fivethirthyeight--2020-10-13--Why Rejected Ballots Could Be A Big Problem In 2020

As many states have changed their laws to encourage the use of mail voting during the pandemic , one big problem has become apparent : the number of mail ballots that are rejected .
Rejected absentee ballots , most of which are cast by mail , have long been an issue , but a manageable one .
According to the Election Administration and Voting Survey , less than 1 percent of the 33.4 million absentee ballots submitted in the 2016 general election across the 50 states and Washington , D.C. , were rejected .
This year , though , rejection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many people are voting by mail for the first time and may not know the rules .
According to research by David Cottrell , Michael C. Herron and Daniel A. Smith , voters without experience voting by mail are up to three times more likely to have their ballots rejected .
And even if the absentee-ballot rejection rate turns out to be as low as 2016 ’ s , there will simply be a lot more absentee voting this year , and 1 percent of a big number is still pretty big .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than 550,000 absentee ballots were returned but not counted in this year ’ s presidential primaries — and that number is almost certainly an undercount , considering that data was available in only 30 states .
At the very least , that far outstrips the 318,709 absentee ballots that were rejected across the 50 states and Washington , D.C. , in the much higher-turnout 2016 general election .
“ The risk has always been there , ” Charles Stewart III , founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s different this time is that states that don ’ t have histories of large numbers of mail ballots now are getting a large number of mail ballots .
And rejection rates for many of those states , which flew under the radar when there was a small number of ballots , are now being highlighted.
” Mail ballots can be rejected for a number of reasons , but election administration experts told FiveThirtyEight there are two big reasons .
The most common reason is that they arrive late .
Many states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be received , as opposed to postmarked , which means unless you drop off your ballot in person , you ’ re trusting the postal service to deliver your ballot in time for it to be counted ( so if you ’ re putting your ballot in the mail , be sure to do so early ) .
The second most common reason a ballot is rejected is that it is missing a required signature ; people who vote absentee are required to sign their ballot or ballot envelope , and some states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Ballots can also be rejected if the signature on them does not match the signature the voter has on file .
This is a major gripe of voting-rights advocates , who point out that the decision of whether a signature is close enough to the one on file can be very subjective ( while some states have detailed guidelines for when a signature should count , others don ’ t , and election workers conducting signature verification are often not well trained ) .
And according to Tammy Patrick , a senior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ odd-looking signatures do not represent voter fraud , just the correct voter signing their name under unusual circumstances .
“ When I worked [ as an election official ] in Maricopa County , I never had a voter say it wasn ’ t them , ” Patrick said .
“ They would say their arm was in a cast , or ‘ I recently had a stroke , ’ or my favorite was , ‘ My gosh , I signed it on the dashboard of my car when I was driving down the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some more esoteric reasons why mail ballots get rejected .
For example , in Pennsylvania , “ naked ballots ” — those not enclosed in the required secrecy envelope — are automatically tossed .
Or “ a couple might put the wrong person ’ s ballot in the wrong envelope , ” said Herron , one of the political scientists who authored the study on rejected mail ballots .
“ But those are rare , ” he stressed .
Mail-ballot rejections don ’ t disenfranchise all voters equally , though .
Voters of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tend to have less experience voting by mail , are more likely to have their votes go uncounted .
In North Carolina , Black voters ’ mail ballots are already being rejected at a higher rate than white voters ’ ballots .
A similar trend was identified in Florida and Georgia in the 2018 midterms .
And in Florida in 2016 and 2018 , voters age 21 and younger had a rejection rate more than eight times greater than voters over age 65 .
It ’ s possible , though , that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
People often find themselves unable to vote in in-person elections as well — just in ways that are harder to measure .
For example , some people may want to vote but lack the proper identification to do so ; others may not be able to find their polling place on Election Day .
And even among people who do make it to the polls , some may be deterred by long lines , and others may be turned away because of problems with their voter registration ( e.g.
, it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was purged from the rolls ) .
Stewart ’ s Survey of the Performance of American Elections estimates that about 955,000 votes were “ lost ” in one of these four ways in the 2016 general election .
So for all the attention afforded rejected mail ballots , people probably don ’ t talk enough about the perennial problem of lost in-person votes .
But with so many more people voting by mail this year , the question becomes which method disenfranchises more voters — in-person voting or mail voting ?
Herron said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ getting rejected this year than he is about in-person votes getting “ rejected ” in a normal year .
“ What ’ s the biggest problem ?
We don ’ t really know.
” But , he added , “ my intuition is that the magnitude of late ballots is much greater.
” Stewart agreed : “ I think that the incremental risk of voting by mail is greater than voting in person.
” In addition to the rate of absentee-ballot rejections being higher than the rate of lost in-person votes , Stewart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail ballots than in-person ones are tossed out in the actual tabulation stage .
“ The story there is a simple one , ” said Stewart .
“ Mistakes that are getting caught in a precinct ” — such as a person voting for too many candidates , or making a stray mark on the ballot that might invalidate the whole thing — “ are not going to be caught in vote-by-mail.
” That ’ s because ballot scanners will typically spit back out an in-person ballot that is marked incorrectly , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to try again with a fresh ballot .
Mail voters do not have that luxury .
So mail-ballot rejections could be a bigger problem than in-person “ rejections ” this year ; at the very least , they will certainly be a bigger problem than they ’ ve been in the past .
However , the good news is that election officials are aware that increased mail voting could potentially disenfranchise more voters , and some are addressing the problem .
Eight states , for instance , have switched from a receipt deadline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ensuring that most ballots put in the mail by the deadline will not be rejected for being late .
The vast majority of states are also giving voters the option to drop off their mail ballots in person via secure drop boxes .
In addition , Patrick said that many mail ballots these days are trackable , so it ’ s possible to prove whether a ballot was put in the mail on time .
Some states are also taking a less strict approach to signature verification : Pennsylvania , for instance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not be rejected based on an apparent signature mismatch alone .
And according to data collected by the National Vote at Home Institute and shared with FiveThirtyEight , 25 states now have procedures in place to notify voters of problems with their absentee ballots and give them a chance to fix , or “ cure , ” them .
As a result of these changes and more , Patrick said she ’ s optimistic that absentee-ballot rejection rates will be relatively low this fall .
“ Many states with high rejection rates in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the general , ” including clearer instructions and better envelope designs , which tests show lowers the number of voters who forget to sign them , she said .
“ Also the fact that so many voters are acting early , both in terms of requesting their ballot and returning it , ” Patrick added .
“ That all gives me hope.
” Indeed , according to data collected by political scientist Michael McDonald , almost 10 million ballots have already been returned nationwide .
But other experts aren ’ t sure whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year .
“ That ’ s the big question , ” Herron said , pointing out that the influx of first-time mail voters into the electorate this year could cancel out the benefits of states ’ changes to election administration .
“ How strong are those compared to the experience effect ?
We don ’ t know the answer , ” he said .
And in addition to voter inexperience and those administrative changes , there ’ s a third factor to consider : slower mail delivery this year .
In conclusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t think anyone can put a number on it to say that the effect of these three is x .
”

