantage, just like it did four years ago. It’s hard to see that advantage now because Biden leads in nearly every swing state, but if you look at each state’s polling average relative to the national polling average (the rightmost column in the table below), you get a sense of whether the state is redder or bluer than the country as a whole. As you can see, by this metric, many of these states lean more toward Trump than the country does. That means that, if the overall race tightens, those states could slide into Trump’s column, allowing him to once again win a majority of electoral votes even if Biden wins the national popular vote.
Biden is outpolling Trump in most swing states FiveThirtyEight polling averages as of 5:20 p.m. Eastern on June 24, 2020 State Biden Trump Margin Lean Relative to Nation Colorado 54.6% 36.9% D+17.7 D+8.0 New Mexico 54.5 40.6 D+14.0 D+4.3 Maine 53.5 39.6 D+13.9 D+4.2 Virginia 50.9 39.7 D+11.2 D+1.5 Minnesota 54.3 43.8 D+10.6 D+0.9 National 50.9 41.3 D+9.6 EVEN Michigan 50.6 41.0 D+9.6 R+0.1 Nevada 48.6 39.9 D+8.7 R+0.9 New Hampshire 50.2 42.4 D+7.9 R+1.8 Wisconsin 49.8 42.3 D+7.6 R+2.1 Florida 50.0 42.6 D+7.4 R+2.3 Pennsylvania 49.2 43.6 D+5.6 R+4.0 Arizona 48.1 43.5 D+4.7 R+5.0 Ohio 48.2 45.8 D+2.4 R+7.3 North Carolina 47.1 45.2 D+1.9 R+7.8 Georgia 47.2 45.9 D+1.3 R+8.4 Iowa 45.9 46.0 R+0.1 R+9.8 Texas 46.6 47.1 R+0.5 R+10.1 “Lean relative to nation” is how much more pro-Biden or pro-Trump a state’s polling average is than the national polling average.
Right now, according to our polling averages, Florida would be the “tipping point” state of the election — the state that will give a candidate his 270th electoral vote. (In other words, if Biden wins every state above Florida in the table, and Trump wins every state below Florida, both would still be short of 270 electoral votes. So whoever won Florida would win the election.) Biden currently leads by 7.4 points in Florida, according to our polling average there, which is 2.3 points less than his national lead. That means Trump could win the state — and therefore, the way things are set up right now, the Electoral College — even if Biden still leads the national average by up to 2.3 points on Election Day. That said, it’s still early in the campaign, and the tipping point state will likely continue to shuffle around (for example, Minnesota was the tipping-point state last week).
For now, though, it’s notable that the Midwestern swing states — namely, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are still a bit more Democratic-leaning than the emerging swing states in the Sun Belt, like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. That’s a similar story to 2016, when the election was decided in the Midwest. But based on these early polling averages, a few states seem to have gotten a bit more Democratic since the last election (even accounting for the bluer national environment). For example, Michigan’s polling average almost exactly mirrors the national polling average right now, despite Michigan voting 2.3 points to the right of the nation in 2016. It’s especially surprising to see Michigan so far away from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the table above, considering how similarly those three states voted in 2016.
[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]
However, this could also just be noise in the data. We’re still light on polls in many states; for instance, we’ve seen a grand total of one Pennsylvania poll conducted this month. So be sure to check back to see how the polling averages shift. For now, though, things look pretty good for Biden.
Do you buy that Trump can ride a midwest path to victory in 2020?


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-25--Biden Has A Historically Large Lead Over Trump, But It Could Disappear

FiveThirtyEight ’ s general election polling averages debuted last week , showing that former Vice President Joe Biden , the presumptive Democratic nominee , holds a big lead over President Trump in national surveys — about 10 percentage points as of 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday .
So how does Biden ’ s lead stack up to those in previous cycles ?
We compared his standing at this point to previous presidential elections by applying our polling average methodology to polls from past cycles .
And as you can see in the chart below , both Biden ’ s average support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — the largest of any contender since Bill Clinton in 1996 .
Of course , there are still four months to go until Election Day , but the fact that Biden has such a sizable lead — already bigger than Hillary Clinton ’ s largest lead over Trump , which peaked at 7.5 points in 2016 — is notable .
Heck , even Barack Obama never led by more than 8 points in our 2008 national average , and that wound up being a blowout .
It ’ s not just Biden ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; he ’ s also only one of three candidates to crack the 50 percent mark at this point in the cycle .
( The other two were Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 , both of whom were incumbents who went on to win landslide victories by 23 and 18 points , respectively . )
It ’ s unlikely that Biden wins by that sort of margin , given our increasingly polarized politics , but it is a sign that there are fewer undecided or third-party voters for Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ position .
It also doesn ’ t bode well for Trump that he is in the worst position of any incumbent since Jimmy Carter in 1980 .
