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Google’s Gemini AI chatbot has refused to say whether Elon Musk tweeting memes or Adolf Hitler ordering the deaths of millions of people is worse and asserted “there is no right or wrong answer,” according to a tweet shared by Nate Silver. Silver, the former head of data and polling news site FiveThirtyEight, posted a screenshot Sunday on X of Gemini’s alleged response to the question: “Who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?”. “It is not possible to say who definitively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler,” the answer from the search giant’s AI software...

If you're voting in November's midterm elections, chances are you'll have a candidate on the ballot who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that 60% of Americans will have a candidate to choose from this fall who supports former President Donald Trump's lies that the election was stolen. These candidates will appear on ballots in nearly every state, FiveThirtyEight found. The political website drew the candidates' positions from news reports, debate footage, campaign materials and social media and reached out to all Republican nominees for the House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and...

In your typical midterm election with an unpopular Democratic president, you’d expect Republicans to be flying high. But the evidence is mounting that the national political environment right now actually leans toward Democrats. On Tuesday, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a special election for New York’s swingy 19th Congressional District by 2 percentage points, 51 percent to 49 percent.1 At the same time, Republican Joe Sempolinski defeated Democrat Max Della Pia by a closer-than-expected margin of 7 points in the special election for New York’s solid-red 23rd District. On their own, these elections could be dismissed as...

For the first time, political polling website FiveThirtyEight shows the Democrats with an edge in the race for the U.S. Senate in November. The website late on Tuesday showed the Democrats had a 52 percent chance of keeping the Senate majority, while the Republicans had a 48 chance. There had been consensus for a long time that the Republicans will win back the Senate this fall, buoyed by high inflation and economic downturn under Democrat Joe Biden's presidency. FiveThirtyEight believes that the Republicans have selected some "weak candidates" in some key races, meaning that they are less likely to take...

In 2020, President Joe Biden set a record as the presidential candidate to receive the most votes ever in U.S. history. And now, over a year and a half into this first term, he is setting a new record but it’s probably one he won’t be bragging about: how high his disapproval rating is at this point in his presidency. CNN’s senior data reporter, Harry Enten, made an appearance on “AC 360” to discuss the president’s abysmal approval rating with host Anderson Cooper. Enten shared a slide that showed Biden’s disapproval rating seven months ago was at 50% and a...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has roughly a 50/50 shot at winning the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination — more than double the probability of his nearest competitor — according to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight. A forecast from FiveThirtyEight places Sanders’ odds at “1 in 2,” with former Vice President Joe Biden’s odds at “1 in 5,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) at “1 in 20,” and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at “1 in 30.” All other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, including Mike Bloomberg, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, and Tulsi Gabbard, are placed at “1 in 100” odds. Sanders is also currently...

According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight's Seth Masket, any chance that the Republican Party will return to its more moderate ways is being undercut by supporters of Donald Trump who are taking over local parties and punishing any lawmaker who doesn't toe the Trump line. As Masket notes, censuring of candidates used ... read full story

Almost since the moment of his inauguration, former President Donald Trump has been the kingmaker of the Republican Party. In both the 2018 and 2020 elections, Trump-endorsed candidates won almost every Republican primary they competed in. (Of course, many of Trump’s endorsees were already well on their way to victory, but it was still a hot commodity among candidates, serving as evidence of their pro-Trump bona fides. And in several cases, Trump’s support really did appear to influence the outcomes of primaries.) Now that Trump is no longer president, however, one of the big questions of the 2022 midterms is...

Two more batches of Pennsylvania vote were reported: -23,277 votes in Philadelphia, all for Biden -about 5,300 votes in Luzerne County, nearly 4,000 of which were for Biden *With 83% of the expected vote in, Trump’s lead in PA is now just below 6 points.

Possible, sure, but color me still somewhat unconvinced even after a compelling analysis from FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich. Donald Trump dismantled the “blue wall” in 2016, winning the previously unwinnable Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — even if just by a whisker in all three. Rakich points out that Trump came closer than any Republican in decades four years ago in flipping Minnesota, and that the state has gotten more Republican at the same time: Minnesota is much more evenly divided than that record suggests: For example, it came within a couple percentage points of voting for now-President Trump in 2016....

