fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Is The Price Right?

Is The Price Right?

Welcome to The Riddler .
Every week , I offer up problems related to the things we hold dear around here : math , logic and probability .
Two puzzles are presented each week : the Riddler Express for those of you who want something bite-size and the Riddler Classic for those of you in the slow-puzzle movement .
Submit a correct answer for either , and you may get a shoutout in next week ’ s column .
Please wait until Monday to publicly share your answers !
If you need a hint or have a favorite puzzle collecting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Twitter .
As you may have seen in FiveThirtyEight ’ s reporting , there ’ s an election coming up .
Inspired , Vikrant Kulkarni has an electoral enigma for you : On Nov. 3 , the residents of Riddler City will elect a mayor from among three candidates .
The winner will be the candidate who receives an outright majority ( i.e.
, more than 50 percent of the vote ) .
But if no one achieves this outright majority , there will be a runoff election among the top two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each candidate are uniformly distributed between 0 percent and 100 percent ( subject to the constraint that they add up to 100 percent , of course ) , then what is the probability of a runoff ?
Extra credit : Suppose there are N candidates instead of three .
What is the probability of a runoff ?
This week , we return to the brilliant and ageless game show , “ The Price is Right.
” In a modified version of the bidding round , you and two ( not three ) other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ item , one at a time .
Assume the true price of this item is a randomly selected value between 0 and 100 .
( Note : The value is a real number and does not have to be an integer . )
Among the three contestants , the winner is whoever guesses the closest price without going over .
For example , if the true price is 29 and I guess 30 , while another contestant guesses 20 , then they would be the winner even though my guess was technically closer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exceed the actual price , the contestant who made the lowest ( and therefore closest ) guess is declared the winner .
I mean , someone has to win , right ?
If you are the first to guess , and all contestants play optimally ( taking full advantage of the guesses of those who went before them ) , what are your chances of winning ?
Congratulations to 👏 Nick Russell 👏 of Vancouver , Canada , winner of last week ’ s Riddler Express .
Last week , you were helping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restaurant for some contactless curbside pickup .
There were six parking spots , all lined up in a row .
While I could parallel park , it definitely wasn ’ t my preference .
No parallel parking was required when the rearmost of the six spots was available or when there were two consecutive open spots .
If there was a random arrangement of cars occupying four of the six spots , what was the probability that I had to parallel park ?
With six spots and four cars , there were 6 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consider .
Some solvers , like Lisa Fondren of Montrose , Michigan , listed them all out and counted how many required parallel parking .
But there were other ways to find the solution that didn ’ t require working through every case .
Rather than considering where the four cars were , solver Libby Aiello equivalently looked at where the two empty spots were .
Among the total 15 combinations , there were five in which the two empty spots were adjacent : the first and second spots , the second and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fourth and fifth , and the fifth and sixth .
There were also five combinations in which the last spot was open , since there were five spots from which to choose the other open spot .
Combining these two cases ( having two consecutive open spots and having the sixth spot open ) , there appeared to be 10 combinations that didn ’ t require parallel parking .
But that wasn ’ t quite right .
As Libby noted , one combination — when the fifth and sixth spots were open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consecutive spots were open and the sixth spot was open .
Subtracting one to account for this double counting meant there were nine combinations that didn ’ t require parallel parking , and six combinations that did .
Therefore , the probability I had to parallel park was 6/15 , or 40 percent .
I was pleased to see how many readers solved this combinatorics challenge .
Now if only that many drivers could successfully parallel park… Congratulations to 👏 Douglas Thackrey 👏 of Loulé , Portugal , winner of last week ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one thing — parking trucks was another thing entirely .
Last week , you looked at a very long truck ( with length L ) with two front wheels and two rear wheels .
( The truck was so long compared to its width that you could consider the two front wheels as being a single wheel , and the two rear wheels as being a single wheel . )
You were asked to determine the truck ’ s turning radius , given the angles by which you could turn the front or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what would happen if the front wheels could be turned up to 30 degrees in either direction ( right or left ) , but the rear wheels did not turn .
There was no doubt among readers that this was a geometry puzzle , but the challenge lay in translating the constraints on the wheels ( i.e.
, only turning a certain amount or not at all ) into the resulting motion of the truck .
As suggested by the term “ turning radius , ” the key was to think about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the driver rotated the front wheels a full 30 degrees in one direction and drove forward , both the front and the rear of the truck would move in circles .
The front of the truck always made a 30 degree angle with the tangent line to the circle it was moving around .
Meanwhile , the rear wheels of the truck couldn ’ t turn .
That meant the truck ’ s rear was always tangent to the circle it was moving around .
If that wasn ’ t clear , here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the truck was moving : The green line segment represents the truck , and the circles represent the paths of the truck ’ s front and rear .
Sure enough , the angle between the truck and the tangent line ( represented by the white segment ) is always 30 degrees .
This means that the front of the truck is moving around a wider circle than the rear — and , consequently , that the front of the truck moves faster than the rear !
At this point , calculating the turning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trigonometry .
If the green segment was doubled in length so that it formed a chord within the larger circle , the 30 degree angles meant that this chord was one side of an inscribed regular hexagon , whose sides all equal the circle ’ s radius .
And so if the truck had length L , the turning radius — that is , the radius of the circle around which the front of the truck moved — was 2L .
( Solvers who gave the turning radius for the truck ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were also given full credit . )
That was the case when you could only turn the front wheels .
You were also asked for the turning radius when both the front and rear wheels could be independently turned up 30 degrees in either direction .
To make the tightest possible circle , the front and rear wheels were both rotated the full 30 degrees , but in opposite directions , allowing the front and rear to move along the same circle .
Again , here ’ s an animation : This time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chord that was a side of an inscribed regular hexagon .
That meant the turning radius was equal to the truck ’ s length , L. ( Again , solutions for different locations on the truck were also accepted . )
A few solvers , including Laurent Lessard and Josh Silverman , tackled the general version of this problem , in which the front wheels could be turned an angle θ and the rear wheels could be turned an angle θ .
The turning radius at the front of the truck was L·cos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , while the turning radius at the rear was L·cos ( θ ) /sin ( θ +θ ) .
These formulas checked out for both questions in the riddle .
And when neither wheel could turn ( i.e.
, θ and θ were both zero ) , the turning radius went to infinity , which also made sense .
In that case , you ’ d just have to keep on truckin ’ .
Well , aren ’ t you lucky ?
There ’ s a whole book full of the best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head-scratchers .
It ’ s called “ The Riddler , ” and it ’ s in stores now !