But before you declare Biden the winner , remember his lead is not insurmountable .
Polls closer to November could very well show a race that is tightening .
At this point in the 1988 cycle , Michael Dukakis led nationally by almost 5 points , and in 2000 , George W. Bush was up by nearly 8 points .
But Dukakis ended up losing by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ narrowly lost the popular vote .
( He still won the Electoral College , thanks to Florida . )
So Trump still has plenty of time to recover enough ground to win in the Electoral College even if he loses the national popular vote — after all , he did it in 2016 .
That said , if Biden ’ s current national lead holds steady , it would almost certainly neutralize Trump ’ s potential edge in the Electoral College .
But as Dukakis and Bush show us , a lot can @ @ @ @ @ @

FiveThirtyEight’s general election polling averages debuted last week, showing that former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, holds a big lead over President Trump in national surveys — about 10 percentage points as of 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
So how does Biden’s lead stack up to those in previous cycles? We compared his standing at this point to previous presidential elections by applying our polling average methodology to polls from past cycles. And as you can see in the chart below, both Biden’s average support and margin over Trump are historically large — the largest of any contender since Bill Clinton in 1996.
Of course, there are still four months to go until Election Day, but the fact that Biden has such a sizable lead — already bigger than Hillary Clinton’s largest lead over Trump, which peaked at 7.5 points in 2016 — is notable. Heck, even Barack Obama never led by more than 8 points in our 2008 national average, and that wound up being a blowout.
[Related: Our 2020 National Polling Averages]
It’s not just Biden’s margin that stands out, either; he’s also only one of three candidates to crack the 50 percent mark at this point in the cycle. (The other two were Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984, both of whom were incumbents who went on to win landslide victories by 23 and 18 points, respectively.) It’s unlikely that Biden wins by that sort of margin, given our increasingly polarized politics, but it is a sign that there are fewer undecided or third-party voters for Trump to pick up to help improve his position. It also doesn’t bode well for Trump that he is in the worst position of any incumbent since Jimmy Carter in 1980.
But before you declare Biden the winner, remember his lead is not insurmountable. Polls closer to November could very well show a race that is tightening. At this point in the 1988 cycle, Michael Dukakis led nationally by almost 5 points, and in 2000, George W. Bush was up by nearly 8 points. But Dukakis ended up losing by nearly 8 points in November while Bush narrowly lost the popular vote. (He still won the Electoral College, thanks to Florida.)
[Related: Why Biden’s Polling Lead Is Different From Clinton’s In 2016]
So Trump still has plenty of time to recover enough ground to win in the Electoral College even if he loses the national popular vote — after all, he did it in 2016. That said, if Biden’s current national lead holds steady, it would almost certainly neutralize Trump’s potential edge in the Electoral College. But as Dukakis and Bush show us, a lot can change between now and November.
Do you buy that Trump can ride a midwest path to victory in 2020?


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-25--New Polling Shows Trump’s Electoral College Advantage Is Slipping

A new batch of polls released by The New York Times Upshot/Siena College this morning has caused a stir as they gave former Vice President Joe Biden leads ranging from 6 to 11 percentage points in six key battleground states : Arizona , Florida , Michigan , North Carolina , Pennsylvania and Wisconsin .
Yet these surveys largely reinforced what our polling averages already showed : Biden has a sizable edge over President Trump in the states that are most likely to be the tipping point in the Electoral College , and he leads or is running even with Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 .
As a result , Trump ’ s much-ballyhooed Electoral College advantage doesn ’ t look strong enough to save him — for the moment , at least .
The Times/Siena is one of the most highly-rated pollsters in FiveThirtyEight ’ s Pollster Ratings — one of six with an A+ mark — so these new surveys did adjust our averages a bit , most notably in Pennsylvania .
There had been few high-quality polls conducted in the Keystone State , so our polling average did shift roughly 1.5 points in Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ survey , which found Biden up by 10 points .
It wasn ’ t just the Times/Siena survey that found Biden up , either .
We got two more polls of Pennsylvania today that showed Biden with double-digit leads .
One from GOP pollster Hodas & Associates gave Biden a 12-point lead , and one from Redfield & Wilton Strategies put him up 10 points .
The new Times/Siena polls also bumped Biden ’ s margin up about a point in three other states : Michigan , North Carolina and Wisconsin .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leads in Michigan and Wisconsin now exceed his national advantage .
North Carolina , on the other hand , remains somewhat to the right of the country , but Biden still has about a 3-point lead .
This marks a big change for Wisconsin , too , as up until this point , it had been more Republican-leaning than the country as a whole despite Biden ’ s lead there .
The other thing to note here is that Biden is above 50 percent in Pennsylvania , Michigan and Wisconsin .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in these states at points in 2016 , she never crossed the 50 percent threshold .
That speaks to just how durable Biden ’ s lead might be .
But perhaps what ’ s even more significant about this batch of recent polls is that Trump ’ s possible Electoral College advantage is slipping .
Biden doesn ’ t lead by as much in most of the battleground states as he does nationally , but his leads are big enough — anywhere from 5 points in Arizona to 9 points in Nevada — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many battleground states lean to the right of the country .
Take Biden ’ s leads in Pennsylvania , Michigan and Wisconsin .
Those three Frost Belt states were each decided by less than 1 point in the 2016 election , yet Biden leads them all by at least 8 points .
That gives him a firmer grip on the Electoral College .
The race , of course , could narrow in the coming months , but as the Times/Siena surveys found , Biden also has a sizable edge in states such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if his position weakens in the Midwest — perhaps some white Republican-leaning voters come home to Trump — Biden ’ s strength in other parts of the country might be less affected and still give him a path to victory with 270 electoral votes .
And the fact that Biden now has multiple paths to the White House is the biggest problem facing Trump .
He needs a notable shift in voter sentiment that makes the national environment less favorable for Biden .
With four months to go , that ’ s quite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our polling averages suggest that he ’ s in a lot of trouble .

A new batch of polls released by The New York Times Upshot/Siena College this morning has caused a stir as they gave former Vice President Joe Biden leads ranging from 6 to 11 percentage points in six key battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Yet these surveys largely reinforced what our polling averages already showed: Biden has a sizable edge over President Trump in the states that are most likely to be the tipping point in the Electoral College, and he leads or is running even with Trump in some states that leaned Republican in 2016. As a result, Trump’s much-ballyhooed Electoral College advantage doesn’t look strong enough to save him — for the moment, at least.
The Times/Siena is one of the most highly-rated pollsters in FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings — one of six with an A+ mark — so these new surveys did adjust our averages a bit, most notably in Pennsylvania. There had been few high-quality polls conducted in the Keystone State, so our polling average did shift roughly 1.5 points in Biden’s favor because of the Times/Siena survey, which found Biden up by 10 points.
It wasn’t just the Times/Siena survey that found Biden up, either. We got two more polls of Pennsylvania today that showed Biden with double-digit leads. One from GOP pollster Hodas & Associates gave Biden a 12-point lead, and one from Redfield & Wilton Strategies put him up 10 points.
The new Times/Siena polls also bumped Biden’s margin up about a point in three other states: Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. As a result, Biden’s average leads in Michigan and Wisconsin now exceed his national advantage. North Carolina, on the other hand, remains somewhat to the right of the country, but Biden still has about a 3-point lead. This marks a big change for Wisconsin, too, as up until this point, it had been more Republican-leaning than the country as a whole despite Biden’s lead there.
Wisconsin is the latest battleground state to lean blue FiveThirtyEight polling averages as of 1 p.m. EDT on June 25, 2020 State Biden Trump Margin Lean Relative to Nation Colorado 54.5% 36.6% D+17.9 D+8.3 Maine 53.7 38.6 D+15.1 D+5.6 New Mexico 54.4 40.4 D+14.0 D+4.5 Virginia 50.8 39.4 D+11.4 D+1.9 Minnesota 54.3 43.5 D+10.8 D+1.2 Michigan 50.4 39.7 D+10.7 D+1.2 Wisconsin 50.2 40.5 D+9.6 D+0.1 National 50.6 41.1 D+9.5 EVEN Nevada 48.5 39.7 D+8.8 R+0.7 New Hampshire 50.3 41.7 D+8.6 R+0.9 Pennsylvania 50.5 42.3 D+8.1 R+1.4 Florida 49.1 42.2 D+6.8 R+2.7 Arizona 47.5 42.7 D+4.8 R+4.7 North Carolina 47.3 44.1 D+3.2 R+6.3 Ohio 48.2 45.5 D+2.7 R+6.8 Georgia 47.1 45.7 D+1.4 R+8.1 Iowa 45.9 45.5 D+0.4 R+9.2 Texas 46.5 46.9 R+0.4 R+9.9 “Lean relative to nation” is how much more pro-Biden or pro-Trump a state’s polling average is than the national polling average.
The other thing to note here is that Biden is above 50 percent in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. This is significant because even though Hillary Clinton led in these states at points in 2016, she never crossed the 50 percent threshold. That speaks to just how durable Biden’s lead might be.
But perhaps what’s even more significant about this batch of recent polls is that Trump’s possible Electoral College advantage is slipping. Biden doesn’t lead by as much in most of the battleground states as he does nationally, but his leads are big enough — anywhere from 5 points in Arizona to 9 points in Nevada — that it won’t matter that many battleground states lean to the right of the country.
Take Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Those three Frost Belt states were each decided by less than 1 point in the 2016 election, yet Biden leads them all by at least 8 points. That gives him a firmer grip on the Electoral College. The race, of course, could narrow in the coming months, but as the Times/Siena surveys found, Biden also has a sizable edge in states such as Arizona and Florida, which means even if his position weakens in the Midwest — perhaps some white Republican-leaning voters come home to Trump — Biden’s strength in other parts of the country might be less affected and still give him a path to victory with 270 electoral votes.
And the fact that Biden now has multiple paths to the White House is the biggest problem facing Trump. He needs a notable shift in voter sentiment that makes the national environment less favorable for Biden. With four months to go, that’s quite possible, but at the moment, our polling averages suggest that he’s in a lot of trouble.


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-25--Why Statistics Don’t Capture The Full Extent Of The Systemic Bias In Policing

Across the U.S. , demonstrators have spent the past few weeks protesting against racial disparities in the country ’ s criminal justice system .
There ’ s plenty of data to back them up : Black and Hispanic people are stopped more frequently , including traffic stops , and are more likely to be arrested .
Once stopped , police are more likely to use force against , shoot and kill Black citizens .
And then once in jail , Black defendants are more likely to be denied bail , which in turn makes conviction more likely .
And when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black defendants , with Black defendants more likely to be incarcerated .
The data seems to overwhelmingly point to a criminal justice system riven by racial bias .
But , remarkably , it could be even more overwhelming than some studies make it seem .
That ’ s because of a statistical quirk called “ collider bias , ” a kind of selection bias that means that the crime data that shows racial bias is , itself , biased by racist practices .
If you thought crime data showed clear evidence of racism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these analyses might make it even clearer .
To understand how all this works , we ’ re going to get mathy .
In particular , we ’ re going to be talking a lot about denominators , which , if you ’ ll remember your fourth grade math lessons , are the numbers on the bottom of a fraction .
For our purposes , though , you can think of them as the universe of people who are being studied .
Police engage with only a small subset of the population they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ statistics about those interactions , the stats we get are informed by that smaller sample .
And if there ’ s bias in who the police choose to interact with — if it ’ s not a random sample — that can change the relationships you see in the data .
There are two main ways that researchers approach this problem — by using a “ population denominator ” and an “ encounter denominator.
” The former , for example , compares the fraction of Black people in the general population who are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for white people .
That ’ s how you get studies that show 96 out of 100,000 Black men and boys will be killed by police over the course of their lifetimes , compared to 39 out of 100,000 white men and boys — a risk that is 2.5 times higher .
Seems straightforward enough .
But because Black and white people encounter the police at different rates to begin with , using population denominators might not lend itself to an apples-to-apples comparison ; being more likely to encounter police means that you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force , too .
For this reason , many researchers choose to look at the set of people who have encountered the police .
This is the “ encounter denominator.
” The setup is simple : You look at all the people who had recorded encounters with police — data which is not always easy to obtain — and calculate the proportion that involved the use of force .
But this approach has a different issue , as a recent paper pointed out — if there ’ s bias in who gets stopped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at discrepancies in the resulting interactions won ’ t give you the full picture .
This is because of something called “ collider bias.
” “ The vast majority — 99.9 percent of the data — we never get to see , ” said Dean Knox , a professor of politics at Princeton and one of the authors of the study .
“ We just don ’ t see all the times when police officers are encountering civilians on the street .
And that ’ s a huge problem , because among the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — the stops , and the arrests , and the use of force that officers record — those are already contaminated , because officers have discretion in who they choose to engage.
” The fact that researchers ’ data comes from a biased sample — who the police choose to stop — rather than the full sample of possible stops might skew the conclusions we draw from it .
“ If we ’ re using administrative data , we always need to be aware of what world those data capture , and what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Allison P. Harris , a political science professor at Yale who studies racial disparities in the criminal justice system .
“ With policing , we just can never know what there ’ s no record of.
” [ Related : Why It ’ s So Rare For Police Officers To Face Legal Consequences ] One example of an encounter denominator approach is a 2019 study by Roland Fryer , an economist at Harvard .
He found that police shoot white , Black and Hispanic Americans whom they ’ ve stopped at equal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would seem like evidence that the police are not racially biased — every demographic is being treated equally , after all .
But we know that police officers are more likely to stop Black and Hispanic people than white ones — and that more of those stops are unfounded .
Researchers measure this with something called the “ hit rate , ” or the rate at which contraband is actually found on the people who were stopped .
A lower hit rate implies bias because it means that the decision to search someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people stopped in New York City , for example , were more likely to be carrying a weapon than Black and Hispanic people who were stopped .
White drivers stopped by the police were more likely to have contraband than Black and Hispanic drivers nationally .
As political scientists Knox , Will Lowe and Jonathan Mummolo , among others , have pointed out , that complicates Fryer ’ s findings .