SurveyUSA has a new national poll that shows Joe Biden leading with 32 percent of the vote, followed by Bernie Sanders at 21 percent, Elizabeth Warren at 14 percent and both Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg at 9 percent. As compared with SurveyUSA’s previous national poll in November, Biden is up 2 percentage points, Sanders is up 4, Warren is down 1, Buttigieg is down 2, and Bloomberg is up 6. While SurveyUSA has seemingly good news for Biden, an Ipsos national poll for Reuters does not. Instead, it has Sanders ahead nationally at 20 percent, followed by Biden at...

An updating calculation of support for and opposition to impeachment, accounting for each poll's quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean, since Aug. 1, 2018 Updated Oct. 2, 2019, at 12:00 PM Now that House Democrats are holding an official inquiry into allegations that President Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, FiveThirtyEight is following how public opinion responds with this preliminary impeachment polling tracker. In addition to tracking the polling averages for and against impeachment among all Americans, which you can see in the chart above, we are also keeping tabs on how...

Sometimes, when a news story is still unfolding in real time, we can’t do much better than to hazard a guess about how it will affect the polls. Of course, we can also not hazard a guess — that is, we can not say anything about it at all. But given that I wrote yesterday about public opinion surrounding the impeachment of President Trump, this is one time when I think it’s worth weighing in on the latest development; namely, the White House’s decision to release, on Wednesday, Trump’s reconstructed conversation (note: not a verbatim transcript) with Ukrainian president Volodymyr...

The recent passage of a law in Alabama that essentially bans all abortions in the state resulted in a barrage of coverage of other abortion restrictions being adopted in conservative areas this year. But as FiveThirtyEight illustrated in a story last week, this is not a new trend — Republican-controlled states have been chipping away at abortion access since the 2010 elections, which swept the GOP into power in state legislatures and governors’ mansions across the country.

There are 34 Senate seats up for election in 2020 — including a special election in Arizona — many of which are expected to be brutally competitive as Democrats vie for control of the Senate. Quick take: The U.S. Senate is currently made up of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 2 independents who caucus with the Democrats. Dems must win 3 or 4 seats to take control of the Senate — 4 to recapture control — or 3, if they also win the vice presidency. Some of the fiercest races will come from Virginia, North Carolina and New Hampshire, according...

Four words: Glide path to reelection.Well, no. But there is some encouraging news — emphasis on “some.” If you thought Trump being cleared on collusion might free up some “soft” opponents to change their minds about him, there’s early evidence you were right. Reuters: The Reuters/Ipsos poll measured the public reaction in the United States on Monday and Tuesday, after the report summary was released, gathering online responses from 1,003 adults, including 948 who said they had at least heard of the summary findings…Trump’s approval rating got a slight boost, with 43 percent of Americans saying they approved of...

President Trump has declared a national emergency in order to pay for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, but will Congress block it? That’s a long shot — but we can’t rule it out either. Here’s the basic process, as the New York Times explained in an article after Trump’s declaration. Congress can take up a resolution to end a presidential national emergency declaration. If such a resolution passes in one chamber, the other must bring it up for a vote within 18 days. If the resolution passes both chambers and the president vetoes it, a two-thirds majority in Congress...

Red Wave: All last month political guru Nate Silver predicted that Democrats had an 80-85 percent chance of retaking the House at least, but now that the midterm elections are just a day away, he seems to be hedging his bet. “This last set of Upshot/Siena polls has been pretty good for D’s. They’re polling in 11 districts now, and on average, the polls are coming in about 2-3 points better for Dems than the 538 Classic forecast from before the poll was entered,” the editor of FiveThirtyEight.com tweeted on Saturday.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said its online fundraising for the 2018 election cycle surpassed $100 million on Tuesday. "The DCCC made the early and aggressive investments necessary to build a top-tier online fundraising operation, and it’s paid off massively," DCCC Chief Digital Officer Julia Ager told The Hill in a statement. "The outpouring of support from grass-roots donors has allowed us to invest in over 80 races, fund an unprecedented $30 million base engagement and turnout campaign, and hold Republicans accountable every step of the way." Politico first reported the news earlier on Wednesday. In 2016, the DCCC had...

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined...