Advertise on podcast: The Strength In Numbers Podcast with G. Elliott Morris

Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir take reader questions for their final episode before Election Day. Replay the live conversation for our insights about how to read early vote data, and watch to watch for on election night. Speaking of, don’t forget! David and I will be live with other members of The Downballot, Strength In Numbers, and FiftyPlusOne teams here on Substack on Nov. 3 at 6:45 PM ET. Join us for an extra-informative and fun live discussion of the election results as they come in. Just click below to add a reminder to your calendar: Apple | Google | Office 365 | Outlook | Outlook.com | Yahoo This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. Timestamps: For general subjects covered: 00:00 Intro and programming notes 06:59 House forecast and the median seat count 13:04 Money in the Texas Senate race 25:21 Likely voter screens and the Maine poll gap 38:20 Early vote: how much to trust it By question asked: 16:44 Q: Do poll results expose the limits of big money? 20:21 Q (Kelty): Is Musk's spending going to ads or voter mobilization? 22:58 Q: Does money have a diminishing role in elections? 24:23 Q (Robert): Why do the Marist and Citadel polls show such a large registered vs. likely voter gap? 31:36 Q (Anonymous): What are the top bellwether races, like Mike Lawler's seat? 35:56 Q (live reader): What's the first early drop to watch, like Loudoun County? 38:20 Q (Jane): How much stock should we put in early vote analysis? 46:34 Q (Ed): Are the polls misidentifying likely voters? 52:29 Q (Alex): Does Trump's rally strategy matter if he can't fill a stadium? 54:10 Q (final): What's the most plausible surprise result? . . . Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir invited Elliott’s colleague at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, onto the show to explain how we caught one pollster lying about its data, and what led another to delete its entire internet history. This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. Timestamps: 02:29 Wedgewood Polls: how the fabrication was exposed 15:26 Past fraud cases and the history of fake polling 31:25 Using raw data to find patterns of fraud 43:34 Possible motives—and why this problem could get worse Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

Here’s a fun fact: According to economist Nicholas Bloom and coauthors, for every dollar the U.S. Federal Government spends collecting data at the national Bureau of Labor Statistics, it returns $25 in additional national economic activity. Seems like a pretty good deal, right? Well, that economic — as well as the intrinsic democratic (lowercase “d”) — value of our federal data system (think of agencies like the Census Bureau as well as the BLS) is now under threat. Proposed changes to the 2030 census, and the widespread defunding of the departments that generate federal data, could decrease the accuracy of many studies of the population, as well as political polls (something of great interest to this newsletter’s audience). And here’s one matter of particular concern: A proposed change by the Trump administration to the 2030 Census could result in an undercount of the population in states with large clusters of non-citizens, including both legal immigrants and unauthorized immigrant residents (think Texas, Florida, and California). This change is likely unconstitutional, but that may not stop the change from being implemented. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is joined by Chris Jackson, Senior Vice President at the polling and research firm SSRS, to talk through what the “federal data system” is, what these threats are, and what you can do about it. After you listen to this podcast, please go to handsoffourcens.us to learn how to leave a public comment about the proposed changes This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. Time stamps: 00:00 Intro: the proposed 2030 Census rule and how to leave a comment 04:20 What federal data is and why it matters 19:20 Threats from staff cuts, shutdowns, and DOGE 43:26 Falling trust in the data and the political fight over who gets to be included as “people” 59:04 What you can do about this Thanks again to Chris Jackson for spending the time to walk us through the federal data system. As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A on Substack Live each week. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time, or check out the Strength In Numbers channel on YouTube. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir show what could happen if the polls are underestimating either Democrats or Republicans ahead of the November elections. Given Democrats’ edge in most key Senate races today, we ask: How big would the miss need to be for Republicans to keep their majority? What about in the House? And how would these hypothetical misses compare to historical misses? This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. Here are the key timestamps from our podcast this week: 00:00 Three rules for reading the polls 03:05 The “named congressional ballot” and what it says about the House 19:53 Internal polls, candidate quality, and the Senate 25:29 What if the polls are wrong? Senate scenarios 43:48 The House under a big polling miss Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir explain why polls could underestimate either the Democrats or the Republicans this November. You can make a good case either way. Plus, will Democrats win a majority of governors’ mansions for the first time since 2009? This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. A few big takeaways from the conversation: * Polls underestimated Republicans in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Why did they do that? Is it possible we’re seeing the same biases now? Or have pollsters overcorrected for their past misfires and are now undershooting Democrats? * Pollsters could be increasing the weight on very pro-Trump segments of the population. Due to possible error from something pollsters call “recall bias,” there might be too many MAGA Republicans in surveys—especially if disaffected Trump voters are claiming they did not in fact vote for him in the past. * Or, super-engaged respondents are flooding polls with pro-Democratic attitudes. Elliott finds that “high-effort” respondents lean Democratic. If they’re overrepresented in polls (as they have been in the past), this could be costing Republicans about a point or 2 on average. * Democrats look favored to net at least two governorships, and could win back a majority of states’ executive posts for the first time since 2009. But there are a ton of extremely close races, so if Democrats finish strong, that number could grow. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

This is an upload of a guest appearance on Paul Krugman’s Substack, recorded September 30, 2026. Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. Paul Krugman had David Nir, who co-hosts the SIN podcast with me, and me on his weekly interview show this Thursday, and the video is out this morning. Paul has graciously agreed to let us repost the video interview and transcript here. In this recording, we talk about (obviously) the state of the midterms — particularly the now-quite-rosy odds of the Democrat taking the House and Senate in November. We also talk about (go figure) the economy, and the counterintuitive finding from historical midterms that economic growth and other objective indicators typically don’t predict midterm outcomes well. What matters far more than any indicator is the label of the party in control of the White House. Of course, when everyone is saying they're mad about prices and only ~20% say the incumbent party is handling the issue well, that tends to have an effect electorally too. We also get into the chance of a large polling miss this year, like in some notable recent elections. I give a reminder that tools like election forecasting models, when done well, can represent uncertainty in the election given measurement error in the indicators. Thanks to Paul and David for a great discussion. Here are some links, and I’ve pasted the transcript below for easy reading. Elliott Transcript Paul Krugman: Like almost everybody I know, I spend about 17 hours a day thinking about the midterms, and I’ve got G. Elliott Morris and David Nir from Strength in Numbers and The Downballot here to talk to me about: What do we know? What’s going to happen? What are the indicators? And then maybe some broader issues about what the heck we think is going on in U.S. politics. So, hi, guys. Welcome. Elliott Morris: Hey, thanks, Paul. David Nir: Paul, it’s a pleasure. Krugman: So, yeah, as we record this, I guess it’s one month and two days before the midterms, and if I believe you guys, the polling and other indicators, which David will talk about, seem to be almost kind of shocking right now. Elliott, I just looked at your Fifty Plus One post, and I believe you now have 99% odds of Democrats controlling the House. Morris: Yeah, well, it’s October, Paul. So we’re in what I consider spooky probability territory. 99% is when you start to go, “I hope these models are parameterized correctly.” Look, the way to unpack this: Our model at 50 Plus One shows a 99% chance that the Democrats will win 218 seats or more. 99% seems very large. As the forecaster, I don’t want to be wrong on the 99, but it makes sense when you look at the numbers on paper. So, let’s take 2018 as a comparison case. That’s when Democrats won 235 seats in the House. That year, the generic ballot—which is a question that asks people how they will vote in their local congressional district, for which party they will vote—that has Democrats up somewhere between 8 and 9 points. Democrats won in 2018, leading the polls by about 8 or 9 points. They actually won the House popular vote by seven and a half points or so, if you account for some weirdness with, like, uncontested seats. So we are in a more favorable environment, if the polls are right, than 2018. And we also have a lot of other district-level indicators pointing the same way. Krugman: But, I mean, the gerrymandering was fairly extreme before this, and if we go back to the beginning of this year, it was looking a little iffy, if I recall. Morris: Yeah. So gerrymandering seems to have shifted maybe a handful of seats at most to the Republicans, accounting for some pretty rosy polling, for example, in South Texas and in Florida for the Democrats, where there’s been a larger shift than the national shift, which is about 10 or 11 percentage points. So if we are around eight points, our model says Democrats need to win the House popular vote by about three and a half points. So there’s room for the polls to be wrong by about five. The average expected error for the polls at this point, 30 days before the election, is about three and a half percentage points. So we’re looking at a larger-than-average error in the polls. And then if you account for other indicators, district-level surveys, the race raters like we do, that’s how we get up to that 99. But yeah, I acknowledge this is a very, very large probability. Nir: And Paul, just to address your point about the gerrymandering, which did heavily favor the GOP, it’s important to remember that Republicans were not doing that from a position of strength. They were doing it from a position of weakness, precisely because they knew that they were facing a very difficult midterm election. And they definitely—I can say this with certainty—definitely will not pick up, they will not flip, all of the seats that they targeted in Texas and Florida and elsewhere. And that has a lot to do with the quality of candidate recruitment on both sides. And also, in particular in Texas and Florida as well, has a lot to do with Latino voters moving back against Trump after moving heavily for him in 2024. So, 2024 in a lot of ways was a high watermark. And so when you’re looking at how Trump performed in these districts two years ago, in a lot of cases, expect really a lot of fallback for the GOP. Krugman: Tell me if I’m being underinformed here, but my understanding is that the gerrymandering was based, at least partially, on the assumption that the Hispanic shift towards Trump that took place in ‘24 was an enduring feature of the landscape, and that it all kind of goes wrong if, as now appears to be the case, it’s not enduring. Right? Nir: That’s definitely what it appears to be. Because if you look at these redrawn districts, and instead of looking at how they went in 2024, if you go back a few years earlier and look at how they performed in 2020, when Joe Biden did much better with Latino voters than Kamala Harris did in many parts of the country, they show a much more competitive picture. And so you have Republicans talking about, you know, “Oh, these districts are Trump plus five, Trump plus ten, Trump plus 15.” But that’s 2024. You dial back to 2020, and suddenly we’re talking about districts that Joe Biden won, that Democrats have a real chance of holding on to in 2026. Krugman: Okay. And I want to talk about other indicators, and polling in general. But just a question about the Senate: So now, we’re up into the 70s again for the Senate, right? And that’s a lot less. I mean, the Senate is sort of inherently gerrymandered. States that have about the population of some neighborhoods in the Bronx have as many seats. So, yeah. But that’s also looking pretty strong, right? Morris: Well, speaking of state gerrymandering, don’t get me started about the drawing of the state border of Nevada. I mean, that was a gerrymander, right? So, look, the Democrats have 47 seats right now. They need 51 to have a majority and to overcome JD Vance’s tiebreaker as president of the Senate. So they need four pickups. They look likely, according to our model, to get a pickup in North Carolina, where the former governor, Roy Cooper, is running against the current chair of the Republican National Committee. So that’s what’s on my mind. They look then likely as well to somewhere between a sort of toss-up and a lean Democratic seat in Texas and Ohio, where Democrats have got some good recruits in James Talarico and Sherrod Brown, a former incumbent senator of Ohio. And I should say Democrats are also very likely to hold on to their seat in Georgia, just for what it’s worth. And then we get into the seats that are, like, a lot, a lot tighter. That’s Iowa, currently Republican-held, but where the Democrat, Josh Turek, is leading the polls; Maine, where the polls were somewhat, you know, incredibly wrong in 2020, showing Susan Collins losing to— Nir: Sarah Gideon. Morris: See, this is why we do it together, Paul, right? Krugman: Yeah, I know, it’s okay. Morris: And t… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott Morris and David Nir walk through the current electoral state of play just over one month out from the 2026 midterm elections. This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. A few big takeaways from the conversation: * The House at 99% is in “spooky probability territory™,” but the seat-level math adds up. In Elliott’s forecast model at FiftyPlusOne, Democrats need only about a 3.5-point national margin to win the majority, and they're polling 5 to 6 points better than that. For Republicans to hold on, the polls would have to move about five times more than they historically do in the last month, or miss by roughly twice the usual error. * Democrats have a 73% chance at the Senate because of the long shots, not the toss-ups. If you only look at the competitive seats, the Senate looks like a coin flip. But election forecasting models also pick up on Democratic upsets in the 20-to-30% zone (Florida, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska) that drag their median up to 52 seats. * David makes the case that red-state Republicans have forgotten how to campaign. In states like Kansas and Texas, GOP candidates are making big missteps that would be unlikely for someone accustomed to running competitive races. Can you lose your general election campaign muscles? * Elliott and David answer listener questions about cross-over voting and modeling polling errors. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott Morris and David Nir dig into the latest batch of good news for Democrats: an all-time low for Trump's approval rating in our monthly Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll; a record Democratic lead on the generic ballot; and a flurry of Senate polls showing the party competitive in states as red as Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Kansas. We ask if this is what the political environment felt like in past wave elections, such as 2018—or even 2006. We also share previously unreleased polling on Trump's promise to send every American a $5,000 check if his party wins the midterms (teaser: it doesn’t poll well!); answer your questions about the new New York Times/Siena poll in Maine; and respond to a recent piece arguing that polling has become a playground for grifters, liars, and frauds. Elliott thinks social media is the problem, not polling. This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. A few big takeaways from the conversation: * Republicans continue to slide in the polls. According to Elliott’s election model, Democrats now have about a 70% chance of winning complete control of Congress this November. Trump’s net approval (-28 on average) is nearly three times worse than it was before the 2018 midterms, and Republicans are sweating races like Kansas Senate and Oklahoma’s 5th District (the latter of which Trump won by 18 points in 2026). * Our new poll finds that voters saw Trump’s $5,000 checks as a bribe. Trump’s approval is 33% with 63% disapproving in our September Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, and Democrats lead the generic ballot by 10 among likely voters. Trump’s promise to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans win the midterm is underwater by 18 points generally, with 66% of U.S. adults (64% of Republicans) calling it inappropriate. A plurality of Republicans believe Trump made his promise just to win more votes and doesn’t intend to actually send checks. * One poll shouldn’t move your priors much, but the race can still move a lot by November. A new New York Times/Siena poll out today showing Susan Collins up 3 points in Maine moves the average in the state by about half a point in isolation. Senate polling averages have historically shifted about 4.5 points in the final six weeks. There is a correct balance between updating your beliefs the right amount given new data (a small amount, IF you have a lot of data) and being open to the possibility of big changes in the future. * Fake “polls” are a problem with social media, not polling itself. Elliott responds to a piece arguing that polling has been polluted by grifters and frauds. But fake and AI-generated polls spread mostly through low-quality aggregator accounts on X, and web panels from quality pollsters have been at least as accurate as phone polls in recent years. The fix for this is better gatekeeping, and critics have to be careful not to discredit polls more broadly. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David dig into Elliott’s newsletter piece arguing the conventional wisdom on polling error might have it backwards this cycle — that the polls could be understating Democratic support, not overstating it, as the polls did in 2020 and 2024. They break down two structural reasons why that could be happening. Then, the podcast closes with a state-by-state tour of the FiftyPlusOne election forecast that’s moved sharply toward Democrats in both chambers. This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. A couple of big takeaways from the conversation: * Polling bias is not predictable from cycle to cycle. In 2022, many election forecasters ended up making worse predictions than they otherwise woudl have by adding extra support for Republicans to “unskew” the polls. * Weighting by recalled 2024 vote could be quietly inflating support for Republicans. Pollsters increasingly weight samples to match the results of the last election, using respondents’ self-reported vote. But people can misremember or change their reported vote — if disaffected Trump voters are the ones now declining to admit they voted for him, the remaining self-identified “Trump voters” skew more MAGA than the actual 2024 coalition. Elliott’s simulations suggest this could be suppressing the Democrats’ generic-ballot margin by up to a point. * Named-candidate polling shows Democrats running ahead of the generic ballot. A YouGov/Economist survey using actual candidate names in each district showed Democrats up 11 points among likely voters, versus 8 points on CBS’s standard generic-ballot question over the same period (also fielded by YouGov) — a gap directionally consistent with but larger than the historical average overperformance for high-quality candidates. * The 50+1 forecast now gives Democrats a 97% chance of winning the House, up sharply from where it stood in prior weeks, and a 65% chance in the Senate, where polls have moved toward Democrats in most competitive states. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David react to the first night of “Trumpapalooza,” the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, and explain why its proponents misunderstand what low-turnout Republican voters actually want. We also dig into Trump’s promise to send every adult American a $5,000 check if the GOP keeps Congress. Plus, we walk through the standards The Downballot and FiftyPlusOne use to decide which polls are worth reporting on (and, for readers, taking seriously). This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our livestreams, so you can directly shape our conversations on the podcast. A couple of big takeaways from the conversation: * What “Trumpapalooza” boosters get wrong about low-turnout Trump voters. According to Elliott’s analysis of 11,000 interviews from our monthly Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll this year, lower-propensity voters whom Republicans hope to activate via the convention are more anti-Trump—and are more focused on affordability—than Republicans who are already highly likely to vote in November. Even if two days of wall-to-wall Trump content were to motivate them, that might backfire on the GOP. * Not all polls are created equal, and not all deserve to be shared. David has new advice over at The Downballot walking through which polls are worth covering, and he swaps notes with Elliott about his own rules at FiftyPlusOne. Be especially aware of “informed ballot” polls masquerading as proper poll numbers, and just say no to pollsters who amplify conspiracy theories about elections. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is reunited with David (who is back from a short break to recover from knee surgery) to discuss how Trump continues to alienate voters ahead of the midterms. Polls also show more Republicans than ever are saying they regret voting for Trump in 2024 — and GOP candidates for the House and Senate are scrubbing mentions of the president from their campaign websites. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions keep the show ad-free, fund the newsletter, and ensure we have the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our live streams, so you can directly shape the conversations we’re having on the podcast. A couple of big takeaways from the conversation: * A new UMass Amherst poll shows just 84% of Trump 2024 voters sticking with him in a hypothetical do-over election. That compares to 94% of Harris voters staying with Harris. Similarly, Navigator Research finds 18% of Trump’s voters say they regret their vote, chiefly over Iran, the cost of living, and corruption and abuse of power by the White House. * 2026 is looking like an above-average reaction against the party in power. In Gallup’s latest poll, U.S. adults now lean 49% toward the Democrats and just 39% toward Republicans — the biggest gap for Democrats since the peak of the financial crisis in 2008. Trump and the Republicans have essentially speedrun George W. Bush’s entire second term in 19 months. * Trump is picking the 20% side of every issue. From tweeting his support for data centers by saying “let Data Reign” to renaming Lake Ontario to lavishly spending on the White House ballroom, Donald Trump is constantly taking positions that are opposed by the vast majority of voters. Now Republican candidates for Congress have started distancing themselves from him. Ralph Alvarado and Andy Barr in deep-red Kentucky both scrubbed mentions of Trump from their campaign websites, and Carlos de la Cruz quietly demoted himself on his site from “Trump conservative” to “proven conservative.” Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly livestream on Substack. We’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is joined by Rajiv Sethi , professor of economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, and author of the Substack Imperfect Information (currently on hiatus as he finishes a forthcoming book), for a deep dive into prediction markets. We talk about how they work, which types of markets work better than others, whether they beat statistical modelers at forecasting elections, and whether markets will soon replace the pollsters and journalists. A couple of big takeaways from the conversation: * Markets are well calibrated probabilistically, but are not a 1:1 substitute for statistical forecasters. When information is sparse, markets cannot provide highly accurate forecasts of future events. And they can’t provide a standardized method for understanding the weight assigned to different types of information in anticipating outcomes, which limits their use journalistically. * But markets can be very useful when other models can’t function, such as when Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 election, and forecasters had to spend a few weeks updating their models. Markets kept producing continuous probability estimates through that uncertainty. Rajiv made the point that prediction markets were able to react to new information during the COVID-19 pandemic when epidemiological models were still getting trained. * There is an under-studied potential bandwagon effect with the markets. Highly visible odds undoubtedly have an effect on consumers (and voters) psychologically, even if they are hard to detect. Market prices from Kalshi are now contractually embedded in CNN's election coverage — Rajiv and Elliott discussed whether that visibility could itself depress turnout for whichever side is being priced as the underdog. (If you are studying this, reach out to me!) * No, markets aren't going to replace polls or journalism. Rajiv makes the great point that markets depend on polls, since traders seek out measurements of opinion. And we know that traders even commission their own private polls, like the French "whale" who contracted surveys from the Trafalgar Group in 2024. If public polling actually became scarcer, Rajiv expects markets would get more volatile and less accurate. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly live stream on Substack, and we’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! If you value this work and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions support this podcast, the newsletter, and the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our live streams, so you can directly shape the conversations we’re having on the podcast. You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is joined by Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, to dig into a truly wild week in polling. This week truly had it all: one “pollster” that turned out to be entirely fictional, a real pollster that admitted to reassigning respondents’ vote choices, and two firms that our investigation found were doing polls for campaigns but passing them off as non-partisan, public surveys. Plus, we talk about how to navigate the polling landscape given the increasingly low barrier to entry in public opinion research. Here are the big takeaways: * A firm called “Median Strategies” faked polls in California and Wisconsin. The firm told the LA Times it had invented its results as a “social experiment,” then scrubbed its anonymously registered website once reporters started asking for methodological details. Mary explains why FiftyPlusOne never reported on this organization’s “polls” and the screening questions she asks every pollster before she shares their numbers at 50+1. * A pollster called The Public Sentiment Institute admitted to reassigning respondents’ vote choices to boost numbers for one candidate — who coincidentally paid for the company’s polls, which it didn’t disclose. TPSI says they “leaned” respondents who had selected voting for Jay Collins toward James Fishback — whose campaign, it turns out, had paid them about $1,500 shortly before the polls came out. Collins finished in the mid-20s, and Fishback got 10%. * Fake polls have always been around. But it’s easier than ever to conduct surveys that are both real and unprofessional or low-quality. A firm called Research 2000 faked Daily Kos’s daily Obama approval tracker for over a year before they got caught. Now, in 2026, AI tools make it trivial for enterprising young coders to fabricate release paperwork and even topline and crosstab data — and anonymous prediction markets create an avenue for payoff. Mary says that social media accounts that collect and republish polls should only publish verified results, and link to their sources (instead of posting screenshots of polls to go viral). Better yet, just go to FiftyPlusOne.news for all your polling needs. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly live stream on Substack, and we’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! If you value this work and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions support this podcast, the newsletter, and the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our live streams, so you can directly shape the conversations we’re having on the podcast. You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David dig into why the Wisconsin governor’s primary polls overestimated Francesca Hong by 20 points, why the “the polls are overestimating the left” narrative falls apart pretty quickly (look at Minnesota), and why late primaries are bad for democracy (and frustrating for election forecasters). Here are the big takeaways: * Hong’s miss is a 90th-percentile polling miss, not proof the industry is broken. The pre-election average had her up about 20 on David Crowley, and she lost by one. In the Senate and governor primaries Elliott and Mary Radcliffe analyzed going back a decade, the average poll misses the margin between the top two by 13 points, and misses of 20-plus happen about 10% of the time. What’s genuinely unusual is the direction: in all eight of the 20-point misses in the database, the polls underestimated the leader — Tammy Duckworth by 20 in the 2016 Illinois Senate primary, Sam Brown in Nevada in 2024 — and the previous record for overestimating an eventual loser was 19 points, in the 2024 Puerto Rico governor’s race. (Lamar Alexander in 2014 and Spencer Cox were both overestimated by 15-plus and won anyway.) Evergreen reminder: polling primaries is hard. * We should judge candidates by their absolute performance, not performance relative to the polls. If nobody had polled Wisconsin, the only available take Tuesday night would have been “wow, that was close.” Instead, polls set up a prior for everyone that Hong would win big — so when she didn’t, the election gets cast as a “disappointment for the left.” David argues for rooting our grading of candidates by their actual performance. Elliott says you could also use the fundamentals. But be consistent: you can throw out the polls as junk and trash them when they’re wrong, but then you can’t say candidates “underperformed” based on polls. * At a D+7 national environment, Wisconsin and Minnesota are at worst lean D, and maybe likely. With a generic ballot running D+7 to D+8, Minnesota a couple points bluer than the country and Wisconsin about a point redder, a win by under five points for either Democratic candidate would be a surprise. Especially considering in Wisconsin the Republican nominee for governor, Tom Tiffany, is a Freedom Caucus member, election denier who voted against recognizing Biden’s win days after January 6, one of only 18 House members to oppose the resolution condemning QAnon, and very far right on abortion. Democrats will spend heavily making all of that central to their campaign — while Trump has, at best, a 40-42% approval rating in the state. Maybe this is bluer than people think? Thanks to everyone who joined us for the weekly live stream on Substack, and we’ll be back next week! As a reminder, paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! If you missed our video livestream, you can watch it by clicking play on the web version of this post at gelliottmorris.com. You can also subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! If you value this work and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions support this podcast, the newsletter, and the time it takes to do original data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our live streams, so you can directly shape the conversations we’re having on the podcast. You can read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: If you’re a reader of Strength in Numbers and haven’t yet subscribed to David’s newsletter, head to the-downballot.com. And if you’re coming from David’s site, subscribe here to get the numbers behind the news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe

On this week’s Deep Dive episode of the Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott sits down with Peter Enns — Cornell University political scientist, political methodologist, and co-founder of the polling firm Verasight — to talk through a huge new paper he has published, "How a Seemingly Innocuous and Intuitive Methodological Choice Confused a Generation of Research on Policy Responsiveness." We get into why one of the most famous papers in political science appears to be fatally flawed, and why the conventional wisdom about democratic responsiveness is outdated as a result. Democracy, Enns argues, might be working better than you think. This is a wonky episode, but one with profound implications for anyone who cares about what the public wants and how — or if — the government responds to that. Here are the big takeaways: * One of the most famous results in modern political science looks like a statistical fluke. From 2004-2014, Martín Gilens and Ben Page took thousands of opinion polls and broke down preferences for public policy among rich, middle-income and poor Americans. Then they identified policies where the rich and poor disagreed, and calculated how how often either group got what it wanted. The problem is that middle and the affluent agreed about 94 percent of the time — so Gilens and Page set aside every policy where the two groups weren’t at least 10 points apart, which meant throwing out 80 to 90 percent of 2,000 policies. The way the scholars analyzed the remaining subset produced a statistical paradox called “Simpson’s Paradox,” which obscured an underlying relationship of responsiveness to the poor even when the rich wanted something different. * The paper looks at income differences among the wrong groups. One misfire of Gilens’ approach is it pits the top 20% of earners ($150k) against the bottom. But, e.g., two public school teachers in Bakersfield make enough to land in the top 10 percent of American households — a comfortable income, but not the world of private fundraisers and super PACs that influence politics. Page and Bartels once ran a special survey of the genuinely wealthy precisely because a normal 1,000-person poll turns up no multimillionaires at all, and using it Enns shows that the top 10 percent’s opinions track the middle class far more closely than they track the very rich. But they didn’t look at policy responsiveness. * The system responds to the public as a whole. When Enns measures how policy tracks overall public opinion, while accounting for the influence of organized interest groups, he finds Congress does respond to what Americans want, and at least as strongly as it responds to those groups. A separate 2017 reanalysis of the Gilens data by Branham, Soroka and Wlezien reached a similar place, finding something close to a coin flip when the middle class and the rich disagree. The unexciting answer may be the correct one: policy does loosely follow public opinion, and most groups (excluding the super-rich) want the same things. * This matters because telling people their government ignores them, when it doesn’t, discourages participation. Enns concludes by saying Americans agree with each other far more than they realize, that policy does follow them when they do agree, and that the right reaction to seeing unrepresentative slices of the electorate or society get their way is to get more involved, not less. For more of the methods details, see this blog post from Peter about his new paper, and the study link here. If you value this work and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In Numbers. Paid subscriptions support this podcast, the newsletter, and the time it takes to do this kind of data-driven analysis of politics and elections. Paying subscribers also gain the ability to send in questions during our live streams, so you can directly shape the conversations we’re having on the podcast. You can also subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app to listen on your own time. And if you do listen via one of those apps, please drop us a five-star rating and review if you feel we’ve earned it — it really helps people discover the show! A reminder that paid subscribers to Strength In Numbers get to participate in our live Q&A! You can also read the transcript of our conversation by clicking the headline of this article to take you to the web version of the podcast, then clicking the button just below the byline that looks either like a piece of paper or is labeled “Transcript,” like so: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gelliottmorris.com/subscribe