Welcome to The Riddler. Every week, I offer up problems related to the things we hold dear around here: math, logic and probability. Two puzzles are presented each week: the Riddler Express for those of you who want something bite-size and the Riddler Classic for those of you in the slow-puzzle movement. Submit a correct answer for either, and you may get a shoutout in next week’s column. Please wait until Monday to publicly share your answers! If you need a hint or have a favorite puzzle collecting dust in your attic, find me on Twitter.
Riddler Express
As you may have seen in FiveThirtyEight’s reporting, there’s an election coming up. Inspired, Vikrant Kulkarni has an electoral enigma for you:
On Nov. 3, the residents of Riddler City will elect a mayor from among three candidates. The winner will be the candidate who receives an outright majority (i.e., more than 50 percent of the vote). But if no one achieves this outright majority, there will be a runoff election among the top two candidates.
If the voting shares of each candidate are uniformly distributed between 0 percent and 100 percent (subject to the constraint that they add up to 100 percent, of course), then what is the probability of a runoff?
Extra credit: Suppose there are N candidates instead of three. What is the probability of a runoff?
The solution to this Riddler Express can be found in the following week’s column.
Riddler Classic
This week, we return to the brilliant and ageless game show, “The Price is Right.” In a modified version of the bidding round, you and two (not three) other contestants must guess the price of an item, one at a time.
Assume the true price of this item is a randomly selected value between 0 and 100. (Note: The value is a real number and does not have to be an integer.) Among the three contestants, the winner is whoever guesses the closest price without going over. For example, if the true price is 29 and I guess 30, while another contestant guesses 20, then they would be the winner even though my guess was technically closer.
In the event all three guesses exceed the actual price, the contestant who made the lowest (and therefore closest) guess is declared the winner. I mean, someone has to win, right?
If you are the first to guess, and all contestants play optimally (taking full advantage of the guesses of those who went before them), what are your chances of winning?
The solution to this Riddler Classic can be found in the following week’s column.
Solution to last week’s Riddler Express
Congratulations to 👏 Nick Russell 👏 of Vancouver, Canada, winner of last week’s Riddler Express.
Last week, you were helping me park across the street from a restaurant for some contactless curbside pickup. There were six parking spots, all lined up in a row.
While I could parallel park, it definitely wasn’t my preference. No parallel parking was required when the rearmost of the six spots was available or when there were two consecutive open spots. If there was a random arrangement of cars occupying four of the six spots, what was the probability that I had to parallel park?
With six spots and four cars, there were 6 choose 4, or 15 cases to consider. Some solvers, like Lisa Fondren of Montrose, Michigan, listed them all out and counted how many required parallel parking.
But there were other ways to find the solution that didn’t require working through every case. Rather than considering where the four cars were, solver Libby Aiello equivalently looked at where the two empty spots were. Among the total 15 combinations, there were five in which the two empty spots were adjacent: the first and second spots, the second and third, the third and fourth, the fourth and fifth, and the fifth and sixth.
There were also five combinations in which the last spot was open, since there were five spots from which to choose the other open spot. Combining these two cases (having two consecutive open spots and having the sixth spot open), there appeared to be 10 combinations that didn’t require parallel parking.
But that wasn’t quite right. As Libby noted, one combination — when the fifth and sixth spots were open — was counted twice, since two consecutive spots were open and the sixth spot was open. Subtracting one to account for this double counting meant there were nine combinations that didn’t require parallel parking, and six combinations that did. Therefore, the probability I had to parallel park was 6/15, or 40 percent.
I was pleased to see how many readers solved this combinatorics challenge. Now if only that many drivers could successfully parallel park…
Solution to last week’s Riddler Classic
Congratulations to 👏 Douglas Thackrey 👏 of Loulé, Portugal, winner of last week’s Riddler Classic.
Parking cars was one thing — parking trucks was another thing entirely. Last week, you looked at a very long truck (with length L) with two front wheels and two rear wheels. (The truck was so long compared to its width that you could consider the two front wheels as being a single wheel, and the two rear wheels as being a single wheel.)
You were asked to determine the truck’s turning radius, given the angles by which you could turn the front or rear wheels. First, you considered what would happen if the front wheels could be turned up to 30 degrees in either direction (right or left), but the rear wheels did not turn.
There was no doubt among readers that this was a geometry puzzle, but the challenge lay in translating the constraints on the wheels (i.e., only turning a certain amount or not at all) into the resulting motion of the truck.
As suggested by the term “turning radius,” the key was to think about the circular motion of the truck. When the driver rotated the front wheels a full 30 degrees in one direction and drove forward, both the front and the rear of the truck would move in circles. The front of the truck always made a 30 degree angle with the tangent line to the circle it was moving around.
Meanwhile, the rear wheels of the truck couldn’t turn. That meant the truck’s rear was always tangent to the circle it was moving around.
If that wasn’t clear, here’s an animation to illustrate how the truck was moving:
The green line segment represents the truck, and the circles represent the paths of the truck’s front and rear. Sure enough, the angle between the truck and the tangent line (represented by the white segment) is always 30 degrees. This means that the front of the truck is moving around a wider circle than the rear — and, consequently, that the front of the truck moves faster than the rear!
At this point, calculating the turning radius was a matter of geometry and trigonometry. If the green segment was doubled in length so that it formed a chord within the larger circle, the 30 degree angles meant that this chord was one side of an inscribed regular hexagon, whose sides all equal the circle’s radius. And so if the truck had length L, the turning radius — that is, the radius of the circle around which the front of the truck moved — was 2L. (Solvers who gave the turning radius for the truck’s midpoint or rear and explained their reasoning were also given full credit.)
That was the case when you could only turn the front wheels. You were also asked for the turning radius when both the front and rear wheels could be independently turned up 30 degrees in either direction. To make the tightest possible circle, the front and rear wheels were both rotated the full 30 degrees, but in opposite directions, allowing the front and rear to move along the same circle. Again, here’s an animation:
This time, the truck made up a complete chord that was a side of an inscribed regular hexagon. That meant the turning radius was equal to the truck’s length, L. (Again, solutions for different locations on the truck were also accepted.)
A few solvers, including Laurent Lessard and Josh Silverman, tackled the general version of this problem, in which the front wheels could be turned an angle θ 1 and the rear wheels could be turned an angle θ 2 . The turning radius at the front of the truck was L·cos(θ 2 )/sin(θ 1 +θ 2 ), while the turning radius at the rear was L·cos(θ 1 )/sin(θ 1 +θ 2 ).
These formulas checked out for both questions in the riddle. And when neither wheel could turn (i.e., θ 1 and θ 2 were both zero), the turning radius went to infinity, which also made sense. In that case, you’d just have to keep on truckin’.
Want more riddles?
Well, aren’t you lucky? There’s a whole book full of the best puzzles from this column and some never-before-seen head-scratchers. It’s called “The Riddler,” and it’s in stores now!
Want to submit a riddle?
Email Zach Wissner-Gross at riddlercolumn@gmail.com


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Wisconsin Was Never A Safe Blue State

Wisconsin Was Never A Safe Blue State

This is the fifth in a series of articles examining the politics and demographics of 2020 ’ s expected swing states .
Wisconsin is proof that politicos have short memories .
In 2004 , Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried Wisconsin by just 0.4 percentage points — making it the closest state in the country .
Four years earlier , it had been even closer — Democrat Al Gore won the Badger State by just 5,708 votes , or 0.2 points .
But Democrat Barack Obama really connected with Wisconsin voters , winning the state by 14 points in 2008 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into 2016 , that contributed to a sense that Wisconsin was a safe bet for Hillary Clinton — part of the mythical “ blue wall.
” It had , after all , voted Democratic in seven consecutive presidential elections by that point .
We all know what happened next : Now-President Trump carried Wisconsin by 0.8 percentage points , reaffirming its status as a swing state .
It was the third time in five presidential elections that Wisconsin was decided by less than a point .
Fast forward to 2020 , and both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potential tipping point state .
According to the FiveThirtyEight forecast , Wisconsin has a 13 percent chance of providing the decisive vote in the Electoral College ; only Pennsylvania and Florida are likelier tipping points .
Conventional wisdom says that Clinton lost Wisconsin because she infamously did not visit the state at all during the final seven months of the 2016 campaign .
But that ’ s probably not true ; Clinton devoted a lot of effort to winning Pennsylvania and still lost there , for instance .
Instead , Wisconsin probably got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Pennsylvania and other Midwestern states did : demographics .
The one-time home of progressive stalwarts like Robert “ Fighting Bob ” La Follette and Victor Berger could not escape the modern reality that white people without a bachelor ’ s degree — who make up 59 percent of Wisconsin ’ s population age 25 and older — have become more and more Republican , especially in the Trump era .
According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress , white voters without a college degree in Wisconsin went from supporting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2012 to supporting Trump 56 percent to 38 percent in 2016 .
And as you can see in the map below , counties with the highest shares of white residents without a college degree veered the sharpest to the right : These trends have left Wisconsin a light red state ; according to FiveThirtyEight ’ s partisan lean metric ( newly updated for the 2020 cycle ! )
, the state is 2.8 points more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole .
Yet Democrats could easily still win it in 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Trump nationally , and considering they have multiple ( non-mutually exclusive ) paths forward in the state .
First , they could keep improving among suburban voters .
As the map above shows , the Milwaukee suburbs were pretty much the only part of Wisconsin that actually moved toward Democrats in 2016 .
The problem is that , unlike , say , the Philadelphia suburbs , Milwaukee ’ s are still deeply Republican .
The so-called “ WOW counties ” — Waukesha , Ozaukee and Washington — have historically been the center @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producing such politicians as former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and former Gov .
Scott Walker .
And all the Trump era has done is turn them from maroon to crimson : Even as Republicans bombed in other suburban areas around the country , Trump still carried the WOW counties in 2016 by 28 percentage points , and Walker carried them by 35 points in Wisconsin ’ s 2018 gubernatorial race .
It will be very interesting to see if Biden can continue to eat into that margin , though — if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Wisconsin politics .
Second , Democrats could fix their turnout problem among Black voters .
According to the CAP analysis , 74 percent of eligible Black voters turned out to vote in Wisconsin in 2012 , but only 55 percent did in 2016 .
Given that Black Wisconsinites voted for Clinton 92 percent to 4 percent , that was a huge blow to Democrats : According to CAP ’ s calculations , Clinton would have won Wisconsin if Black voters had turned out at 2012 levels but everything else had stayed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats could win back some non-college-educated white voters .
This may be the path of least resistance : In the 2018 gubernatorial race , Democrat Tony Evers won six predominantly white , working-class counties in southwest Wisconsin that Trump carried in 2016 .
And according to a Siena College/The New York Times Upshot poll of Wisconsin from early October , Trump led Biden just 50 percent to 44 percent among white voters without a bachelor ’ s degree — much closer to the 2012 margin than 2016 ’ s .
Indeed , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something much closer to the comfortable Democratic victories he and his old boss enjoyed in Wisconsin in 2008 and 2012 than Clinton ’ s showing in 2016 .
The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Biden an 88 in 100 chance of winning the state ; the average projected vote share margin is Biden 53.0 percent , Trump 46.1 percent .
But Biden owes that commanding lead mostly to his overall national strength : We ’ re expecting him to win the national popular vote by 8.3 points — which means that Wisconsin is still more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama-level Biden win would not solve Democrats ’ underlying problems in the state .
If Trump were to make a national comeback , or if there ’ s a significant polling error , or even just looking ahead to 2024 , Republicans could be well-positioned to win Wisconsin once again .
The combination of high support among white voters without a college degree , suburbs that are still dark red and the decisiveness of Black turnout makes Wisconsin , in the long term , arguably the most likely brick in the Midwestern “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