As many states have changed their laws to encourage the use of mail voting during the pandemic, one big problem has become apparent: the number of mail ballots that are rejected.
Rejected absentee ballots, most of which are cast by mail, have long been an issue, but a manageable one. According to the Election Administration and Voting Survey, less than 1 percent of the 33.4 million absentee ballots submitted in the 2016 general election across the 50 states and Washington, D.C., were rejected. This year, though, rejection rates could be much higher because so many people are voting by mail for the first time and may not know the rules. According to research by David Cottrell, Michael C. Herron and Daniel A. Smith, voters without experience voting by mail are up to three times more likely to have their ballots rejected.
And even if the absentee-ballot rejection rate turns out to be as low as 2016’s, there will simply be a lot more absentee voting this year, and 1 percent of a big number is still pretty big. According to an analysis by NPR, more than 550,000 absentee ballots were returned but not counted in this year’s presidential primaries — and that number is almost certainly an undercount, considering that data was available in only 30 states. At the very least, that far outstrips the 318,709 absentee ballots that were rejected across the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the much higher-turnout 2016 general election.
“The risk has always been there,” Charles Stewart III, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science Lab, told FiveThirtyEight. “What’s different this time is that states that don’t have histories of large numbers of mail ballots now are getting a large number of mail ballots. And rejection rates for many of those states, which flew under the radar when there was a small number of ballots, are now being highlighted.”
Mail ballots can be rejected for a number of reasons, but election administration experts told FiveThirtyEight there are two big reasons. The most common reason is that they arrive late. Many states have deadlines by which mail ballots must be received, as opposed to postmarked, which means unless you drop off your ballot in person, you’re trusting the postal service to deliver your ballot in time for it to be counted (so if you’re putting your ballot in the mail, be sure to do so early).
The second most common reason a ballot is rejected is that it is missing a required signature; people who vote absentee are required to sign their ballot or ballot envelope, and some states even require a witness signature as well. Ballots can also be rejected if the signature on them does not match the signature the voter has on file. This is a major gripe of voting-rights advocates, who point out that the decision of whether a signature is close enough to the one on file can be very subjective (while some states have detailed guidelines for when a signature should count, others don’t, and election workers conducting signature verification are often not well trained). And according to Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser with the Democracy Fund, most odd-looking signatures do not represent voter fraud, just the correct voter signing their name under unusual circumstances. “When I worked [as an election official] in Maricopa County, I never had a voter say it wasn’t them,” Patrick said. “They would say their arm was in a cast, or ‘I recently had a stroke,’ or my favorite was, ‘My gosh, I signed it on the dashboard of my car when I was driving down the 202!’”
There are also some more esoteric reasons why mail ballots get rejected. For example, in Pennsylvania, “naked ballots” — those not enclosed in the required secrecy envelope — are automatically tossed. Or “a couple might put the wrong person’s ballot in the wrong envelope,” said Herron, one of the political scientists who authored the study on rejected mail ballots. “But those are rare,” he stressed.
Mail-ballot rejections don’t disenfranchise all voters equally, though. Voters of color and young voters, who also tend to have less experience voting by mail, are more likely to have their votes go uncounted. In North Carolina, Black voters’ mail ballots are already being rejected at a higher rate than white voters’ ballots. A similar trend was identified in Florida and Georgia in the 2018 midterms. And in Florida in 2016 and 2018, voters age 21 and younger had a rejection rate more than eight times greater than voters over age 65.
It’s possible, though, that the problem of rejected mail ballots is overstated. People often find themselves unable to vote in in-person elections as well — just in ways that are harder to measure. For example, some people may want to vote but lack the proper identification to do so; others may not be able to find their polling place on Election Day. And even among people who do make it to the polls, some may be deterred by long lines, and others may be turned away because of problems with their voter registration (e.g., it was out of date, or the voter was purged from the rolls). Stewart’s Survey of the Performance of American Elections estimates that about 955,000 votes were “lost” in one of these four ways in the 2016 general election.
Lots of in-person votes are “rejected” too Estimated number of in-person votes that were not cast or counted for various reasons in the 2016 general election Reason Lost Votes Registration problems 300,000 Long lines 247,000 Lack of ID 233,000 Couldn’t find polling place 175,000 Total 955,000 Source: Survey of the Performance of American Elections
So for all the attention afforded rejected mail ballots, people probably don’t talk enough about the perennial problem of lost in-person votes. But with so many more people voting by mail this year, the question becomes which method disenfranchises more voters — in-person voting or mail voting?
Herron said he is more concerned about mail ballots getting rejected this year than he is about in-person votes getting “rejected” in a normal year. “What’s the biggest problem? We don’t really know.” But, he added, “my intuition is that the magnitude of late ballots is much greater.”
Stewart agreed: “I think that the incremental risk of voting by mail is greater than voting in person.” In addition to the rate of absentee-ballot rejections being higher than the rate of lost in-person votes, Stewart’s research has found that more mail ballots than in-person ones are tossed out in the actual tabulation stage. “The story there is a simple one,” said Stewart. “Mistakes that are getting caught in a precinct” — such as a person voting for too many candidates, or making a stray mark on the ballot that might invalidate the whole thing — “are not going to be caught in vote-by-mail.” That’s because ballot scanners will typically spit back out an in-person ballot that is marked incorrectly, and the voter will be given a chance to try again with a fresh ballot. Mail voters do not have that luxury.
So mail-ballot rejections could be a bigger problem than in-person “rejections” this year; at the very least, they will certainly be a bigger problem than they’ve been in the past. However, the good news is that election officials are aware that increased mail voting could potentially disenfranchise more voters, and some are addressing the problem. Eight states, for instance, have switched from a receipt deadline for mail ballots to a postmark deadline, ensuring that most ballots put in the mail by the deadline will not be rejected for being late. The vast majority of states are also giving voters the option to drop off their mail ballots in person via secure drop boxes. In addition, Patrick said that many mail ballots these days are trackable, so it’s possible to prove whether a ballot was put in the mail on time.
Some states are also taking a less strict approach to signature verification: Pennsylvania, for instance, has told counties that ballots cannot be rejected based on an apparent signature mismatch alone. And according to data collected by the National Vote at Home Institute and shared with FiveThirtyEight, 25 states now have procedures in place to notify voters of problems with their absentee ballots and give them a chance to fix, or “cure,” them.
As a result of these changes and more, Patrick said she’s optimistic that absentee-ballot rejection rates will be relatively low this fall. “Many states with high rejection rates in the primary have adopted best practices for the general,” including clearer instructions and better envelope designs, which tests show lowers the number of voters who forget to sign them, she said. “Also the fact that so many voters are acting early, both in terms of requesting their ballot and returning it,” Patrick added. “That all gives me hope.” Indeed, according to data collected by political scientist Michael McDonald, almost 10 million ballots have already been returned nationwide.
But other experts aren’t sure whether rejection rates will be higher or lower this year. “That’s the big question,” Herron said, pointing out that the influx of first-time mail voters into the electorate this year could cancel out the benefits of states’ changes to election administration. “How strong are those compared to the experience effect? We don’t know the answer,” he said. And in addition to voter inexperience and those administrative changes, there’s a third factor to consider: slower mail delivery this year. In conclusion, Herron said, “I don’t think anyone can put a number on it to say that the effect of these three is x.”
How Trump could still win reelection l FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast


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

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

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


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

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

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

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


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-13--LeBron James Won It All Again, So Is The GOAT Debate Finally Over? LOL, No.

We start with the conclusion of the NBA Finals .
The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Miami Heat in convincing fashion after a blowout Game 6 , and LeBron James now has his fourth ring .
Naturally , the accomplishment has revived the old question of whether LeBron did/can/should unseat Michael Jordan as the GOAT .
The Hot Takedown team is pretty skeptical of the usefulness of the question but does believe that with this championship , LeBron has attained some achievements so singular not even the most ardent Jordan defenders can argue with them — although , of course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ living in a much more player-driven era now , in no small part because LeBron was willing to switch teams , so James winning three championships with three different franchises speaks to his ability to be the driving force behind a successful postseason and to play the kind of smart , team-driven basketball that makes the current game so good .
Whether one prefers the kind of hero ball that Jordan played is just that : a preference .
Next , we turn to the four remaining teams in the MLB postseason .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the heels of the league , the Houston Astros : whether their hot play in the postseason is strange ( it isn ’ t ) ; whether the cheating scandal has had an effect on the way their 2020 has gone ( maybe ) ; and whether a World Series appearance would change their recent legacy ( probably not much ) .
What ’ s been the most impressive surprise , besides the Tampa Bay Rays proving that even the smallest player can change the course of the future , is how the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right when it needed to , bolstering the team ’ s incredible offensive talent .
In our very serious and consequential World Series draft , Geoff has the Los Angeles Dodgers , the most likely winner according to our model , and Sara has the remainder of the field .
Our hosts have plenty of sympathy for the Dodgers , a consistently great team whose time should be now .
But Neil , at least , is inclined to bet on the field .
Finally , in the Rabbit Hole , Sara takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and why so many teams across all levels of sports still use Native American names and iconography .
We ’ ve seen a bunch of schools change their names — and in some cases adopt nightmarish gargoyle replacements — in recent years , but there are still 45 high schools across the United States using the Washington Football Team ’ s former name .
So it will be interesting to see if the number of teams using Native names and images continues to diminish , or if communities who see these mascots as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entrench themselves .
What we ’ re looking at this week : • The Undefeated on LeBron James ending the GOAT debate .
• Hundreds of high schools still use Native Americans as team mascots .