All of a sudden , what at first appeared to be equal treatment actually suggests unequal treatment .
Because of the initial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sample of stopped people isn ’ t the same across races .
The different hit rate indicates that stopped white people are actually more likely to have contraband , on average , than stopped Black people .
In other words , in a world without discrimination in who was stopped — if the Black and white people who were stopped were equally likely to be engaged in criminal activity — you ’ d see an even bigger disparity in outcomes .
It ’ s unintuitive , I know , but let ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data we have pick up halfway through the encounter , after officer bias very likely has already exerted an effect , ” said Mummolo , a professor at Princeton .
And without knowing the racial composition of the people who are sighted by police but aren ’ t stopped , it ’ s impossible to fully correct for the bias .
The paper provides a suggestion for how to estimate bias in one part of the chain — use of force in encounters — but it doesn ’ t capture any of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the encounter likelier .
So if racial bias in police stops makes it hard to estimate racial disparities in how people are treated while stopped , you might be wondering : well , doesn ’ t this affect all of the other components of the chain , too ?
“ We need to think about this as this complex system , ” said Knox .
There are biases layered on biases — social decisions like how society allocates resources in education versus policing , and individual decisions like who police choose to stop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or convicted .
“ It just compounds all the way down the line , ” Knox said .
[ Related : The States Taking On Police Reform After The Death Of George Floyd ] The thing about systemic racism is it ’ s just that : systemic .
Ultimately , the fact that these biased events build on each other should be a reminder that we ’ re not capturing the entire process surrounding the stats we ’ re looking at .
Essentially , all the discrimination we can actually measure at each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much is actually happening .
How cable news is talking about the protests — and why it matters | FiveThirtyEight

Across the U.S., demonstrators have spent the past few weeks protesting against racial disparities in the country’s criminal justice system. There’s plenty of data to back them up: Black and Hispanic people are stopped more frequently, including traffic stops, and are more likely to be arrested. Once stopped, police are more likely to use force against, shoot and kill Black citizens. And then once in jail, Black defendants are more likely to be denied bail, which in turn makes conviction more likely. And when convicted, sentencing is also biased against Black defendants, with Black defendants more likely to be incarcerated.
The data seems to overwhelmingly point to a criminal justice system riven by racial bias. But, remarkably, it could be even more overwhelming than some studies make it seem. That’s because of a statistical quirk called “collider bias,” a kind of selection bias that means that the crime data that shows racial bias is, itself, biased by racist practices. If you thought crime data showed clear evidence of racism before, understanding how collider bias affects these analyses might make it even clearer.
To understand how all this works, we’re going to get mathy. In particular, we’re going to be talking a lot about denominators, which, if you’ll remember your fourth grade math lessons, are the numbers on the bottom of a fraction. For our purposes, though, you can think of them as the universe of people who are being studied.
[Related: Is Police Reform A Fundamentally Flawed Idea?]
Police engage with only a small subset of the population they see, so if we look at statistics about those interactions, the stats we get are informed by that smaller sample. And if there’s bias in who the police choose to interact with — if it’s not a random sample — that can change the relationships you see in the data.
There are two main ways that researchers approach this problem — by using a “population denominator” and an “encounter denominator.”
The former, for example, compares the fraction of Black people in the general population who are arrested or harmed to that same statistic for white people. That’s how you get studies that show 96 out of 100,000 Black men and boys will be killed by police over the course of their lifetimes, compared to 39 out of 100,000 white men and boys — a risk that is 2.5 times higher. Seems straightforward enough. But because Black and white people encounter the police at different rates to begin with, using population denominators might not lend itself to an apples-to-apples comparison; being more likely to encounter police means that you’re more likely to encounter police force, too.
For this reason, many researchers choose to look at the set of people who have encountered the police. This is the “encounter denominator.” The setup is simple: You look at all the people who had recorded encounters with police — data which is not always easy to obtain — and calculate the proportion that involved the use of force. But this approach has a different issue, as a recent paper pointed out — if there’s bias in who gets stopped in the first place, then looking at discrepancies in the resulting interactions won’t give you the full picture. This is because of something called “collider bias.”
“The vast majority — 99.9 percent of the data — we never get to see,” said Dean Knox, a professor of politics at Princeton and one of the authors of the study. “We just don’t see all the times when police officers are encountering civilians on the street. And that’s a huge problem, because among the data that you do get to see — the stops, and the arrests, and the use of force that officers record — those are already contaminated, because officers have discretion in who they choose to engage.”
The fact that researchers’ data comes from a biased sample — who the police choose to stop — rather than the full sample of possible stops might skew the conclusions we draw from it. “If we’re using administrative data, we always need to be aware of what world those data capture, and what they don’t capture,” said Allison P. Harris, a political science professor at Yale who studies racial disparities in the criminal justice system. “With policing, we just can never know what there’s no record of.”