This is the fifth in a series of articles examining the politics and demographics of 2020’s expected swing states.
Wisconsin is proof that politicos have short memories. In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried Wisconsin by just 0.4 percentage points — making it the closest state in the country. Four years earlier, it had been even closer — Democrat Al Gore won the Badger State by just 5,708 votes, or 0.2 points.
But Democrat Barack Obama really connected with Wisconsin voters, winning the state by 14 points in 2008 and 7 points in 2012. Going into 2016, that contributed to a sense that Wisconsin was a safe bet for Hillary Clinton — part of the mythical “blue wall.” It had, after all, voted Democratic in seven consecutive presidential elections by that point.
We all know what happened next: Now-President Trump carried Wisconsin by 0.8 percentage points, reaffirming its status as a swing state. It was the third time in five presidential elections that Wisconsin was decided by less than a point. Fast forward to 2020, and both sides are rightly treating it as a potential tipping point state. According to the FiveThirtyEight forecast, Wisconsin has a 13 percent chance of providing the decisive vote in the Electoral College; only Pennsylvania and Florida are likelier tipping points.
[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]
Conventional wisdom says that Clinton lost Wisconsin because she infamously did not visit the state at all during the final seven months of the 2016 campaign. But that’s probably not true; Clinton devoted a lot of effort to winning Pennsylvania and still lost there, for instance. Instead, Wisconsin probably got redder in 2016 for the same reason that Pennsylvania and other Midwestern states did: demographics. The one-time home of progressive stalwarts like Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette and Victor Berger could not escape the modern reality that white people without a bachelor’s degree — who make up 59 percent of Wisconsin’s population age 25 and older — have become more and more Republican, especially in the Trump era. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, white voters without a college degree in Wisconsin went from supporting Mitt Romney 52 percent to 47 percent in 2012 to supporting Trump 56 percent to 38 percent in 2016. And as you can see in the map below, counties with the highest shares of white residents without a college degree veered the sharpest to the right:
These trends have left Wisconsin a light red state; according to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean metric (newly updated for the 2020 cycle!), the state is 2.8 points more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole. Yet Democrats could easily still win it in 2020, given Biden’s double-digit lead against Trump nationally, and considering they have multiple (non-mutually exclusive) paths forward in the state.
First, they could keep improving among suburban voters. As the map above shows, the Milwaukee suburbs were pretty much the only part of Wisconsin that actually moved toward Democrats in 2016. The problem is that, unlike, say, the Philadelphia suburbs, Milwaukee’s are still deeply Republican. The so-called “WOW counties” — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — have historically been the center of Republican power in the state, powering such politicians as former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and former Gov. Scott Walker. And all the Trump era has done is turn them from maroon to crimson: Even as Republicans bombed in other suburban areas around the country, Trump still carried the WOW counties in 2016 by 28 percentage points, and Walker carried them by 35 points in Wisconsin’s 2018 gubernatorial race. It will be very interesting to see if Biden can continue to eat into that margin, though — if so, it could have long-term implications for Wisconsin politics.
Second, Democrats could fix their turnout problem among Black voters. According to the CAP analysis, 74 percent of eligible Black voters turned out to vote in Wisconsin in 2012, but only 55 percent did in 2016. Given that Black Wisconsinites voted for Clinton 92 percent to 4 percent, that was a huge blow to Democrats: According to CAP’s calculations, Clinton would have won Wisconsin if Black voters had turned out at 2012 levels but everything else had stayed the same.
Third, of course, Democrats could win back some non-college-educated white voters. This may be the path of least resistance: In the 2018 gubernatorial race, Democrat Tony Evers won six predominantly white, working-class counties in southwest Wisconsin that Trump carried in 2016. And according to a Siena College/The New York Times Upshot poll of Wisconsin from early October, Trump led Biden just 50 percent to 44 percent among white voters without a bachelor’s degree — much closer to the 2012 margin than 2016’s.
Indeed, it appears that Biden is on track for something much closer to the comfortable Democratic victories he and his old boss enjoyed in Wisconsin in 2008 and 2012 than Clinton’s showing in 2016. The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Biden an 88 in 100 chance of winning the state; the average projected vote share margin is Biden 53.0 percent, Trump 46.1 percent. But Biden owes that commanding lead mostly to his overall national strength: We’re expecting him to win the national popular vote by 8.3 points — which means that Wisconsin is still more Trump-friendly than average.
So even an Obama-level Biden win would not solve Democrats’ underlying problems in the state. If Trump were to make a national comeback, or if there’s a significant polling error, or even just looking ahead to 2024, Republicans could be well-positioned to win Wisconsin once again. The combination of high support among white voters without a college degree, suburbs that are still dark red and the decisiveness of Black turnout makes Wisconsin, in the long term, arguably the most likely brick in the Midwestern “blue wall” to be painted red.
CLARIFICATION (Oct. 16, 2020, 10:15 a.m.): This story has been updated to more precisely describe Reince Priebus’s and Scott Walker’s connections to “WOW counties.”


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Democrats Don’t Need To Win Georgia, Iowa, Ohio Or Texas — But They Could

Welcome to Pollapalooza , our weekly polling roundup .
Just eight years ago , it would have been weird to put Iowa and Ohio in the same electoral category as Georgia and Texas .
In the 2012 election , President Obama won Iowa by 6 percentage points and Ohio by 3 points while losing Georgia by 8 and Texas by 16 .
But in the early stages of the Trump era , Georgia and Texas got a bit more blue , while Iowa and Ohio got more red .
( Exactly why these shifts happened at the same time is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that aside for the moment . )
In 2016 and 2018 , these four states voted similarly — about 11 points , give or take , to the right of the country overall .
That gave Trump fairly comfortable wins in all four states in 2016 — when Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by just 2 points — but Republicans barely won in several key statewide races in these four states in 2018 , when Democrats won the national U.S. House vote by about 9 points .
Fast-forward to 2020 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 — and perhaps even more so — and all four states look competitive .
You can see that in the latest polls .
Morning Consult surveys released this week showed President Trump with just a 2-point lead in Georgia and Texas , and a 3-point lead in Ohio .
A CBS News/YouGov poll had Biden and Trump tied in Iowa .
Those are just a few polls , obviously , but they largely match the FiveThirtyEight polling averages in each of these states .
Biden doesn ’ t need to carry these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Electoral College victory without carrying them .
Trump does need them , however — but he also needs bluer states like Florida , Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to win reelection .
Similarly , Democrats can win a Senate majority without carrying any of the four Senate seats up for grabs in these states ( none in Ohio but two in Georgia ) .
But these states are still important .
Winning the Senate races there would likely mean that Democrats have 53 or 54 seats overall , giving them room for defections on key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Texas , meanwhile , could help down-ballot Democrats there , as the party could flip several U.S. House seats and the Texas House of Representatives .
Symbolically , winning Georgia and particularly Texas would suggest that Democrats have really arrived in the South after years of talk about their potential strength in that region .
And winning Iowa and particularly Ohio would suggest that Democrats ’ decline in the Midwest have been overstated .
So let ’ s look at these four states more closely .
( I have generally ordered them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worst . )
Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield has a 53 in 100 chance of winning , according to FiveThirtyEight ’ s Senate forecast for Iowa ; Biden has a 42 in 100 chance of winning , per our presidential forecast .
Even with the national swift toward the Democrats , Greenfield ’ s strong standing has been a bit surprising .
Incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst , as both a Republican woman and former Army reservist , was a compelling candidate when she ran for the Senate in 2014 and seemed like a rising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by 8 points in a state Obama had carried two years earlier .
She has probably been more aligned with Trump than a senator from a swing state should be for electoral reasons , but she hasn ’ t made any major gaffes or had any big scandals in her Senate tenure .
And Greenfield , who runs a real estate firm in Des Moines , doesn ’ t particularly have a unique biography , and she has never been elected to any office before .
Part of the story here is likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Ernst was a strong candidate because her 2014 margin looked really big at the time , but that margin was really about Iowa shifting to the right more than Ernst herself .
( Trump won big there in 2016 . )
So Ernst is struggling now because Iowa has moved back left and she doesn ’ t have much popularity separate from the broader GOP .
Our model has Biden doing slightly worse than Greenfield — or put another way , Trump is doing better than Ernst .
That might just be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Senate results could end up lining up fairly closely .
But there is an obvious explanation for this dynamic : Democrats are spending a lot of money in Iowa to try to win the Senate race , but not much in terms of the presidential race .
Biden and various organizations backing his campaign have spent just $ 3.3 million on TV commercials in Iowa to boost him , according to a recent NPR analysis .
