Nate Silver's Blog, page 130

Election Update: Nevada Is Still A Swing State

The way some Democrats like to tell the story, Nevada went from red to blue without ever really stopping at purple. With its rapidly growing Latino and nonwhite populations, Nevada has demographics that increasingly look like California’s. And President Obama not only won the state twice, but did so by more than his national margins of victory, claiming it by 12.5 percentage points in 2008 and 6.7 percentage points in 2012.

YEARNEVADA RESULTNATIONAL RESULTNEVADA RESULT RELATIVE TO NATIONAL RESULT1968Republican+8.2Republican+0.7Republican+7.51972Republican+27.4Republican+23.2Republican+4.21976Republican+4.4Democrat+2.1Republican+6.51980Republican+35.6Republican+9.7Republican+25.91984Republican+33.9Republican+18.2Republican+15.71988Republican+20.9Republican+7.7Republican+13.21992Democrat+2.6Democrat+5.6Republican+3.01996Democrat+1.0Democrat+8.5Republican+7.52000Republican+3.6Democrat+0.5Republican+4.12004Republican+2.6Republican+2.5Republican+0.12008Democrat+12.5Democrat+7.3Democrat+5.22012Democrat+6.7Democrat+3.9Democrat+2.8Nevada presidential election results, 1968-2012

All values are the popular vote winner’s margin of victory in percentage points

A generation ago, the idea of Democrats relying on Nevada would have seemed ludicrous. Ronald Reagan won the state by 35.6 percentage points in 1980, even as he beat Jimmy Carter by “only” 9.7 percentage points nationally. Bill Clinton won Nevada in 1992 and 1996, but both years were close calls compared with his relatively emphatic national margins. Democrats have come a long way there.

So far, though, polls have shown a relatively close race in Nevada, even as Democrat Hillary Clinton has a fairly clear lead on Republican Donald Trump nationally. Granted, there hasn’t been a lot of data. On Monday, Monmouth University published a poll showing Clinton leading Trump by 4 percentage points in Nevada. You can nitpick at the small sample size — 408 likely voters — but that’s an improvement over the table scraps we had to work with previously. Before Monmouth, the last publicly available, Nevada-specific poll had been way back in November. There were also subsamples from polls such as this one that surveyed several swing states, although they also had small sample sizes.

Those earlier polls had shown a tied race or Trump narrowly ahead. Our “polls-only” model gives the most weight to the highly rated Monmouth poll, but it considers those other surveys also. Thus, its adjusted polling average in Nevada puts Clinton ahead by only 1.6 percentage points.

The polls-only model doesn’t take that for a final answer, however. Instead, it blends that polling average with what we call a “demographic regression.” Since Nevada doesn’t have much polling, the regression gets a fair amount of weight.

Wait a second … why are we calling it a “polls-only” model if it looks at demographics also? Because all the inferences it makes from the regression are based on polls of other states.1 If you tried to infer what was going on in Nevada based on polls of other states, you’d assume that Clinton was relatively far ahead there. In general, Clinton is polling quite well in states with large Latino populations, such as Florida, Arizona, California and even Texas (she’s losing in Texas, but not by as much as Democrats usually do). She’s doing fine out West, even in Utah, although Colorado, where there also hasn’t been a lot of polling, looks closer than expected. Her numbers in other swing states aren’t extraordinary, but they’re pretty good, basically matching her national numbers.

Therefore, the regression estimate thinks Clinton “should” be winning Nevada by 10.2 percentage points, based on the polling it sees elsewhere. But Clinton’s polls from Nevada itself are mediocre, so the model compromises and projects her to win the state by 5.2 percentage points. Notably, that’s slightly worse for Democrats than the country as a whole. (The polls-only model has Clinton ahead by 6.2 percentage points nationally.) If Clinton maintains her current national lead over Trump, she’ll probably win Nevada — but if the race tightens, it’s a long way from a safe state.

As far as our model is concerned, the analysis basically stops there. It sees a gap between polls and demographics in Nevada, and it compromises. The terms of the compromise are dictated by the volume of polling and how long we have to go until the election.2

Related:

This Year Is Not As Bad As 1968

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In the aftermath of a fraught week, some have wondered if the level of anger and violence of this election cycle has reached that of 1968. FiveThirtyEight’s Farai Chideya joins the podcast crew to talk about how the two years are similar and, in many ways, different.

The team also speculates on who Donald Trump will choose as his running mate and how Bernie Sanders’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton will go down. They also follow up with Harry Enten about why he has chosen not to vote in this election.

You can stream or download the full episode above. You can also find us by searching “fivethirtyeight” in your favorite podcast app, or subscribe using the RSS feed. