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What Americans Think Of The Biden Impeachment Inquiry - 2023-09-14T19:41:00+00:00
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly-ish polling roundup. It’s officially impeachment season again. On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced that he’s directing three House committees to start investigating whether President Biden benefited from his son Hunter’s business dealings overseas. McCarthy accused the Biden family of “a culture of corruption,” saying that the Biden administration […]

The Second GOP Debate Could Be Smaller, With Or Without Trump - 2023-09-14T10:00:00+00:00
The second Republican presidential primary debate is less than two weeks away, so time is running out for GOP contenders to meet the Republican National Committee’s qualification criteria. To make the Sept. 27 debate, each candidate must have at least 3 percent support in two qualifying national polls, or at least 3 percent in one […]

The Senate Is Losing One Of Its Few Remaining Moderate Republicans - 2023-09-13T22:40:55+00:00
On Wednesday, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney announced he would not run for reelection in 2024. On the surface, the electoral impact of Romney’s decision is minimal — his seat should stay safely in Republican hands. But it’s still notable because it represents the departure of one of the few remaining Republican senators who had a […]

Why ‘Bidenomics’ Isn’t Working For Biden - 2023-09-12T20:07:16+00:00
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): For a long time, the economy has been seen as a big liability for President Biden in his reelection bid. Inflation soared in 2021 and 2022, culminating at a rate of 9.1 percent last June. The same […]

Why Biden Is Losing Support Among Voters Of Color - 2023-09-11T23:58:15+00:00
Among the most politically tuned-in, last week saw the kind of hand-wringing and accusations of bias surrounding the polls that you’d usually expect from the final two months of a campaign, not the final year and two months of a campaign. The focus was largely on general election polls: Whether a Wall Street Journal poll […]

Politics Podcast: Polling Silly Season Begins - 2023-09-11T22:15:16+00:00
Among the most politically tuned-in, last week saw the kind of hand-wringing and accusations of bias surrounding the polls that you’d usually expect from the final two months of a campaign, not the final year and two months of a campaign. The focus was largely on general election polls: Whether a Wall Street Journal poll showing former President Donald […]

Ron DeSantis Probably Didn’t Turn Florida Red - 2023-09-11T18:34:26+00:00
In his presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pitched himself as a transformational leader who has reshaped the politics of his home state. His 2022 reelection by 19 percentage points “was not just a big victory,” he has argued. “It was really a fundamental realignment of Florida from being a swing state to being […]

Aging Politicians Are Only Going To Get More Common - 2023-09-07T10:00:00+00:00
Presidents are getting older and older. Former President Donald Trump was the oldest person to assume office when he was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017, and President Biden broke that record four years later. If either is elected again next year, at ages 78 and 81, respectively, they will be older than the previous […]

Should We Trust Polls Campaigns Leak To The Press? - 2023-09-07T02:20:46+00:00
Now that we are on the other side of Labor Day and summer is subsiding, this is — as tradition goes — when focus on political campaigns really begins to heat up. The off-year elections this November will get some attention, but the main attraction is still the 2024 Republican presidential primary. In this installment […]

Politics Podcast: Is Donald Trump The Inevitable GOP Nominee? - 2023-09-06T22:33:55+00:00
Now that we are on the other side of Labor Day and summer is subsiding, this is — as tradition goes — when focus on political campaigns really begins to heat up. The off-year elections this November will get some attention, but the main attraction is still the 2024 Republican presidential primary. In this installment […]

What Are The Swing States Of The Future? - 2023-09-06T14:45:05+00:00
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior reporter): The residents of states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are used to having their airwaves flooded with political ads as presidential elections draw near. But over the years, there’s actually been a lot of variation in which states […]

Everything You Need To Know About Tuesday’s Special Elections In Rhode Island And Utah - 2023-09-05T10:00:00+00:00
Usually, Labor Day is considered the traditional start of campaign season — but here in 2023, it marks the end of the competitive phase of two heated special elections. Neither Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District nor Utah’s 2nd is expected to be very competitive in November’s general elections, so Tuesday’s primaries will likely determine their […]

Vivek Ramaswamy Is Climbing. Where Can He Go? - 2023-09-01T10:00:00+00:00
At last week’s Republican debate, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy arguably made the biggest splash of any candidate. Sharing center stage with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the entrepreneur spoke more than any contender other than former Vice President Mike Pence and even briefly surpassed the absent front-runner, former President Donald Trump, in Google search traffic. Built partly […]

We’re Hiring A Visual Journalist - 2023-08-31T13:59:38+00:00
FiveThirtyEight is looking for a savvy Visual Journalist to cover U.S. politics and elections. The ideal candidate will be eager to contribute in a number of capacities — through daily graphics production, collaboration on reported stories and work on our “big swing” interactives. We’re looking for a web developer and designer who can exercise strong […]

After An Eventful Month, Trump Has Lost Support In The GOP Primary - 2023-08-31T10:00:00+00:00
Once more, with feeling: It has been a couple of weeks since former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment (this time in Georgia, in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election there). Do the charges appear to have affected his chances of returning to the White House? After each of Trump’s three prior indictments, […]

Will Trump Regret Skipping The GOP Debates? - 2023-08-30T10:00:00+00:00
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. maya (Maya Sweedler, senior editor): The first Republican debate last Wednesday featured eight candidates — none of whom was the front-runner. Former President Donald Trump elected to skip the debate, writing on his social media website that “The public knows who I am […]

What Are Trump’s Chances Of Winning The GOP Primary? - 2023-08-29T18:57:45+00:00
Is the 2024 Republican presidential primary already over? If you just look at the polls, you’d be forgiven for thinking so. Consider the state of the states: Several polls published last week showed former President Donald Trump leading in Iowa (with 42 percent to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 19 percent and South Carolina Sen. Tim […]

Politics Podcast: Good Or Bad Use Of Polling … Extended Cut - 2023-08-28T22:34:52+00:00
This is a special end-of-meteorological-summer installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. Galen Druke speaks with pollsters Kristen Soltis Anderson and David Byler in an episode made entirely of “good or bad use of polling” examples. They consider why GOP primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy polls differently depending on survey methodology, what we can learn from post-debate […]

How Restarting Student Loan Payments Could Change Millions of Lives — And The Economy - 2023-08-28T10:00:00+00:00
When Congress voted in May to restart student loan payments this fall — and then the Supreme Court overturned President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan in June — Alexa Goins and her husband realized they had a choice: They could keep their house or they could pay off their student debt.  Together, she and her […]

Politics Podcast: Lessons From A Trump-Less Debate - 2023-08-24T13:36:11+00:00
The crew discusses their takeaways from the first Republican presidential primary debate in this late-night edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new […]