That compares with $ 154.1 million in Florida , the state where they are spending the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than $ 56 million in the Ernst-Greenfield race , more than all but one other Senate campaign ( North Carolina ) .
This makes sense .
Winning a Democratic Senate seat in Iowa is just as valuable as winning one in Texas .
But for Biden , Iowa is far less valuable — it has only six electoral votes .
Biden has a 49 in 100 chance , according to FiveThirtyEight ’ s presidential forecast .
Biden ’ s chances in Iowa and Ohio are fairly similar , reflecting the national dynamics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s one factor to watch in the next few weeks : It ’ s likely that Biden and Democratic groups backing his campaign will invest more heavily in trying to win Ohio than to win Georgia , Iowa or Texas ( at the presidential level ) .
Ohio has way more electoral votes ( 18 ) than Iowa .
And Ohio is fairly demographically and culturally similar to states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that Biden has been targeting for months .
So Biden doesn ’ t need to adapt his approach to win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Texas are much different politically from the Midwestern states .
In fact , Biden was in Ohio this week , but his campaign seems hesitant to send him to Texas .
Biden has a 50 in 100 chance , according to FiveThirtyEight ’ s presidential forecast ; Democrats have a 49 in 100 chance of winning Georgia ’ s special Senate election , with Raphael Warnock as their likely candidate , and Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff has a 28 in 100 chance in the state ’ s other U.S. Senate race .
Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Senate level largely because of Georgia election law .
At the presidential level , the winner of the plurality of the vote gets the state ’ s 16 electoral votes .
But for the Senate ( and other races in Georgia ) , you can win only if you get 50 percent of the vote or more .
So it ’ s possible that both of Georgia ’ s U.S. Senate races will go to a runoff , which would take place on Jan. 5 .
Based on current polling , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the presidency and the Senate by that date .
I would expect Republicans to try really really hard to win one or both of these Senate races in such a runoff , and this is already a GOP-leaning state in the first place .
But the rules aren ’ t the only reason to be skeptical of Democrats ’ chances of winning in Georgia , particularly at the Senate level .
Candidate strength is another .
Stacey Abrams ’ s decision not to run for either of these Senate seats made sense for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t want to be a senator ) but was problematic for Democrats in Georgia .
In the race against incumbent Sen. David Perdue , Ossoff won the Democratic primary in a crowded field .
Ossoff , a one-time staffer to Georgia congressman Hank Johnson , is perhaps most famous for his 2017 U.S. House campaign in suburban Atlanta that got a lot of national attention because it was one of the first congressional races after Trump ’ s election .
But Ossoff lost that race and has never won or held political office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the seat held by Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler , the Democratic Party establishment has coalesced around Warnock , who has never even run for office before .
Of course , it makes sense why Democrats have boosted Warnock despite his lack of electoral experience .
He is the kind of person the Democratic Party would like to elect to the Senate to represent Georgia — a Black man who serves as the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta , the church Martin Luther King Jr. once led .
But Democrats have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the blue-leaning national environment but also because the GOP candidates are not exactly juggernauts either .
First elected in 2014 , Perdue has been a strong defender and ally of Trump , including his anti-immigration policies .
And Perdue , like Trump , has done little outreach outside of his base .
That approach likely ensures he will get almost total opposition from Georgia ’ s large bloc of Black voters and will lose badly in the Atlanta suburbs .
So if Ossoff can peel off a few white swing voters and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ levels , he can win this seat .
Loeffler is also likely to have trouble wooing voters outside of the GOP base because of the particular dynamics of her race .
She was appointed in December 2019 by Gov .
Brian Kemp , after longtime Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson retired .
Because of that appointment , her race is officially a special election , with different rules than the Ossoff-Perdue contest .
There were no party primaries .
So more than a dozen candidates from both parties are running , with the top @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 5 .
Kemp picked Loeffler with the idea that a 49-year-old woman who co-owns Atlanta ’ s WNBA team could run for this seat and appeal to more moderate voters .
But GOP congressman Doug Collins , who represents an area in more rural northeastern Georgia , opted to run too .
Collins is very conservative .
So Loeffler , worried that Collins and Warnock would finish ahead of her , has aggressively moved to the right , looking to secure enough GOP votes to make it to the runoff .
In some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and seems likely to make it into a runoff against Warnock .
But she attacked the Black Lives Matter movement , and the players on the Atlanta Dream are now strong critics of her .
Loeffler ’ s more moderate branding is gone .
She is now like Perdue , a Republican who must run up the score among more conservative and rural Georgians to overcome opposition by Georgia ’ s urban , suburban and Black voters .
Biden has a 31 in 100 chance , according to our presidential forecast ; Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100 chance , per our Senate forecast for the state .
Why do Democratic chances seem slimmer in Texas ?
In terms of the Senate , the Republicans have a stronger candidate compared with those in Georgia and Iowa .
Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn has won six statewide races in Texas : Supreme Court twice , attorney general once and Senate three times .
In contrast , Hegar , a former Air Force pilot , has never held elective office .
She ran and lost in a U.S. House race two years ago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s worth considering if ex-congressman Beto O ’ Rourke , who ran such a strong 2018 campaign for Senate in Texas , would be polling better than Hegar if he had run .
Also , Democratic groups aren ’ t spending that much in the Texas Senate race since they can try to win smaller , less-expensive states like Iowa .
Similarly , as I alluded earlier , Biden ’ s campaign also hasn ’ t spent much time or resources trying to win Texas .
That makes sense — Texas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state that determines the election .
But if Democrats fall short of winning the Texas House of Representatives , not investing in Texas might end up looking like a mistake .
A Texas dominated by Republicans can draw district lines for congressional races that will make it hard for Democrats to win seats and keep their U.S. House majority .
• Democratic Gov .
Roy Cooper of North Carolina led his opponent , Republican Lt. Gov .
Dan Forest , 51 percent to 44 percent among registered voters , according to a Monmouth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely voters , Cooper led Forest 51 percent to 37 percent in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll .
• About 79 percent of Black Americans think that structural and systemic racism is a “ major obstacle ” to Black people in America achieving equal outcomes compared with white people , according to a new poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Undefeated .
Fifty-seven percent of Hispanic Americans and 43 percent of white Americans agreed .
About 73 percent of Black adults said that individual acts of discrimination and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people , compared with 67 percent of Hispanic adults and 46 percent of white adults .
• In that same survey , 65 percent of Black men and 59 percent of Black women said that it is a “ bad time ” to be a Black man or Black woman in America .
Just 25 percent of Black men and 34 percent of Black women said it is a good time .
Black Americans are expressing much more negative views on their lives than when these questions were previously asked .
In a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent of Black men said that it was a good time to be Black in America , compared with 28 percent who said it was a bad time .
In a 2011 KFF/Washington Post poll , 73 percent of Black women said it was a good time , while 15 percent said it was a bad time .
( This was a really interesting poll , and I highly recommend reading it in full . )
• According to a recent Navigator Research survey , 52 percent of registered voters said that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in terms of dealing with the novel coronavirus .
That ’ s compared with 32 percent who said “ the worst is over ” and 16 percent who said they didn ’ t know .
The poll also found that 78 percent support laws in their states requiring people to wear masks in public places .
That includes 92 percent of Democrats , 70 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans .
• Just 21 percent of registered voters support adding justices to the Supreme Court , according to a new Yahoo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea , and 33 percent are not sure .
• New Hampshire Gov .
Chris Sununu , a Republican , leads his Democratic opponent for governor , state senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes , by 55 percent to 31 percent among likely voters , according to a new Suffolk University poll .
The same survey found Biden ahead of Trump 51 percent to 41 percent in New Hampshire .
U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen , a Democrat , is ahead 51 percent to 36 percent in her reelection bid against her Republican opponent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s presidential approval tracker , 42.7 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president , while 54.3 percent disapprove ( a net approval rating of -11.6 points ) .
At this time last week , 43.2 percent approved and 53.4 percent disapproved ( for a net approval rating of -10.2 points ) .
One month ago , Trump had an approval rating of 43.1 percent and a disapproval rating of 52.7 percent , for a net approval rating of -9.6 points .
In our average of polls of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by 7 percentage points ( 48.9 percent to 41.9 percent ) .
A week ago , Democrats led Republicans by 6.5 points ( 49.3 percent to 42.8 percent ) .
At this time last month , voters preferred Democrats by 6.5 points ( 48.6 percent to 42.1 percent ) .
Check out all the polls we ’ ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections .

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

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.
Poll(s) of the week
Just eight years ago, it would have been weird to put Iowa and Ohio in the same electoral category as Georgia and Texas. In the 2012 election, President Obama won Iowa by 6 percentage points and Ohio by 3 points while losing Georgia by 8 and Texas by 16.
But in the early stages of the Trump era, Georgia and Texas got a bit more blue, while Iowa and Ohio got more red. (Exactly why these shifts happened at the same time is complicated, so let’s leave that aside for the moment.) In 2016 and 2018, these four states voted similarly — about 11 points, give or take, to the right of the country overall. That gave Trump fairly comfortable wins in all four states in 2016 — when Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by just 2 points — but Republicans barely won in several key statewide races in these four states in 2018, when Democrats won the national U.S. House vote by about 9 points.
Confidence Interval: Will Democrats win the trifecta? l FiveThirtyEight
Fast-forward to 2020, which is looking about as blue as 2018 — and perhaps even more so — and all four states look competitive. You can see that in the latest polls. Morning Consult surveys released this week showed President Trump with just a 2-point lead in Georgia and Texas, and a 3-point lead in Ohio. A CBS News/YouGov poll had Biden and Trump tied in Iowa. Those are just a few polls, obviously, but they largely match the FiveThirtyEight polling averages in each of these states.
[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]
Biden doesn’t need to carry these states — he can win a comfortable Electoral College victory without carrying them. Trump does need them, however — but he also needs bluer states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to win reelection. Similarly, Democrats can win a Senate majority without carrying any of the four Senate seats up for grabs in these states (none in Ohio but two in Georgia).
But these states are still important. Winning the Senate races there would likely mean that Democrats have 53 or 54 seats overall, giving them room for defections on key votes. A strong performance from Biden in Texas, meanwhile, could help down-ballot Democrats there, as the party could flip several U.S. House seats and the Texas House of Representatives. Symbolically, winning Georgia and particularly Texas would suggest that Democrats have really arrived in the South after years of talk about their potential strength in that region. And winning Iowa and particularly Ohio would suggest that Democrats’ decline in the Midwest have been overstated.
So let’s look at these four states more closely. (I have generally ordered them from Democrats’ best chances to their worst.)
Iowa
Democratic candidate Theresa Greenfield has a 53 in 100 chance of winning, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast for Iowa; Biden has a 42 in 100 chance of winning, per our presidential forecast.
Even with the national shift toward the Democrats, Greenfield’s strong standing has been a bit surprising. Incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst, as both a Republican woman and former Army reservist, was a compelling candidate when she ran for the Senate in 2014 and seemed like a rising star in the GOP after she won by 8 points in a state Obama had carried two years earlier. She has probably been more aligned with Trump than a senator from a swing state should be for electoral reasons, but she hasn’t made any major gaffes or had any big scandals in her Senate tenure. And Greenfield, who runs a real estate firm in Des Moines, doesn’t particularly have a unique biography, and she has never been elected to any office before.
Part of the story here is likely that people in politics like me assumed that Ernst was a strong candidate because her 2014 margin looked really big at the time, but that margin was really about Iowa shifting to the right more than Ernst herself. (Trump won big there in 2016.) So Ernst is struggling now because Iowa has moved back left and she doesn’t have much popularity separate from the broader GOP.
Our model has Biden doing slightly worse than Greenfield — or put another way, Trump is doing better than Ernst. That might just be random polling effects, and the presidential and Senate results could end up lining up fairly closely. But there is an obvious explanation for this dynamic: Democrats are spending a lot of money in Iowa to try to win the Senate race, but not much in terms of the presidential race. Biden and various organizations backing his campaign have spent just $3.3 million on TV commercials in Iowa to boost him, according to a recent NPR analysis. That compares with $154.1 million in Florida, the state where they are spending the most. But Democratic-aligned groups have spent more than $56 million in the Ernst-Greenfield race, more than all but one other Senate campaign (North Carolina). This makes sense. Winning a Democratic Senate seat in Iowa is just as valuable as winning one in Texas. But for Biden, Iowa is far less valuable — it has only six electoral votes.
Ohio
Biden has a 49 in 100 chance, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential forecast.
Biden’s chances in Iowa and Ohio are fairly similar, reflecting the national dynamics we explained above. But here’s one factor to watch in the next few weeks: It’s likely that Biden and Democratic groups backing his campaign will invest more heavily in trying to win Ohio than to win Georgia, Iowa or Texas (at the presidential level). Ohio has way more electoral votes (18) than Iowa. And Ohio is fairly demographically and culturally similar to states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that Biden has been targeting for months. So Biden doesn’t need to adapt his approach to win in those states, while Georgia and Texas are much different politically from the Midwestern states.
In fact, Biden was in Ohio this week, but his campaign seems hesitant to send him to Texas.
Georgia
Biden has a 50 in 100 chance, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential forecast; Democrats have a 49 in 100 chance of winning Georgia’s special Senate election, with Raphael Warnock as their likely candidate, and Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff has a 28 in 100 chance in the state’s other U.S. Senate race.
Biden may have a better chance than Democrats at the Senate level largely because of Georgia election law. At the presidential level, the winner of the plurality of the vote gets the state’s 16 electoral votes. But for the Senate (and other races in Georgia), you can win only if you get 50 percent of the vote or more. So it’s possible that both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate races will go to a runoff, which would take place on Jan. 5. Based on current polling, Democrats may have won the House, the presidency and the Senate by that date. I would expect Republicans to try really really hard to win one or both of these Senate races in such a runoff, and this is already a GOP-leaning state in the first place.
But the rules aren’t the only reason to be skeptical of Democrats’ chances of winning in Georgia, particularly at the Senate level. Candidate strength is another. Stacey Abrams’s decision not to run for either of these Senate seats made sense for her (Abrams said she didn’t want to be a senator) but was problematic for Democrats in Georgia. In the race against incumbent Sen. David Perdue, Ossoff won the Democratic primary in a crowded field. Ossoff, a one-time staffer to Georgia congressman Hank Johnson, is perhaps most famous for his 2017 U.S. House campaign in suburban Atlanta that got a lot of national attention because it was one of the first congressional races after Trump’s election. But Ossoff lost that race and has never won or held political office before.
Similarly, in the race for the seat held by Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Democratic Party establishment has coalesced around Warnock, who has never even run for office before. Of course, it makes sense why Democrats have boosted Warnock despite his lack of electoral experience. He is the kind of person the Democratic Party would like to elect to the Senate to represent Georgia — a Black man who serves as the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, the church Martin Luther King Jr. once led.
But Democrats have a chance in these races because of the blue-leaning national environment but also because the GOP candidates are not exactly juggernauts either. First elected in 2014, Perdue has been a strong defender and ally of Trump, including his anti-immigration policies. And Perdue, like Trump, has done little outreach outside of his base. That approach likely ensures he will get almost total opposition from Georgia’s large bloc of Black voters and will lose badly in the Atlanta suburbs. So if Ossoff can peel off a few white swing voters and the Democratic base turns out at really high levels, he can win this seat.
Loeffler is also likely to have trouble wooing voters outside of the GOP base because of the particular dynamics of her race. She was appointed in December 2019 by Gov. Brian Kemp, after longtime Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson retired. Because of that appointment, her race is officially a special election, with different rules than the Ossoff-Perdue contest. There were no party primaries. So more than a dozen candidates from both parties are running, with the top two advancing to face off on Jan 5. Kemp picked Loeffler with the idea that a 49-year-old woman who co-owns Atlanta’s WNBA team could run for this seat and appeal to more moderate voters. But GOP congressman Doug Collins, who represents an area in more rural northeastern Georgia, opted to run too. Collins is very conservative. So Loeffler, worried that Collins and Warnock would finish ahead of her, has aggressively moved to the right, looking to secure enough GOP votes to make it to the runoff.
In some polls, she is ahead of Collins and seems likely to make it into a runoff against Warnock. But she attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, and the players on the Atlanta Dream are now strong critics of her. Loeffler’s more moderate branding is gone. She is now like Perdue, a Republican who must run up the score among more conservative and rural Georgians to overcome opposition by Georgia’s urban, suburban and Black voters.
Texas
Biden has a 31 in 100 chance, according to our presidential forecast; Democratic candidate M.J. Hegar has a 13 in 100 chance, per our Senate forecast for the state.
Why do Democratic chances seem slimmer in Texas? In terms of the Senate, the Republicans have a stronger candidate compared with those in Georgia and Iowa. Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn has won six statewide races in Texas: Supreme Court twice, attorney general once and Senate three times. In contrast, Hegar, a former Air Force pilot, has never held elective office. She ran and lost in a U.S. House race two years ago. As with Abrams in Georgia, it’s worth considering if ex-congressman Beto O’Rourke, who ran such a strong 2018 campaign for Senate in Texas, would be polling better than Hegar if he had run. Also, Democratic groups aren’t spending that much in the Texas Senate race since they can try to win smaller, less-expensive states like Iowa.
Similarly, as I alluded earlier, Biden’s campaign also hasn’t spent much time or resources trying to win Texas. That makes sense — Texas will almost certainly not be a tipping state that determines the election. But if Democrats fall short of winning the Texas House of Representatives, not investing in Texas might end up looking like a mistake. A Texas dominated by Republicans can draw district lines for congressional races that will make it hard for Democrats to win seats and keep their U.S. House majority.
Other polling bites
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina led his opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, 51 percent to 44 percent among registered voters, according to a Monmouth University poll released this week. Among likely voters, Cooper led Forest 51 percent to 37 percent in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.
About 79 percent of Black Americans think that structural and systemic racism is a “major obstacle” to Black people in America achieving equal outcomes compared with white people, according to a new poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Undefeated. Fifty-seven percent of Hispanic Americans and 43 percent of white Americans agreed. About 73 percent of Black adults said that individual acts of discrimination and racism were a major barrier for Black people, compared with 67 percent of Hispanic adults and 46 percent of white adults.
In that same survey, 65 percent of Black men and 59 percent of Black women said that it is a “bad time” to be a Black man or Black woman in America. Just 25 percent of Black men and 34 percent of Black women said it is a good time. Black Americans are expressing much more negative views on their lives than when these questions were previously asked. In a 2006 KFF/Washington Post/Harvard University poll, 60 percent of Black men said that it was a good time to be Black in America, compared with 28 percent who said it was a bad time. In a 2011 KFF/Washington Post poll, 73 percent of Black women said it was a good time, while 15 percent said it was a bad time. (This was a really interesting poll, and I highly recommend reading it in full.)
According to a recent Navigator Research survey, 52 percent of registered voters said that the “worst is yet to come” in terms of dealing with the novel coronavirus. That’s compared with 32 percent who said “the worst is over” and 16 percent who said they didn’t know. The poll also found that 78 percent support laws in their states requiring people to wear masks in public places. That includes 92 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans.
Just 21 percent of registered voters support adding justices to the Supreme Court, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll; 46 percent oppose the idea, and 33 percent are not sure.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, leads his Democratic opponent for governor, state senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes, by 55 percent to 31 percent among likely voters, according to a new Suffolk University poll. The same survey found Biden ahead of Trump 51 percent to 41 percent in New Hampshire. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, is ahead 51 percent to 36 percent in her reelection bid against her Republican opponent, Corky Messner.
Trump approval
According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 42.7 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 54.3 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -11.6 points). At this time last week, 43.2 percent approved and 53.4 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -10.2 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 43.1 percent and a disapproval rating of 52.7 percent, for a net approval rating of -9.6 points.
Generic ballot
In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot, Democrats currently lead by 7 percentage points (48.9 percent to 41.9 percent). A week ago, Democrats led Republicans by 6.5 points (49.3 percent to 42.8 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats by 6.5 points (48.6 percent to 42.1 percent).
Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Politics Podcast: Why Democrats’ Chances Of Winning The Senate Have Increased

Democrats ’ chances of winning the Senate have ticked up in our forecast over the past week and a half @ @ @ @ @ chance to a 72 percent chance .
In this installment of “ Model Talk ” @ @ @ @ @ , Nate Silver and Galen Druke discuss what is responsible for the shift and what @ @ @ @ @ key states .
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “ play ” @ @ @ @ @ above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN App or your favorite podcast @ @ @ @ @ new to podcasts , learn how to listen .
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded @ @ @ @ @ new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes .
@ @ @ @ @ or suggestion for “ good polling vs. bad polling ” ?
Get in touch by @ @ @ @ @ in the comments .

Over the past week and a half, Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate have ticked up in our forecast, from a 63 percent chance to a 73 percent chance. In this installment of Model Talk on the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Nate Silver and Galen Druke discuss what is responsible for the shift and what recent polling looks like in key states.
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Would Biden’s COVID-19 Plan Be Able To Control The Pandemic?

Joe Biden says he can fight the pandemic better than President Trump can .
But is Biden ’ s plan @ @ @ @ @ does it address what experts say needs to be improved upon ?
Don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ of PODCAST-19 , FiveThirtyEight ’ s weekly look at what we know — and what @ @ @ @ @ t know — about COVID-19 ?
Subscribe on your favorite podcasting app .
For example @ @ @ @ @ to do it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify .

Joe Biden says he can fight the pandemic better than President Trump can. But is Biden’s plan really that different? And does it address what experts say needs to be improved upon?
Don’t want to miss an episode of PODCAST-19, FiveThirtyEight’s weekly look at what we know — and what we know we don’t know — about COVID-19? Subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. For example, here’s where to do it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Freddie Freeman Took The Leap. Now The Braves Are One Game Away From Doing The Same.

The Atlanta Braves are on the cusp of a major postseason upset .
That ’ s due in no small part to first baseman Freddie Freeman , who entered the season as one of the game ’ s best hitters but has reached a new level in 2020 — even after overcoming COVID-19 this past summer .
In fact , few hitters have ever improved as deep into a career as Freeman has .
Freeman homered in the first two games of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers , and went 2-for-5 with two RBIs in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take a 3-1 lead .
It ’ s the kind of hitting the Braves need to overcome the Dodgers , who entered the NLCS as the favorite to win the World Series .
( The Dodgers ’ chances to win have fallen from 54 percent to 14 percent in our model ; the Braves , who entered the series with the lowest World Series odds of the remaining teams , increased their odds from 12 percent to 39 percent , as of Friday afternoon . )
The good news for the Braves is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to improve his hitting skills more than most major league players in this shortened season , particularly his power and contact rate .
Freeman , long a good fastball hitter , can hit fastballs at an elite level , as the Dodgers and starting pitcher Walker Buehler learned in Game 1 .
This year , Freeman had the fourth-best batting average versus fastballs , and the sixth-best average against fastballs that traveled 95 mph or faster .
And rather than see his bat slow down as he enters his 30s — which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downslope of the aging curve — Freeman has been about four times more efficient against fastballs this season compared to last season .
He posted a career-best batting average against the pitch ( .478 ) , though he faced about one-third as many fastballs in the shortened 2020 season as he averaged in the nine seasons prior , and he covers nearly the entire strike zone with above-average hitting .
Entering this season , one of the few pitch types Freeman hit unevenly , from a runs-created standpoint , was the split-fingered fastball @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fell below league average in five of his first 10 seasons , he ’ s above the average this year .
Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin threw Freeman a low-and-inside splitter in Game 2 , and Freeman was able to bring his hands in and crush the ball for a two-run home run , giving the Braves an early 2-0 lead .
So what changed ?
Freeman stands at 6 feet , 5 inches , but he ’ s always had a compact , whip-like swing .
Indeed , Freeman doesn ’ t appear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all from his first hit in the majors .
That swing has produced consistent results for more than a decade : Since his first full season in 2011 , Freeman ranks ninth among position players in wins above replacement .
Instead , Freeman is simply hitting the ball harder .
His year-over-year average exit velocity gain of 2.7 mph ranks 16th out of 485 qualifying major league hitters this season .
He ’ s also lifting more batted balls into the air , enabling him to hit for more power .
His year-over-year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points ranks 28th in the majors .
Freeman also ranks 30th in year-over-year slugging gains .
All three improvements rank among the top decile of qualifying players .
The quality of batted balls he ’ s lifted into the air were bettered by only two players , according to OPS , this season : José Abreu of the White Sox and teammate Marcell Ozuna .
Freeman has also added contact ability .
He ’ s cut his swinging-strike rate by 3.1 percentage points in the regular season , tied for the 14th-best improvement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strikeout rate was a career-low 14.1 percent this season , and it ’ s been even lower in the postseason ( 7.3 percent through four games of the NLCS ) .
Freeman is crushing pitches he swings at in part because he ’ s been more selective .
His swing rate on pitches out of the strike zone is a career-low 24.1 percent .
It ’ s also possible that Freeman is simply healthier this year after having surgery last fall to remove bone spurs in his elbow .
Freeman told MLB.com that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in nine years I haven ’ t had any pain in the offseason.
” His increased exit velocity and decreased ground-ball rate could also mean that Freeman has improved his ability to hit the ball more out in front of the plate , which is where peak bat speed and power are found .
In all , Freeman has simply been better , and at a point in his career when players rarely improve .
While it ’ s challenging in some ways to evaluate a shortened season , some skills like walk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and groundball rate stabilize with 250 or fewer plate appearances .
( Freeman made 262 regular-season plate appearances this year ) .
Ideally we ’ d like a larger sample to compare stats like OPS , but it ’ s possible that Freeman has made historically rare improvement this season .
Since 1900 , only nine qualified major league hitters have improved their OPS more than Freeman has from their 10th to 11th major league seasons — and none of those hitters had a better 10th career season to improve upon .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it was the second-best 60-game stretch of non-overlapping games of Freeman ’ s career within a season , in terms of WAR .
Having enjoyed an MVP-caliber regular season , his torrid hitting has continued into the postseason when the Braves need it most .
And to finish off the Dodgers , the Braves need Freeman to keep playing as well as he ever has .

Freddie Freeman Took The Leap. Now The Braves Are One Game Away From Doing The Same.
The Atlanta Braves are on the cusp of a major postseason upset. That’s due in no small part to first baseman Freddie Freeman, who entered the season as one of the game’s best hitters but has reached a new level in 2020 — even after overcoming COVID-19 this past summer. In fact, few hitters have ever improved as deep into a career as Freeman has.
Freeman homered in the first two games of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and went 2-for-5 with two RBIs in Game 4, to help the Braves take a 3-1 lead. It’s the kind of hitting the Braves need to overcome the Dodgers, who entered the NLCS as the favorite to win the World Series. (The Dodgers’ chances to win have fallen from 54 percent to 14 percent in our model; the Braves, who entered the series with the lowest World Series odds of the remaining teams, increased their odds from 12 percent to 39 percent, as of Friday afternoon.)
The good news for the Braves is that the already great Freeman has managed to improve his hitting skills more than most major league players in this shortened season, particularly his power and contact rate. Freeman, long a good fastball hitter, can hit fastballs at an elite level, as the Dodgers and starting pitcher Walker Buehler learned in Game 1.
This year, Freeman had the fourth-best batting average versus fastballs, and the sixth-best average against fastballs that traveled 95 mph or faster. And rather than see his bat slow down as he enters his 30s — which is generally around the time hitters reach the downslope of the aging curve — Freeman has been about four times more efficient against fastballs this season compared to last season. He posted a career-best batting average against the pitch (.478), though he faced about one-third as many fastballs in the shortened 2020 season as he averaged in the nine seasons prior, and he covers nearly the entire strike zone with above-average hitting.
Entering this season, one of the few pitch types Freeman hit unevenly, from a runs-created standpoint, was the split-fingered fastball. Though his performance against the pitch fell below league average in five of his first 10 seasons, he’s above the average this year. Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin threw Freeman a low-and-inside splitter in Game 2, and Freeman was able to bring his hands in and crush the ball for a two-run home run, giving the Braves an early 2-0 lead.
So what changed? Freeman stands at 6 feet, 5 inches, but he’s always had a compact, whip-like swing. Indeed, Freeman doesn’t appear to have changed his swing much at all from his first hit in the majors. That swing has produced consistent results for more than a decade: Since his first full season in 2011, Freeman ranks ninth among position players in wins above replacement. Instead, Freeman is simply hitting the ball harder. His year-over-year average exit velocity gain of 2.7 mph ranks 16th out of 485 qualifying major league hitters this season. He’s also lifting more batted balls into the air, enabling him to hit for more power. His year-over-year ground-ball rate of decline of 6.7 percentage points ranks 28th in the majors. Freeman also ranks 30th in year-over-year slugging gains. All three improvements rank among the top decile of qualifying players.
The quality of batted balls he’s lifted into the air were bettered by only two players, according to OPS, this season: José Abreu of the White Sox and teammate Marcell Ozuna.
Freeman has also added contact ability. He’s cut his swinging-strike rate by 3.1 percentage points in the regular season, tied for the 14th-best improvement in the majors. Freeman’s strikeout rate was a career-low 14.1 percent this season, and it’s been even lower in the postseason (7.3 percent through four games of the NLCS). Freeman is crushing pitches he swings at in part because he’s been more selective. His swing rate on pitches out of the strike zone is a career-low 24.1 percent.
It’s also possible that Freeman is simply healthier this year after having surgery last fall to remove bone spurs in his elbow. Freeman told MLB.com that this year was “the first time in nine years I haven’t had any pain in the offseason.” His increased exit velocity and decreased ground-ball rate could also mean that Freeman has improved his ability to hit the ball more out in front of the plate, which is where peak bat speed and power are found.
In all, Freeman has simply been better, and at a point in his career when players rarely improve. While it’s challenging in some ways to evaluate a shortened season, some skills like walk rate, strikeout rate, contact rate and groundball rate stabilize with 250 or fewer plate appearances. (Freeman made 262 regular-season plate appearances this year). Ideally we’d like a larger sample to compare stats like OPS, but it’s possible that Freeman has made historically rare improvement this season. Since 1900, only nine qualified major league hitters have improved their OPS more than Freeman has from their 10th to 11th major league seasons — and none of those hitters had a better 10th career season to improve upon. And while this season was just 60 games, it was the second-best 60-game stretch of non-overlapping games of Freeman’s career within a season, in terms of WAR.
Having enjoyed an MVP-caliber regular season, his torrid hitting has continued into the postseason when the Braves need it most. And to finish off the Dodgers, the Braves need Freeman to keep playing as well as he ever has.
Check out our latest MLB predictions.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-16--Running Backs Are As Replaceable As Ever This Year. So Why Did Kansas City Pick Up Le’Veon Bell?

