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*** As of 1 p.m. Eastern, 538 has collected three national polls and one swing-state poll that were conducted since the debate.* In all of them, more people who watched the debate said Harris won the debate than said Trump did. On average, 57 percent of debate watchers nationally said Harris turned in the better performance; only 34 percent said Trump did. *** That's all obviously good news for Harris — but there are a few caveats here. First of all, it's still quite early. Only a few polls have been conducted since the debate, and we'll have more data...

Vance is one of the least popular vice-presidential picks this century. It's important to make a good first impression — whether you're on a first date, interviewing for a job or running to be vice president of the United States. And the two men who recently joined the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets have made very different first impressions. According to 538's new polling average of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's favorable and unfavorable ratings, the Democratic candidate for vice president has an unusual quality for a modern politician: He's well liked. As of Aug. 15 at 1 p.m. Eastern, 38...

Imagine giving a speech in front of an audience of tens of millions of people. Then imagine that your political future depends on it. On Thursday night, President Joe Biden will take the speaker’s dais and deliver his third State of the Union address at a pivotal moment for him.

In September, West Virginia passed a law effectively banning abortion. In July, California enacted a law allowing citizens to sue gun merchants for making or selling illegal firearms. In 2021, Georgia, Florida and Texas were among the states to tighten their voting laws in response to false claims of voter fraud. The same year, Illinois became the first state to eliminate cash bail. These momentous policy changes were only possible because the same party controlled the state Senate, state House and governorship. When one party enjoys a state-government “trifecta” or has enough of a legislative majority to override vetoes by...

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...

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...

The 2019 elections are in the books, and now the country can finally start paying attention to 2020. In many ways, Tuesday’s elections were a dress rehearsal for those a year from now: The parties’ performance relative to partisanship can tell us which way the political winds might be blowing, and obvious trends from 2019 — like the widening urban-rural divide — provide clues as to where the battles of 2020 will be fought.

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...

Say you're one of the thousands of New Hampshire voters who want Hillary Clinton to be the next president. You could do the straightforward thing and cast your ballot for Clinton in next week's primary. But if you're a registered independent, you have a better option: Infiltrate enemy lines. Vote in the Republican primary. Hand victory to Donald Trump.Welcome to Operation Chaos 2.0.-snip-For unaffiliated but left-leaning voters, this is a golden opportunity to wreak havoc by helping the Republican nightmare scenario come true.Participation in the opposing party's primary with the goal of taking it down from the inside has a...