We start with the conclusion of the NBA Finals. The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Miami Heat in convincing fashion after a blowout Game 6, and LeBron James now has his fourth ring. Naturally, the accomplishment has revived the old question of whether LeBron did/can/should unseat Michael Jordan as the GOAT. The Hot Takedown team is pretty skeptical of the usefulness of the question but does believe that with this championship, LeBron has attained some achievements so singular not even the most ardent Jordan defenders can argue with them — although, of course, they will. We’re living in a much more player-driven era now, in no small part because LeBron was willing to switch teams, so James winning three championships with three different franchises speaks to his ability to be the driving force behind a successful postseason and to play the kind of smart, team-driven basketball that makes the current game so good. Whether one prefers the kind of hero ball that Jordan played is just that: a preference.
Next, we turn to the four remaining teams in the MLB postseason. Well, specifically, we talk about the heels of the league, the Houston Astros: whether their hot play in the postseason is strange (it isn’t); whether the cheating scandal has had an effect on the way their 2020 has gone (maybe); and whether a World Series appearance would change their recent legacy (probably not much). What’s been the most impressive surprise, besides the Tampa Bay Rays proving that even the smallest player can change the course of the future, is how the Atlanta Braves’ pitching has stepped up right when it needed to, bolstering the team’s incredible offensive talent. In our very serious and consequential World Series draft, Geoff has the Los Angeles Dodgers, the most likely winner according to our model, and Sara has the remainder of the field. Our hosts have plenty of sympathy for the Dodgers, a consistently great team whose time should be now. But Neil, at least, is inclined to bet on the field.
Finally, in the Rabbit Hole, Sara takes us into the world of team mascots and why so many teams across all levels of sports still use Native American names and iconography. We’ve seen a bunch of schools change their names — and in some cases adopt nightmarish gargoyle replacements — in recent years, but there are still 45 high schools across the United States using the Washington Football Team’s former name. So it will be interesting to see if the number of teams using Native names and images continues to diminish, or if communities who see these mascots as a way to preserve their identity further entrench themselves.
What we’re looking at this week:


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

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

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


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

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

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


fivethirthyeight--2020-10-13--The 2020 Rays Are Doing More With Less, Even More Than Usual

