NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Republicans on Wrong Side of Public Opinion

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Feb. 09 (News Analysis) - An analysis of 25 key issues shows that Republicans tend to be on the wrong side of public opinion more often than the Obama administration.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Politics Done Right: 20 Questions for Bill Killers

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Dec. 20 (News Analysis) - 1. Over the medium term, how many other opportunities will exist to provide in excess of $100 billion per year in public subsidies to poor and sick people?

NewsTrust Rating: 3.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Comparing the Votes of the Rich and the Poor

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Andrew Gelman - Oct. 27 (Special Report) - As just about everybody knows by now, richer Americans tend to vote Republican while poorer Americans go for the Democrats. But this isn't true for all groups. For an amusing example that we discussed in our book, a survey found that richer journalists

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

When You Assume, You Make a Mess Out of Your Poll

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Sep. 14 (News Analysis) - It's a bit difficult to reconcile the results of three questions from the new Washington Post/ABC News poll on health care reform

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Are The Health Care Protests Working? And are Liberals Helping Them?

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Aug. 13 (Opinion) - It's been interesting to digest the interaction between liberal and conservative blogs on the issue of the health care protests. If you take a look at a service like Memorandum, you'll find that stories about the protests have almost always been the lede in the blogosphere over the course of the past 10-14 days. There are daily, and sometimes even hourly, ebbs and flows in who seems to be pushing the stories -- conservative blogs one day, liberal blogs the next.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.1 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

On Health Care, Bipartisanship without Compromise?

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Jul. 18 (News Analysis) - The big news of the day is the letter sent by a "gang" of six "bipartisan" senators (there was a sale on scare quotes at Target today) urging Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell (and by implication, the White House) that "taking additional time" on health care would be advisable. It's easy to read the letter cynically: "later" in senate speak quite often means "never". That might be particularly so on health care: odds are, frankly, that the Administration will continue to lose political capital until the unemployment rate improves, which even if a recovery in GDP growth is around the corner (which many economists think it is) is liable to take some time. Push this debate back to the autumn, and the effort could be being lead by a President whose approval ratings are in the low 50's or perhaps even the high 40's.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

George F. Will Admits Public Option Will Cut Costs

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - Insurance exists because of the decreasing marginal utility of income: most people would rather have a 100% chance of paying $300 a month than a 1% chance of paying $30,000 a month. In fact, our hypothetical customer -- let's call him Frederick, after George F. Will's middle name -- might very well accept a 100% chance of paying $400 a month rather than take 1% chance of having to pay $30,000, which he might not be able to afford. This is true even though Frederick will lose $100 on this deal in an average month.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Politics Done Right: Iran Does Have Some Fishy Numbers

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Renard Sexton - Jun. 15 (Investigative Report) - Again, as we have mentioned on several occasions, the numbers still do not prove any wrongdoing, as large scale changes in public opinion do happen regularly around the world. However, given the polling data in the run-up to the balloting, and the historical trend away from electoral domination in the first round by one candidate, this very fishy regional data tends to strongly support that which the canceled Mousavi protest was meant to express.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama: Highest Initial Approval For Elected President?

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Jan. 19 (Poll) - Barack Obama's favorability ratings have continued to improve as we approach Tuesday's inauguration. But how do they compare to those of his predecessors? The two highest initial, post-inauguration approval ratings as measured by Gallup belong to presidents who took over for others whose terms ended prematurely. About 86 percent of Americans approved of Harry Truman when he took over for FDR. And 77 percent approved Lyndon Johnson when he took over for JFK. The highest initial approval rating for a newly elected president, on the other hand, appears to belong to Kennedy, whom Gallup pegged at 72 percent approval shortly after his inauguration in 1961.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Is Coleman's Goal a Do-Over?

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Jan. 17 (News Analysis) - If you read the rest of Marc's piece, it's clear that it has been informed by discussions with the Coleman campaign; he's basically reporting the Coleman campaign's spin on the process. Which is fine -- Ambinder is one of the few reporters out there who actually does a lot of reporting, and reporting someone else's spin, as Ambinder does, is very different from spinning yourself. (I do think that Ambinder takes a number of the Coleman campaign's arguments too credulously.) But the pattern is the same: an article that presents the Coleman campaign's version of events again concludes by dangling the possibility of a re-vote.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Zogby Engages in Apparent Push Polling for Right-Wing Website

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - Nov. 18 (News Analysis) - The conservative website HowObamaGotElected.com reports that it has commissioned Zogby International to conduct a poll of 512 Barack Obama voters as part of what can best be described as a viral marketing effort to discredit the intelligence of Obama supporters.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver, Mark Bluemthal - Nov. 04 (Special Report) - 1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What to Watch For - An hour-by-hour guide to election night

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Nov. 03 (Poll) - In 2000 and 2004, the outcome of the presidential race was unknown into the wee hours of the morning (and indeed for several weeks thereafter in 2000). This time, it is possible that we will be able to guess the winner of the presidential race relatively early in the evening. Regardless, there will be plenty to watch Tuesday night, particularly for those who can appreciate a good slugfest in the Senate. And lest we count John McCain out, we need only remember the polling disasters that befell states like New Hampshire in this year's primaries. Here, then, is what I will be watching each hour on election night. 6 PM EST. Polls close in portions of Indiana and Kentucky. I continue to find a hair's worth of tightening on balance in the state-by-state polls -- even as Obama's position in the national trackers seems to be roughly as strong as it has ever been. This, ironically, is the exact reverse of the position we saw earlier in the week, when the national polls seemed to be tightening even as the state polls weren't. However, Obama's win percentage has ticked upward again for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he's gotten some relatively good numbers out of Pennsylvania since our last update, with PPP and Zogby giving him leads of 8 and 14 points, respectively, and Rasmussen showing his lead expanding to 6 points after having been at 4 before. (The Zogby poll is probably an outlier, but may serve to balance out outliers like Strategic Vision on the other side). Secondly, McCain's clock has simply run out. While there is arguable evidence of a small tightening, there is no evidence of a dramatic tightening of the sort he would need to make Tuesday night interesting.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Today's Polls, 10/24

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

FiveThirtyEight - By Nate Silver - Oct. 25 (Poll) - This was something of a partly cloudy day for both candidates. The national polls generally contained reasonable news for Barack Obama, who advanced in four tracking polls to McCain's three (Rasmussen was flat). In addition, Obama pulled strong numbers from the weekly editions of the GQR/Democracy Corps and Economist/YouGov polls. On balance, we see this election as being very flat, but that is incrementally better news for McCain than yesterday's horrible polling day, when he looked to be ceding further ground to Obama. McCain's position has improved very slightly: we now give him a 5.1% chance of winning the election, up from 3.7% yesterday.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer