FiveThirtyEight Politics

By ABC News, 538, FiveThirtyEight, Galen Druke

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The 538 team covers the latest in politics, tracking the issues and "game-changers" every week.

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Did The Fourth Republican D...

12.07.2023

Galen unpacks the fourth Republican primary debate from Tuscaloosa, Alabama with senior elections analyst Geoffrey Skelley and White House correspondent MaryAlice Parks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FiveThirtyEight Politics episodes:

12.07.2023 Did The Fourth Republican Debate Matter? Galen unpacks the fourth Republican primary debate from Tuscaloosa, Alabama with senior elections analyst Geoffrey Skelley and White House correspondent MaryAlice Parks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
12.04.2023 Is Nikki Haley The New Ron DeSantis? In the month since the last Republican debate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has been inching up in the national polls, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been slipping. Today, DeSantis leads Haley by just 3 points nationally, 13 percent ...
11.30.2023 2024 Is The First ‘AI Election.’ What Does That Mean? Exactly one year ago today, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. And quickly, the program changed the conversation around what is possible for artificial intelligence. In the past 12 months, we've seen campaign videos featuring AI-generated images, legislative proposals and a congressional hearing ...
11.27.2023 Why The GOP May Be Ready To Say Goodbye To Santos The U.S. House gets back to work on Tuesday and one of its first orders of business is expected to be a vote on whether to expel Rep. George Santos of New York. A House ethics report concluded earlier this ...
11.20.2023 What These Swing Voters Have To Say About The 2024 Election What makes swing voters swing? In this installment of the 538 Politics podcast Galen heads to Simi Valley, California and speaks with voters whose preferences have crisscrossed parties in recent years. They explain how they’re thinking about politics today and ...
11.16.2023 The Fight For Working-Class Voters In 2016, as has been widely reported, white working-class voters shifted decisively to the right. In 2020, working-class voters of color followed suit to varying degrees, though still giving President Joe Biden a clear majority of their support. This has ...
11.13.2023 If The 2024 Election Were Held Today, Would Trump Win? To mark one year out from the 2024 election, Galen tries to make sense of the political environment based on all the data we have with a crew of election data nerds: G. Elliott Morris, ABC News editorial director of ...
11.09.2023 Haley Takes On Ramaswamy And DeSantis The crew reacts to the third Republican primary debate in this late-night edition of the 538 Politics podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11.08.2023 The 2023 Elections Were Good For Democrats In this late-night edition of the 538 Politics podcast, the crew unpacks the results from election night 2023. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in Kentucky and Ohioans voted to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution. The night was ...
11.06.2023 Will Kentucky And Mississippi Elect Democrats? In this installment of the 538 Politics podcast, the crew previews Election Day 2023, focusing on competitive statewide elections in two very Republican-leaning states — Kentucky and Mississippi. They also consider the value of a recent poll that asked whether ...
11.02.2023 Adam Kinzinger muses: ‘I would love to run against Ted Cruz' The former congressman and recent Texas transplant joins the podcast to discuss his new book, “Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty In Our Divided Country.” He reflects on the current state of the Republican Party, how things could change, and why ...
10.30.2023 Pence Is Out, Phillips Is In The pool of candidates running for president grew by one and shrank by one in the past week. President Biden got a little-known Democratic challenger in Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota. And former Vice President Mike Pence suspended his ...
10.23.2023 Our First-Ever House Speaker Draft The House of Representatives has officially been without a permanent speaker for 20 days. After Rep. Steve Scalise and Rep. Jim Jordan failed to get enough support, nine new Republican candidates have stepped forward to run for the speakership. In ...
10.16.2023 How Americans Feel About The War In Israel In this installment of the podcast, the crew looks at the latest polling on how Americans are reacting to the Hamas attacks in Israel and ongoing war in Gaza. They also check in on the speaker’s race in Washington and ...
10.09.2023 War And A Speakerless House The Hamas attacks on Israel dominated American politics over the weekend, with candidates and politicians sharing their reactions to the violence and now ongoing war. In this installment of the podcast, the crew talks about how the conflict is shaping ...
10.02.2023 How Washington Avoided A Shutdown The government did not shut down over the weekend, contrary to the expectations of many. In this installment of the podcast, the crew discusses the congressional machinations that led to a 45-day extension of current funding and why it could ...
09.28.2023 It's Now Or Never For The GOP Candidates The crew reacts to the second Republican presidential primary debate in this late night podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
09.25.2023 Why Our Politics Are Stuck In 2016 We are at an awkward moment in electoral politics. When it comes to the Republican primary, while there are plenty of alternatives to former President Donald Trump, none of them have gained serious traction. When it comes to Democrats, despite ...
09.18.2023 Workers Are Striking And Americans Are Into It Welcome aboard the Acela, listeners. Today on the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we are taking a break from the campaign trail and heading to Washington, D.C., where there’s quite a lot going on. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced last week that ...
09.11.2023 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 ...
09.06.2023 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 ...
08.28.2023 Good Or Bad Use Of Polling: Extended Cut 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 ...
08.24.2023 Lessons From A Trump-Less Debate The crew discusses their takeaways from the first Republican presidential primary debate in this late-night edition of the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
08.21.2023 What The GOP Primary Looks Like In The Early States Game time for the Republican presidential primary begins in earnest this week. The first debate is being held in Milwaukee on Wednesday, and it marks the beginning of a five-month countdown to the Iowa caucuses, during which there will be ...
08.15.2023 Three Georgia Law Professors Weigh In On Trump's Indictment Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for a fourth time, now in Fulton County, Georgia, for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state. While the alleged crimes in this case are similar in ...
08.14.2023 Who Is The Likeliest GOP VP Candidate? Abortion rights advocates notched another win in a red state. Last Tuesday, Ohioans voted by a 14-point margin not to raise the threshold to amend the constitution to a 60 percent supermajority. Instead, such amendments will continue to require a ...
08.07.2023 Ohio Voters Weigh In On Abortion (Indirectly) Tuesday is Election Day in Ohio and it’s a bit of an unusual one. Ohioans are voting on whether to increase the threshold to pass constitutional amendments from a simple majority to a 60 percent supermajority. In this installment of ...
08.02.2023 Emergency Podcast: Trump Charged In Jan. 6 Investigation Did former President Donald Trump conspire to defraud the United States, conspire to obstruct an official proceeding, actually obstruct that preceding and conspire to willfully deprive American citizens of their right to vote? Those will now be questions for a ...
07.31.2023 July Was Hot As Hell. Do Voters Care? Calculations from the World Meteorological Organization suggest that July was the hottest month on record. Throughout the month, heat records were broken across the globe. Phoenix, Arizona, recorded 31 days in a row of temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit and ...
07.24.2023 Who'd Win A Trump-less GOP Primary? It is widely believed that former President Donald Trump will be indicted for a third time in the coming days or weeks, as he received a target letter from the Department of Justice last week. The potential federal charges involve ...
07.17.2023 Why A Third-Party Candidate Poses A Threat To Biden Campaign finance figures from the second quarter of 2023 were released over the weekend. They offered a first glimpse at many of the presidential campaigns’ finances, since most candidates announced their bids during the second quarter. In this installment of ...
07.10.2023 What's So Special About 'Bidenomics'? Love it or hate it, this is President Biden’s economy and he’s taking credit for it. In recent weeks, Biden has been rolling out his economic pitch to Americans. It started with a high-profile speech in Chicago where he branded ...
07.03.2023 How The Supreme Court Will Shape The 2024 Election The Supreme Court wrapped up its business for the term last week, closing out a docket that touched on the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action in university admissions, student loan forgiveness, business services to LGBTQ people, religious liberty and the ...
06.26.2023 What's With RFK Jr.'s Double-Digit Polling? It's the final week of June and that means that we are anxiously awaiting the decisions in several high-profile Supreme Court cases. The remaining cases touch on issues including affirmative action, President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, business services to ...
06.19.2023 Are Millennials Getting More Conservative? There’s been a lot thrown at Republican voters over the past few weeks. The field of primary candidates has doubled; the leading contender in the primary was federally indicted on 37 counts related to his handling of classified documents and ...
06.13.2023 How Trump's Classified Documents Case Could End Former President Donald Trump was arraigned on Tuesday at a federal courthouse in Miami in relation to his alleged retention of classified documents and obstruction of justice. He pleaded not guilty, setting in motion a trial that could potentially run ...
06.09.2023 Emergency Podcast: Trump's Indictment, The Sequel Former President Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges on Thursday related to classified documents he took from the White House. In this installment of the podcast, the crew discusses the severity and possible political implications of the charges. Learn ...
06.05.2023 The GOP Field Gets Crowded By the end of this week, the number of major candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination is expected to grow to nine. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum ...
05.30.2023 There's A Debt Ceiling Agreement ... For Now In this installment of the podcast, the crew talks about what’s in the debt ceiling agreement, why polls on the debt ceiling have been straight-up contradictory and what could happen if the legislation isn’t passed by next Monday. They also ...
05.25.2023 The Case For And Against Ron DeSantis Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has officially entered the Twitter space ... er, presidential race. He kicked off his campaign in a conversation on a glitchy Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks on Wednesday. In his opening ...
05.22.2023 Can Tim Scott's Optimism Win Over The GOP? The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast gets ready for a big week in politics. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott officially kicked off his presidential campaign in North Charleston Monday morning. We also expect the long-teased Ron DeSantis presidential campaign to become a ...
05.18.2023 Is The Eurovision Song Contest Rigged? Since 1956, European countries have been gathering each year to compete in the Eurovision song contest -- a competition of largely pop and techno artists that can often feel like a parody of European tastes in music. There have long ...
05.15.2023 Why So Many Americans Trust The Weather Channel On Tuesday, voters are heading to the polls in at least three competitive races: the Kentucky Republican gubernatorial primary, the Philadelphia Democratic mayoral primary and the Jacksonville mayoral election. In this installment of the podcast, Galen and Nathaniel preview the ...
05.11.2023 How Immigration Shapes American Politics Title 42 is expiring on Thursday night, a pandemic-era rule allowing the U.S. government to turn away asylum seekers at the border as a public health measure. This comes at a time when apprehensions at the border are already at ...
05.08.2023 Does It Matter If King Charles Is Popular? King Charles III was crowned over the weekend, which led to a lot of polls comparing his popularity to that of other members of the royal family. Long story short, the numbers aren’t great, but in some ways that's beside ...
05.04.2023 How Climate Change Will Reshape Where Americans Live For decades, Americans have been moving South and West. That migration pattern was visible in political terms when seven congressional districts moved between states after the 2020 census, and it continues to be visible in the booming construction and job ...
05.01.2023 Where Biden Stands Heading Into 2024 President Biden announced his reelection campaign last Tuesday, a widely expected move that also brings us one step closer to a possible rematch of the 2020 election. The crew talks about the challenges and advantages that the campaign will bring. ...
04.24.2023 Are America's Favorite Governors Really All Republicans? Congress returned from recess last week to two ongoing conflicts. One was Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s absence from the Senate, stalling the process by which Democrats can approve their judicial nominees. The other was what to do about the debt ceiling, ...
04.21.2023 Live From New York: It's The FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast! The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast held a live taping at The Bell House in Brooklyn on Wednesday night, its first return to a live venue in New York City since the pandemic. Nate Silver and Galen Druke dissect a recent poll ...
04.17.2023 The Next Supreme Court Clash Over Abortion The Supreme Court is set for another high-profile clash over abortion rights. Last Friday, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary stay in a case challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortions. It means that for ...

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FiveThirtyEight Politics

What's FiveThirtyEight Politics about?

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FiveThirtyEight Politics episodes:

Did The Fourth Republican Debate Matter?

Is Nikki Haley The New Ron DeSantis?

2024 Is The First ‘AI Election.’ What Does That Mean?

Why The GOP May Be Ready To Say Goodbye To Santos

What These Swing Voters Have To Say About The 2024 Election

The Fight For Working-Class Voters

If The 2024 Election Were Held Today, Would Trump Win?

Haley Takes On Ramaswamy And DeSantis

The 2023 Elections Were Good For Democrats

Will Kentucky And Mississippi Elect Democrats?

Adam Kinzinger muses: ‘I would love to run against Ted Cruz'

Pence Is Out, Phillips Is In

Our First-Ever House Speaker Draft

How Americans Feel About The War In Israel

War And A Speakerless House

How Washington Avoided A Shutdown

It's Now Or Never For The GOP Candidates

Why Our Politics Are Stuck In 2016

Workers Are Striking And Americans Are Into It

Why Biden Is Losing Support Among Voters Of Color

Is Donald Trump The Inevitable GOP Nominee?

Good Or Bad Use Of Polling: Extended Cut

Lessons From A Trump-Less Debate

What The GOP Primary Looks Like In The Early States

Three Georgia Law Professors Weigh In On Trump's Indictment

Who Is The Likeliest GOP VP Candidate?

Ohio Voters Weigh In On Abortion (Indirectly)

Emergency Podcast: Trump Charged In Jan. 6 Investigation

July Was Hot As Hell. Do Voters Care?

Who'd Win A Trump-less GOP Primary?

Why A Third-Party Candidate Poses A Threat To Biden

What's So Special About 'Bidenomics'?

How The Supreme Court Will Shape The 2024 Election

What's With RFK Jr.'s Double-Digit Polling?

Are Millennials Getting More Conservative?

How Trump's Classified Documents Case Could End

Emergency Podcast: Trump's Indictment, The Sequel

The GOP Field Gets Crowded

There's A Debt Ceiling Agreement ... For Now

The Case For And Against Ron DeSantis

Can Tim Scott's Optimism Win Over The GOP?

Is The Eurovision Song Contest Rigged?

Why So Many Americans Trust The Weather Channel

How Immigration Shapes American Politics

Does It Matter If King Charles Is Popular?

How Climate Change Will Reshape Where Americans Live

Where Biden Stands Heading Into 2024

Are America's Favorite Governors Really All Republicans?

Live From New York: It's The FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast!

The Next Supreme Court Clash Over Abortion

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