During Tuesday night ’ s rescheduled Buffalo-Tennessee game , the New York Jets announced they had released two-time All-Pro running back Le ’ veon Bell .
The 0-5 Jets reportedly attempted to find a team willing to trade for Bell , but general manager Joe Douglas apparently found insufficient interest .
Rather than keep Bell on the roster , New York opted to cut him outright and accept a dead-money cap hit of over $ 19 million .
Although brief , Bell ’ s time in New York was profitable for him : In 17 games played as a Jet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he earned during his six years and 62 games played as a Pittsburgh Steeler .
On Thursday night , Bell landed on his feet , upgrading from one of the worst teams in the NFL to the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs .
Bell signed a one-year deal with the team , according to ESPN ’ s Adam Schefter .
( Terms have not been disclosed . )
It ’ s a strange move for Kansas City .
The Chiefs just spent their first-round draft pick ( 32nd overall ) on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s true that Kansas City has not been good rushing the football this year : They rank 27th in expected points added ( EPA ) per rushing play so far .
But Bell is arriving directly from the team that ranks dead last .
What exactly are the Chiefs hoping to gain with the Bell signing ?
Running the football successfully in the NFL has more to do with scheme and line play than the player carrying the football .
And this season has given us plenty more evidence that , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are largely interchangeable .
Even the highest-paid players at the position haven ’ t offered much extra in the way of production this year compared with their backups .
Christian McCaffrey , the highest-paid back in the NFL , went down with a high ankle sprain in Week 2 .
In his absence , the Carolina Panthers turned to journeyman Mike Davis , a former fourth-round draft pick on his fourth NFL team who had averaged just 28.4 combined rushing and receiving yards per game over 49 career regular-season games .
Yet since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the previously winless Panthers have won three straight games .
During the winning streak , Davis scored three touchdowns and averaged 117 yards from scrimmage per game — beating first-round pick McCaffery ’ s career average of 113 yards .
A similar story played out last weekend in Seattle .
In Minnesota ’ s Week 5 game against the Seattle Seahawks , the Vikings lost star running back Dalvin Cook in the third quarter to a groin injury .
Cook ’ s backup , Alexander Mattison , stepped in and proceeded to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , both career highs .
Before the season even started , the Jacksonville Jaguars cut ties with former first-round pick Leonard Fournette , opting instead to turn to James Robinson , an undrafted rookie out of Illinois State .
While Jacksonville has just one win on the season , Robinson has provided the team with three touchdowns and 103.2 all-purpose yards per game — eclipsing the 101.1 yards Fournette averaged while with the Jaguars .
In Cleveland , Nick Chubb was off to a torrid start to the season , averaging 5.9 yards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ game with four touchdowns for the Browns .
But he suffered a knee ligament injury in Week 4 , giving backup Kareem Hunt an opportunity .
He filled in ably in the Week 5 win against Indianapolis , scoring a touchdown and amassing 93 yards from scrimmage .
The examples aren ’ t confined to 2020 , either .
In 2018 , when Hunt was released by the same Kansas City Chiefs that just signed Bell , Damien Williams filled in without missing a beat , averaging 107.3 yards from scrimmage and 1.3 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compared to 109 yards from scrimmage and 1.4 touchdowns for Hunt .
That same year , Todd Gurley injured his knee and missed the last two games of a season in which he was in the early conversation for league MVP .
His replacement , C.J .
Anderson — a journeyman on his fourth team of the year — played so well that Gurley was relegated to a backup role when he returned from injury during the playoffs .
Bell might not command a high price tag for the Chiefs , but history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ running back problem they might face already on the roster — and it ’ s likely not even a running back .

Running Backs Are As Replaceable As Ever This Year. So Why Did Kansas City Pick Up Le’Veon Bell?
During Tuesday night’s rescheduled Buffalo-Tennessee game, the New York Jets announced they had released two-time All-Pro running back Le’veon Bell. The 0-5 Jets reportedly attempted to find a team willing to trade for Bell, but general manager Joe Douglas apparently found insufficient interest. Rather than keep Bell on the roster, New York opted to cut him outright and accept a dead-money cap hit of over $19 million. Although brief, Bell’s time in New York was profitable for him: In 17 games played as a Jet, Bell earned 1.7 times more than he earned during his six years and 62 games played as a Pittsburgh Steeler.
On Thursday night, Bell landed on his feet, upgrading from one of the worst teams in the NFL to the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. Bell signed a one-year deal with the team, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. (Terms have not been disclosed.)
It’s a strange move for Kansas City. The Chiefs just spent their first-round draft pick (32nd overall) on RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire in April. It’s true that Kansas City has not been good rushing the football this year: They rank 27th in expected points added (EPA) per rushing play so far. But Bell is arriving directly from the team that ranks dead last. What exactly are the Chiefs hoping to gain with the Bell signing?
Running the football successfully in the NFL has more to do with scheme and line play than the player carrying the football. And this season has given us plenty more evidence that, in today’s NFL, running backs are largely interchangeable. Even the highest-paid players at the position haven’t offered much extra in the way of production this year compared with their backups.
Christian McCaffrey, the highest-paid back in the NFL, went down with a high ankle sprain in Week 2. In his absence, the Carolina Panthers turned to journeyman Mike Davis, a former fourth-round draft pick on his fourth NFL team who had averaged just 28.4 combined rushing and receiving yards per game over 49 career regular-season games. Yet since Davis has taken over as lead back, the previously winless Panthers have won three straight games. During the winning streak, Davis scored three touchdowns and averaged 117 yards from scrimmage per game — beating first-round pick McCaffery’s career average of 113 yards.
A similar story played out last weekend in Seattle. In Minnesota’s Week 5 game against the Seattle Seahawks, the Vikings lost star running back Dalvin Cook in the third quarter to a groin injury. Cook’s backup, Alexander Mattison, stepped in and proceeded to rush for 112 yards on 20 carries, both career highs.
Before the season even started, the Jacksonville Jaguars cut ties with former first-round pick Leonard Fournette, opting instead to turn to James Robinson, an undrafted rookie out of Illinois State. While Jacksonville has just one win on the season, Robinson has provided the team with three touchdowns and 103.2 all-purpose yards per game — eclipsing the 101.1 yards Fournette averaged while with the Jaguars.
In Cleveland, Nick Chubb was off to a torrid start to the season, averaging 5.9 yards per carry and 88.1 all-purpose yards per game with four touchdowns for the Browns. But he suffered a knee ligament injury in Week 4, giving backup Kareem Hunt an opportunity. He filled in ably in the Week 5 win against Indianapolis, scoring a touchdown and amassing 93 yards from scrimmage.
The examples aren’t confined to 2020, either. In 2018, when Hunt was released by the same Kansas City Chiefs that just signed Bell, Damien Williams filled in without missing a beat, averaging 107.3 yards from scrimmage and 1.3 touchdowns in regular-season games he started, compared to 109 yards from scrimmage and 1.4 touchdowns for Hunt.
That same year, Todd Gurley injured his knee and missed the last two games of a season in which he was in the early conversation for league MVP. His replacement, C.J. Anderson — a journeyman on his fourth team of the year — played so well that Gurley was relegated to a backup role when he returned from injury during the playoffs.
Bell might not command a high price tag for the Chiefs, but history suggests they have the answer to whatever running back problem they might face already on the roster — and it’s likely not even a running back.
Check out our latest NFL predictions.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-15--Trump Said QAnon ‘Fights’ Pedophilia. But The Group Has Made It Harder To Protect Kids.

It ’ s hard to argue against a phrase like “ save the children.
” Which , presumably , is why QAnon uses it as a hashtag .
The growing online conspiracy cult has co-opted the phrase to push falsehoods about pedophiles who run the world .
But in promoting its radical worldview , QAnon has made life difficult for the organizations actually trying to save children .
And the results could be putting kids at risk .
QAnon is a baseless conspiracy regardless of how deep you go , but its fixation on pedophilia is particularly unmoored .
Devoted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of detail — that there is a secret cabal of powerful elites who run an underground pedophilia ring , and that President Trump is currently working to bring these evildoers to justice .
If you go all the way down the rabbit hole you ’ ll find theories about Bill Gates injecting tracking devices into every citizen , blood libel , devil worship and draining kids of a chemical compound called adrenochrome to become immortal .
But the underlying connective tissue of QAnon is that bad people , mainly Democrats , are trafficking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who can stop them .
Over the summer , Q followers began using # savethechildren to spread the conspiracy theory , and it worked .
From Aug. 9 through Aug. 15 , more than 12,000 public Facebook posts used the hashtag , according to the social media tracking tool CrowdTangle .
The rest of the year , the hashtag tended to garner fewer than 200 posts per week .
But most of the content shared using # savethechildren was based on a Q-fueled and completely warped picture of what child trafficking looks like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made life difficult for the people who actually do anti-trafficking work .
“ It ’ s extraordinarily frustrating , ” said Lisa Goldblatt Grace , co-founder and executive director of My Life My Choice , an anti-trafficking nonprofit .
“ We ’ ve worked so hard for the last 18 years to shift the narrative and have people understand this is happening in our communities .
QAnon instead gives folks this incredibly sensationalized ‘ other ’ to fear and be angry about.
” In reality , child trafficking in the U.S. doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and D.C. elites performing satanic rituals on children they stole from suburban playgrounds .
Instead , kids who are sexually exploited are often poor , children of color , immigrants , or some combination of the three , and they ’ ve often been in the child welfare system or run away from home .
In 2018 , 1 in 7 kids who were reported as runaways to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of child sex trafficking , according to UNICEF .
“ We see minors who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ve run away from home , maybe they ’ ve been kicked out of their home — and then engage in sex acts for money in order to have food to eat and a place to stay , ” said Jean Bruggeman , executive director of Freedom Network USA , an anti-trafficking group .
“ Almost never is there any kind of abduction or solely a use of physical force or locking people away .
It ’ s generally much more subtle coercion.
” The spectre of pedophilia and child sex @ @ @ @ @ @ @ QAnon lore since the very beginning .
Q , the anonymous poster who feeds the conspiracy by claiming to “ drop ” highly classified government information on image boards known for attracting white supremacists and violent misogynists , has been alluding to underground child trafficking rings in his messages for years .
“ Perhaps [ Trump ] could not stomach the thought of children being kidnapped , drugged , and raped while leaders/law enforcement of the world turn a blind eye , ” reads one message from November 2017 .
“ Some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Clintons do to children , what the deep state does to children , satanic trafficking and sacrifices , ” said Mike Rothschild , a conspiracy theory researcher currently working on a book about QAnon .
The # savethechildren hashtag , however , didn ’ t come onto the QAnon radar until this year .
The hashtag had been used before ( notably to promote the charity Save The Children , which has been around for a century and is unaffiliated with QAnon ) , but in July and August , the number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major portion of those posts were Q-affiliated .
This was likely due in part to the pandemic , Rothschild said : With more people stuck indoors , out of work and feeling hopeless , it ’ s easy to get sucked into an online world that claims to have all the answers .
But it also coincided with a crackdown from Twitter to remove Q-related content .
Suddenly , Q followers couldn ’ t spread their message as openly as they had before , so it ’ s possible that ’ s why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wholesome , social media sites couldn ’ t possibly ban it .
It was more of an organic growth than any kind of coordinated campaign , said Annie Kelly , a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia who studies far-right political movements and digital culture .
“ It ’ s incorrect to frame it as some kind of mastermind pulling the strings , ” Kelly said .
“ The # savethechildren evolution wasn ’ t a coordinated effort to hide QAnon ’ s agenda , but it had the effect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s QAnon.
” To some extent , this growing population of people concerned about child trafficking has translated into a genuine support for organizations that work to end it .
I spoke to representatives from six anti-trafficking groups and four told me they have seen a recent increase in donations .
Freedom Network USA , for example , received 102 donations totalling $ 23,200 from April to September this year , more than 50 times the amount it received in the same period last year , when it got five donations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to give specific figures but said they had seen an increase in donations this year , particularly over the summer .
That said , it ’ s really hard to say for sure how many , if any , of those donations were from Q followers .
“ Nobody was sending in donations with a note saying ‘ In Q we trust , ’ you know ?
” Goldblatt Grace said .
And the increased attention has come with plenty of drawbacks .
Polaris , the charity that operates the National Human Trafficking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discouraging people from reporting that children were not being sold inside expensive cabinets online because callers were flooding its phones with a Q-adjacent conspiracy .
The inundated hotline is one example of a problem each of the anti-trafficking representatives I spoke to raised : Even if QAnon is bringing people ’ s attention to child trafficking in general , it ’ s focusing that attention specifically on a sensationalized , largely inaccurate picture of what trafficking looks like .
And that can pull focus and resources away from the actual problem .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misunderstanding of the issue , but also a wrong response , ” said Borislav Gerasimov , the program coordinator for communications and advocacy at the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women .
As an example , Gerasimov cited the gunman who fired inside a pizza shop in 2016 because he wrongly believed it was the location of an underground pedophile ring , a conspiracy theory called Pizzagate that is a precursor to QAnon .
“ If you portray human trafficking as something that a secret cabal is doing , the solution becomes guns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the solution to trafficking.
” The solutions that anti-trafficking groups advocate for aren ’ t about raiding pizza shops or decoding Justin Bieber ’ s headwear choices , they ’ re about improving social programs so kids don ’ t fall through the cracks and end up in situations that leave them vulnerable to exploitation .
That ’ s not as easy of a sell to the QAnon crowd .
“ I don ’ t find that I ’ m able to translate the kind of fervor and excitement and investment people get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ focus and excitement in caring for the most marginalized among us , ” said Goldblatt Grace .
Each of the nonprofit representatives I spoke to said they ’ re grateful for any donation and are hopeful the increased attention can create opportunities for outreach and education .
But for that to happen , Q followers would have to give up on some of their most cherished beliefs and admit that the real problem , while no less concerning , looks less like the action movie playing in their head and more like the @ @ @ @ @ @ @