Up two games to none on the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series , the Tampa Bay Rays are proving with every contest that they are not to be underestimated .
Although the franchise had the sixth-most wins in baseball during the 2010s , it also struggled to make the playoffs — and on the rare occasions it did , it never advanced past the division series .
This year is already different .
With an 82 percent probability of advancing to the World Series ( according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model ) , what very well could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closing in on what might be the most special season in franchise history .
If the Astros are the villains of this league-championship round , in the wake of their well-documented cheating scandal , the Rays should be heroes to every underdog lover out there .
As is customary for the franchise , Tampa Bay continues to do more with less : While the other three active playoff teams all ranked among the top half of MLB in payroll , according to Baseball-Reference.com — with Houston and Los Angeles finishing second and third @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second-lowest payroll in baseball this season , ahead of only the Baltimore Orioles .
Aside from center fielder Kevin Kiermaier , who carries a $ 10.2 million price tag , the rest of the Rays ’ top 15 players by wins above replacement cost a combined $ 17.3 million , or a little over $ 1.2 million per player in full-season payroll salary .
By all rights , a team like this shouldn ’ t have been close to the playoffs at all , but Tampa Bay has long had a knack for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current examples include selecting second baseman Brandon Lowe , the team ’ s 2020 WAR leader , 87th overall in the 2015 draft ; finding ALDS hero Mike Brosseau as an undrafted free agent in 2016 ; and swindling Pittsburgh out of starter Tyler Glasnow and left fielder Austin Meadows in a now-infamous 2018 trade .
And those were just the players powering the Rays ’ first-place AL East finish during the regular season .
Even by its standards , Tampa Bay has outdone itself in this postseason .
Take Randy Arozarena , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outfielder who played only 23 regular-season games but boasts a team-leading 1.359 OPS during the postseason .
Or Manuel Margot , who had a regular-season OPS of just .679 ( with one home run ) and now owns a mark of .928 in the postseason ( with three homers ) .
The Rays have also leaned heavily on relievers Diego Castillo and Ryan Thompson , who combined for 0.5 WAR during the regular season but have allowed just two runs in 12⅔ innings so far under mostly high-pressure circumstances .
The list goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s top seed , the Rays couldn ’ t resist finding unheralded ways to win in the postseason .
Of course , Tampa Bay ’ s success hasn ’ t all come from unexpected sources .
The Rays ’ defense , second in WAR during the regular season only to the St. Louis Cardinals , has excelled at the routine plays — among teams that made the division series , only the Astros have a larger negative gap between their postseason ERA and fielding-independent pitching — and the difficult ones alike : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tampa Bay held an Astros lineup that had been averaging 6.7 runs per game through the first two rounds of the playoffs to just three total runs in the first two games of the ALCS , making Houston look more like the team that disappointed horribly for most of the year .
If the Rays do manage to hang onto the series against Houston , it would earn them just the second pennant in team history .
The first ?
Led by Evan Longoria , Carlos Peña , James Shields and Melvin Upton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , the 2008 Rays were a terrific story , improving by 31 wins after dropping the “ Devil ” from the team ’ s nickname .
Though it ultimately ran into a World Series buzz saw in the form of the Philadelphia Phillies , that team enjoyed one of the best rags-to-riches runs in baseball history .
But if we look at a variety of different metrics , this edition of the Rays is probably better than the 2008 version was : Obviously , the 2020 Rays haven ’ t advanced as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet .
And Houston has kept things relatively close in the series so far , despite its 2-0 deficit .
In fact , the Astros have gotten plenty of runners on base against the Rays in the ALCS — they actually have a higher OPS in the series than Tampa Bay does ( .736 to .614 ) .
Houston could easily be tied or even leading the series right now , if not for a few important breaks here and there .
But that ’ s the nature of postseason baseball .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a great chance to represent the AL in the Fall Classic , much to the joy of most non-Houstonian observers across the nation .
And as always — even as ALCS favorites — they ’ re doing it in classic scrappy Rays fashion .