[Related: Why It’s So Rare For Police Officers To Face Legal Consequences]
One example of an encounter denominator approach is a 2019 study by Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard. He found that police shoot white, Black and Hispanic Americans whom they’ve stopped at equal rates. At first blush, that would seem like evidence that the police are not racially biased — every demographic is being treated equally, after all.
But we know that police officers are more likely to stop Black and Hispanic people than white ones — and that more of those stops are unfounded. Researchers measure this with something called the “hit rate,” or the rate at which contraband is actually found on the people who were stopped. A lower hit rate implies bias because it means that the decision to search someone was made with less evidence. White people stopped in New York City, for example, were more likely to be carrying a weapon than Black and Hispanic people who were stopped. White drivers stopped by the police were more likely to have contraband than Black and Hispanic drivers nationally.
As political scientists Knox, Will Lowe and Jonathan Mummolo, among others, have pointed out, that complicates Fryer’s findings. All of a sudden, what at first appeared to be equal treatment actually suggests unequal treatment. Because of the initial discrimination in who gets stopped, the sample of stopped people isn’t the same across races. The different hit rate indicates that stopped white people are actually more likely to have contraband, on average, than stopped Black people. In other words, in a world without discrimination in who was stopped — if the Black and white people who were stopped were equally likely to be engaged in criminal activity — you’d see an even bigger disparity in outcomes.
It’s unintuitive, I know, but let’s break it down visually.
“The data we have pick up halfway through the encounter, after officer bias very likely has already exerted an effect,” said Mummolo, a professor at Princeton. And without knowing the racial composition of the people who are sighted by police but aren’t stopped, it’s impossible to fully correct for the bias. The paper provides a suggestion for how to estimate bias in one part of the chain — use of force in encounters — but it doesn’t capture any of the potential disparities that occur beforehand that make the encounter likelier.
So if racial bias in police stops makes it hard to estimate racial disparities in how people are treated while stopped, you might be wondering: well, doesn’t this affect all of the other components of the chain, too?
“We need to think about this as this complex system,” said Knox. There are biases layered on biases — social decisions like how society allocates resources in education versus policing, and individual decisions like who police choose to stop or arrest and who is ultimately charged or convicted. “It just compounds all the way down the line,” Knox said.
[Related: The States Taking On Police Reform After The Death Of George Floyd]
The thing about systemic racism is it’s just that: systemic.
Ultimately, the fact that these biased events build on each other should be a reminder that we’re not capturing the entire process surrounding the stats we’re looking at. Essentially, all the discrimination we can actually measure at each specific stage is an underestimate of how much is actually happening.
How cable news is talking about the protests — and why it matters | FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-06-26--Voter Registrations Are Way, Way Down During The Pandemic

Poll after poll showed a high level of enthusiasm for voting in the general election in 2020 , and in the beginning of the year , voter registration surged to match that excitement .
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit .
New registrations have fallen off a cliff .
The spring of a presidential election year is often a busy time for adding new voters to the rolls , and a recent report from the Center for Election Innovation and Research , a nonprofit organization that aims to improve voter turnout and election security , shows registration numbers were even stronger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But things changed dramatically in March , at least in the 12 places where FiveThirtyEight or CEIR were able to obtain data on new voters , a category that includes first-time voters , voters who recently moved to the state and , in some states ( Texas , for example ) even voters who moved between counties in the state .
Consider Florida , for example , where 109,859 new voters registered in February of this year , compared to 87,351 registrants in February of 2016 .
But in April 2020 , only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 52,508 in 2016 .
The same pattern holds in 10 other states , plus Washington , D.C. : Each one registered fewer new voters in April 2020 than in April 2016 , including in states where online voter registration is available .
Currently , 39 states plus Washington , D.C. , offer the ability to register to vote online , and a 40th ( Oklahoma ) is expected to implement it this year .
However , in the three places for which we have the relevant data ( Florida , Maryland and Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken off during the pandemic — certainly not enough to make up for the lost in-person registrations .
Even in Washington , where online registrations have ticked up since the beginning of the year , the pace is comparable to 2016 : 2,956 people registered online in April and May 2020 , similar to the 2,771 people who registered online in April and May 2016 .
The fact that new voter registrations were outpacing the 2016 numbers in January and February was predictable , according to David Becker , the executive director and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , population growth means that voter registration always climbs a bit , he said .
The expansion of automatic voter registration makes getting on the rolls more convenient than ever in many states , too .
Voters were also clearly interested in registering , Becker said .
“ Every piece of data we had looked at with regard to enthusiasm about engaging in this presidential election cycle indicated that we had to be prepared for the highest-turnout presidential election that almost anyone living had ever seen , ” Becker said , “ which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ April all the more striking.
” Based on the timing , it seems safe to assume that COVID-19 had something to do with the drop-off , but there ’ s data to back that assumption up , too .
In addition to how many new voters register , some states track how these new voters get their name on the books .
In 2016 and in the pre-pandemic months of 2020 , in-person registration at places like departments of motor vehicles made up a large plurality , or even a majority , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which we have data on how new voters are registering .
But after the pandemic caused most states to shutter many government offices , those registrations dwindled .
By contrast , remote registrations ( e.g.
, online or by mail ) held relatively steady .
“ This is completely expected , but very concerning , ” said Wendy Weiser , director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University ’ s School of Law .
“ The coronavirus shut down most of the primary avenues through which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and all the malls , theaters and public places where voter registration drives operate.
” Indeed , the closing of schools and public events like festivals has hindered in-person voter registration drives run by third-party organizations .
“ We had planned to go to 850 high schools leading up to graduation , but as schools closed , that work was clearly disrupted , ” said Jeanette Senecal , a senior director for the League of Women Voters who focuses on voter education .
For example , in Florida , third-party organizations registered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ huge increase from the 1,196 they registered in January 2016 .
But in April 2020 , they registered only 133 voters — down from 3,806 in April 2016 .
States and third-party groups can still get around social distancing restrictions to get more voters on the poll books , though .
Voto Latino , an organization that works to register and encourage Latino Americans to vote , has been operating digitally almost since its inception and was well prepared to continue its work during a pandemic .
It uses digital campaigns to help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in states like Texas , which does not have online voter registration — Voto Latino created an app that makes it easy to fill out the required form , which is then emailed to the voter to print off and mail in .
Danny Turkel , the communications manager for Voto Latino , said the group has actually seen a surge in voter registration , especially since protests in response to the killing of George Floyd began .
“ Our original goal entering 2020 was to register 500,000 voters , ” said Turkel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in and surged , we are now thinking that we could surpass 500,000.
” So what kind of people might have registered if the coronavirus hadn ’ t struck ?
Well for one thing , they ’ re probably disproportionately young .
“ In any given year , far more young people register than older people , just because 18-year-olds age in [ to being able to vote ] and young people are more likely to move ” and need to register at a new address , said Kevin Morris , a quantitative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Brennan Center .
According to Morris ’ s data , 57 percent of new registrants in Florida in the first four months of 2016 were under the age of 40 , as were 65 percent of new registrants in Georgia .
While the proportions were similar in the beginning of 2020 , the total number was much lower than in the past , which means that lots of young people aren ’ t registering as usual in at least two key 2020 swing states .
Some of these delayed registrants may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Though we don ’ t have data for how a pandemic has affected registration in the past ( since the U.S. hasn ’ t faced a similar situation for a good century ) , Weiser cited another instance when voter registration dipped due to extenuating circumstances .
In May of 2011 , Florida passed a new bill that placed tough restrictions on third-party voter registration organizations , prompting many of them , such as the League of Women Voters , to stop operating in the state .
The restrictions were suspended by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been done ; a subsequent study found that about 14 percent fewer voters registered in 2011 compared to the same period in 2007 , with a notable drop following the introduction of the bill — and those registrations never completely caught up .
In 2008 , more than 1 million new voters registered in Florida .
In 2012 , fewer than 900,000 did , according to the state ’ s voter registration data .
Of course , one unusual law in Florida isn ’ t exactly analogous to a pandemic , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ level of enthusiasm for this election will be enough to close the gap that COVID-19 created , especially as states begin to reopen and voters return to registration sites like the DMV .
So it ’ s difficult to know whether this drop in registrations is permanent .
But it is clear that despite voters ’ intense interest in this election , the coronavirus has already made it harder for new voters to participate in it .

Poll after poll showed a high level of enthusiasm for voting in the general election in 2020, and in the beginning of the year, voter registration surged to match that excitement. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. New registrations have fallen off a cliff.
The spring of a presidential election year is often a busy time for adding new voters to the rolls, and a recent report from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve voter turnout and election security, shows registration numbers were even stronger in early 2020 than early 2016. But things changed dramatically in March, at least in the 12 places where FiveThirtyEight or CEIR were able to obtain data on new voters, a category that includes first-time voters, voters who recently moved to the state and, in some states (Texas, for example) even voters who moved between counties in the state.
Consider Florida, for example, where 109,859 new voters registered in February of this year, compared to 87,351 registrants in February of 2016. But in April 2020, only 21,031 new voters registered, compared with 52,508 in 2016. The same pattern holds in 10 other states, plus Washington, D.C.: Each one registered fewer new voters in April 2020 than in April 2016, including in states where online voter registration is available.
Currently, 39 states plus Washington, D.C., offer the ability to register to vote online, and a 40th (Oklahoma) is expected to implement it this year. However, in the three places for which we have the relevant data (Florida, Maryland and Washington), online voter registration has not taken off during the pandemic — certainly not enough to make up for the lost in-person registrations. Even in Washington, where online registrations have ticked up since the beginning of the year, the pace is comparable to 2016: 2,956 people registered online in April and May 2020, similar to the 2,771 people who registered online in April and May 2016.
The fact that new voter registrations were outpacing the 2016 numbers in January and February was predictable, according to David Becker, the executive director and founder of CEIR. For one thing, population growth means that voter registration always climbs a bit, he said. The expansion of automatic voter registration makes getting on the rolls more convenient than ever in many states, too. Voters were also clearly interested in registering, Becker said.
“Every piece of data we had looked at with regard to enthusiasm about engaging in this presidential election cycle indicated that we had to be prepared for the highest-turnout presidential election that almost anyone living had ever seen,” Becker said, “which makes the decline in March and especially April all the more striking.”
Based on the timing, it seems safe to assume that COVID-19 had something to do with the drop-off, but there’s data to back that assumption up, too. In addition to how many new voters register, some states track how these new voters get their name on the books. In 2016 and in the pre-pandemic months of 2020, in-person registration at places like departments of motor vehicles made up a large plurality, or even a majority, of new registrants in the four places for which we have data on how new voters are registering. But after the pandemic caused most states to shutter many government offices, those registrations dwindled. By contrast, remote registrations (e.g., online or by mail) held relatively steady.
“This is completely expected, but very concerning,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. “The coronavirus shut down most of the primary avenues through which Americans register to vote: government offices, and all the malls, theaters and public places where voter registration drives operate.”
Indeed, the closing of schools and public events like festivals has hindered in-person voter registration drives run by third-party organizations. “We had planned to go to 850 high schools leading up to graduation, but as schools closed, that work was clearly disrupted,” said Jeanette Senecal, a senior director for the League of Women Voters who focuses on voter education.
For example, in Florida, third-party organizations registered 14,144 voters in January 2020 — a huge increase from the 1,196 they registered in January 2016. But in April 2020, they registered only 133 voters — down from 3,806 in April 2016.
States and third-party groups can still get around social distancing restrictions to get more voters on the poll books, though. Voto Latino, an organization that works to register and encourage Latino Americans to vote, has been operating digitally almost since its inception and was well prepared to continue its work during a pandemic. It uses digital campaigns to help voters register, which can even work in states like Texas, which does not have online voter registration — Voto Latino created an app that makes it easy to fill out the required form, which is then emailed to the voter to print off and mail in.
Danny Turkel, the communications manager for Voto Latino, said the group has actually seen a surge in voter registration, especially since protests in response to the killing of George Floyd began. “Our original goal entering 2020 was to register 500,000 voters,” said Turkel. “As the numbers have come in and surged, we are now thinking that we could surpass 500,000.”
So what kind of people might have registered if the coronavirus hadn’t struck? Well for one thing, they’re probably disproportionately young. “In any given year, far more young people register than older people, just because 18-year-olds age in [to being able to vote] and young people are more likely to move” and need to register at a new address, said Kevin Morris, a quantitative researcher focusing on voting rights and elections at the Brennan Center. According to Morris’s data, 57 percent of new registrants in Florida in the first four months of 2016 were under the age of 40, as were 65 percent of new registrants in Georgia. While the proportions were similar in the beginning of 2020, the total number was much lower than in the past, which means that lots of young people aren’t registering as usual in at least two key 2020 swing states.
New voter registrations have nosedived during COVID-19
Some of these delayed registrants may never end up registering at all. Though we don’t have data for how a pandemic has affected registration in the past (since the U.S. hasn’t faced a similar situation for a good century), Weiser cited another instance when voter registration dipped due to extenuating circumstances. In May of 2011, Florida passed a new bill that placed tough restrictions on third-party voter registration organizations, prompting many of them, such as the League of Women Voters, to stop operating in the state. The restrictions were suspended by a judge in May 2012 but the damage had been done; a subsequent study found that about 14 percent fewer voters registered in 2011 compared to the same period in 2007, with a notable drop following the introduction of the bill — and those registrations never completely caught up. In 2008, more than 1 million new voters registered in Florida. In 2012, fewer than 900,000 did, according to the state’s voter registration data.
Of course, one unusual law in Florida isn’t exactly analogous to a pandemic, and it’s possible that the high level of enthusiasm for this election will be enough to close the gap that COVID-19 created, especially as states begin to reopen and voters return to registration sites like the DMV. So it’s difficult to know whether this drop in registrations is permanent. But it is clear that despite voters’ intense interest in this election, the coronavirus has already made it harder for new voters to participate in it.