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 […]
Category: Five Thirty Eight
The Second GOP Debate Could Be Smaller, With Or Without Trump
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
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
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
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
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
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 […]
Politicians Are Getting Older, and Voters Are Worried — But Not that Worried
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?
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?
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 […]