Up two games to none on the Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series, the Tampa Bay Rays are proving with every contest that they are not to be underestimated. Although the franchise had the sixth-most wins in baseball during the 2010s, it also struggled to make the playoffs — and on the rare occasions it did, it never advanced past the division series.
This year is already different. With an 82 percent probability of advancing to the World Series (according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model), what very well could be the best Rays team ever is closing in on what might be the most special season in franchise history.
If the Astros are the villains of this league-championship round, in the wake of their well-documented cheating scandal, the Rays should be heroes to every underdog lover out there. As is customary for the franchise, Tampa Bay continues to do more with less: While the other three active playoff teams all ranked among the top half of MLB in payroll, according to Baseball-Reference.com — with Houston and Los Angeles finishing second and third, respectively — Tampa Bay had the second-lowest payroll in baseball this season, ahead of only the Baltimore Orioles.
Aside from center fielder Kevin Kiermaier, who carries a $10.2 million price tag, the rest of the Rays’ top 15 players by wins above replacement cost a combined $17.3 million, or a little over $1.2 million per player in full-season payroll salary. By all rights, a team like this shouldn’t have been close to the playoffs at all, but Tampa Bay has long had a knack for unearthing hidden gems. Just a few current examples include selecting second baseman Brandon Lowe, the team’s 2020 WAR leader, 87th overall in the 2015 draft; finding ALDS hero Mike Brosseau as an undrafted free agent in 2016; and swindling Pittsburgh out of starter Tyler Glasnow and left fielder Austin Meadows in a now-infamous 2018 trade.
And those were just the players powering the Rays’ first-place AL East finish during the regular season. Even by its standards, Tampa Bay has outdone itself in this postseason. Take Randy Arozarena, for instance, the previously obscure Cuban outfielder who played only 23 regular-season games but boasts a team-leading 1.359 OPS during the postseason. Or Manuel Margot, who had a regular-season OPS of just .679 (with one home run) and now owns a mark of .928 in the postseason (with three homers). The Rays have also leaned heavily on relievers Diego Castillo and Ryan Thompson, who combined for 0.5 WAR during the regular season but have allowed just two runs in 12⅔ innings so far under mostly high-pressure circumstances. The list goes on. Even after earning the AL’s top seed, the Rays couldn’t resist finding unheralded ways to win in the postseason.
Of course, Tampa Bay’s success hasn’t all come from unexpected sources. The Rays’ defense, second in WAR during the regular season only to the St. Louis Cardinals, has excelled at the routine plays — among teams that made the division series, only the Astros have a larger negative gap between their postseason ERA and fielding-independent pitching — and the difficult ones alike:
Manuel Margot with one of the most INSANE baseball plays you will ever see! pic.twitter.com/ZBMJhVqKMk — Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) October 12, 2020
In large part because of this, Tampa Bay held an Astros lineup that had been averaging 6.7 runs per game through the first two rounds of the playoffs to just three total runs in the first two games of the ALCS, making Houston look more like the team that disappointed horribly for most of the year.
If the Rays do manage to hang onto the series against Houston, it would earn them just the second pennant in team history. The first? Led by Evan Longoria, Carlos Peña, James Shields and Melvin Upton Jr. (then known as B.J.), the 2008 Rays were a terrific story, improving by 31 wins after dropping the “Devil” from the team’s nickname. Though it ultimately ran into a World Series buzz saw in the form of the Philadelphia Phillies, that team enjoyed one of the best rags-to-riches runs in baseball history. But if we look at a variety of different metrics, this edition of the Rays is probably better than the 2008 version was:
Tale of the tape: best Rays team ever? Comparing the 2008 and 2020 Tampa Bay Rays, by the numbers 2008 Rays Category 2020 Rays 1556 Elo rating* 1566 .590 Win percentage* .681 10th Batting WAR rank 10th 9th Base-running 3rd 6th Fielding 2nd 6th Pitching 5th 6th Starters 13th 7th Bullpen 4th 3rd Total WAR rank 3rd *Includes postseason Source: Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs
Obviously, the 2020 Rays haven’t advanced as far as the 2008 edition did … yet. And Houston has kept things relatively close in the series so far, despite its 2-0 deficit. In fact, the Astros have gotten plenty of runners on base against the Rays in the ALCS — they actually have a higher OPS in the series than Tampa Bay does (.736 to .614). Houston could easily be tied or even leading the series right now, if not for a few important breaks here and there.
But that’s the nature of postseason baseball. Instead, it’s Tampa Bay that has a great chance to represent the AL in the Fall Classic, much to the joy of most non-Houstonian observers across the nation. And as always — even as ALCS favorites — they’re doing it in classic scrappy Rays fashion.
Check out our latest MLB predictions.