It’s hard to argue against a phrase like “save the children.” Which, presumably, is why QAnon uses it as a hashtag. The growing online conspiracy cult has co-opted the phrase to push falsehoods about pedophiles who run the world. But in promoting its radical worldview, QAnon has made life difficult for the organizations actually trying to save children. And the results could be putting kids at risk.
QAnon is a baseless conspiracy regardless of how deep you go, but its fixation on pedophilia is particularly unmoored. Devoted QAnon followers believe — to varying levels of detail — that there is a secret cabal of powerful elites who run an underground pedophilia ring, and that President Trump is currently working to bring these evildoers to justice. If you go all the way down the rabbit hole you’ll find theories about Bill Gates injecting tracking devices into every citizen, blood libel, devil worship and draining kids of a chemical compound called adrenochrome to become immortal. But the underlying connective tissue of QAnon is that bad people, mainly Democrats, are trafficking children and Trump is the only one who can stop them.
Over the summer, Q followers began using #savethechildren to spread the conspiracy theory, and it worked. From Aug. 9 through Aug. 15, more than 12,000 public Facebook posts used the hashtag, according to the social media tracking tool CrowdTangle. The rest of the year, the hashtag tended to garner fewer than 200 posts per week.
But most of the content shared using #savethechildren was based on a Q-fueled and completely warped picture of what child trafficking looks like in this country. And that has made life difficult for the people who actually do anti-trafficking work.
“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” said Lisa Goldblatt Grace, co-founder and executive director of My Life My Choice, an anti-trafficking nonprofit. “We’ve worked so hard for the last 18 years to shift the narrative and have people understand this is happening in our communities. QAnon instead gives folks this incredibly sensationalized ‘other’ to fear and be angry about.”
In reality, child trafficking in the U.S. doesn’t look like a bunch of Hollywood and D.C. elites performing satanic rituals on children they stole from suburban playgrounds. Instead, kids who are sexually exploited are often poor, children of color, immigrants, or some combination of the three, and they’ve often been in the child welfare system or run away from home. In 2018, 1 in 7 kids who were reported as runaways to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of child sex trafficking, according to UNICEF.
“We see minors who are in a vulnerable position — maybe they’ve run away from home, maybe they’ve been kicked out of their home — and then engage in sex acts for money in order to have food to eat and a place to stay,” said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, an anti-trafficking group. “Almost never is there any kind of abduction or solely a use of physical force or locking people away. It’s generally much more subtle coercion.”
The spectre of pedophilia and child sex trafficking has been a part of the QAnon lore since the very beginning. Q, the anonymous poster who feeds the conspiracy by claiming to “drop” highly classified government information on image boards known for attracting white supremacists and violent misogynists, has been alluding to underground child trafficking rings in his messages for years. “Perhaps [Trump] could not stomach the thought of children being kidnapped, drugged, and raped while leaders/law enforcement of the world turn a blind eye,” reads one message from November 2017.
“Some of the earliest drops are about what the Clintons do to children, what the deep state does to children, satanic trafficking and sacrifices,” said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher currently working on a book about QAnon.
The #savethechildren hashtag, however, didn’t come onto the QAnon radar until this year. The hashtag had been used before (notably to promote the charity Save The Children, which has been around for a century and is unaffiliated with QAnon), but in July and August, the number of posts using it surged, and a major portion of those posts were Q-affiliated. This was likely due in part to the pandemic, Rothschild said: With more people stuck indoors, out of work and feeling hopeless, it’s easy to get sucked into an online world that claims to have all the answers. But it also coincided with a crackdown from Twitter to remove Q-related content. Suddenly, Q followers couldn’t spread their message as openly as they had before, so it’s possible that’s why they adopted a hashtag that was so wholesome, social media sites couldn’t possibly ban it. It was more of an organic growth than any kind of coordinated campaign, said Annie Kelly, a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia who studies far-right political movements and digital culture.
“It’s incorrect to frame it as some kind of mastermind pulling the strings,” Kelly said. “The #savethechildren evolution wasn’t a coordinated effort to hide QAnon’s agenda, but it had the effect of drawing in people to QAnon without realizing it’s QAnon.”
To some extent, this growing population of people concerned about child trafficking has translated into a genuine support for organizations that work to end it. I spoke to representatives from six anti-trafficking groups and four told me they have seen a recent increase in donations. Freedom Network USA, for example, received 102 donations totalling $23,200 from April to September this year, more than 50 times the amount it received in the same period last year, when it got five donations totalling $428. Other organizations declined to give specific figures but said they had seen an increase in donations this year, particularly over the summer.
That said, it’s really hard to say for sure how many, if any, of those donations were from Q followers. “Nobody was sending in donations with a note saying ‘In Q we trust,’ you know?” Goldblatt Grace said. And the increased attention has come with plenty of drawbacks. Polaris, the charity that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, had to issue a statement discouraging people from reporting that children were being sold inside expensive cabinets online because callers were flooding its phones with a Q-adjacent conspiracy.
The inundated hotline is one example of a problem each of the anti-trafficking representatives I spoke to raised: Even if QAnon is bringing people’s attention to child trafficking in general, it’s focusing that attention specifically on a sensationalized, largely inaccurate picture of what trafficking looks like. And that can pull focus and resources away from the actual problem.
“It can lead to not only a misunderstanding of the issue, but also a wrong response,” said Borislav Gerasimov, the program coordinator for communications and advocacy at the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.
As an example, Gerasimov cited the gunman who fired inside a pizza shop in 2016 because he wrongly believed it was the location of an underground pedophile ring, a conspiracy theory called Pizzagate that is a precursor to QAnon. “If you portray human trafficking as something that a secret cabal is doing, the solution becomes guns and surveillance. This is totally not the solution to trafficking.”
The solutions that anti-trafficking groups advocate for aren’t about raiding pizza shops or decoding Justin Bieber’s headwear choices, they’re about improving social programs so kids don’t fall through the cracks and end up in situations that leave them vulnerable to exploitation. That’s not as easy of a sell to the QAnon crowd.
“I don’t find that I’m able to translate the kind of fervor and excitement and investment people get for #savethechildren into an investment and focus and excitement in caring for the most marginalized among us,” said Goldblatt Grace.
Each of the nonprofit representatives I spoke to said they’re grateful for any donation and are hopeful the increased attention can create opportunities for outreach and education. But for that to happen, Q followers would have to give up on some of their most cherished beliefs and admit that the real problem, while no less concerning, looks less like the action movie playing in their head and more like the rest of America’s problems.


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-17--How Does Early Voting Affect The Forecast? And Other Listener Questions.

In this installment of Model Talk , Nate Silver and Galen Druke discuss the current election forecasts and answer questions @ @ @

How Does Early Voting Affect The Forecast? And Other Listener Questions.
In this installment of Model Talk, Nate Silver and Galen Druke discuss the current election forecasts and answer questions from listeners.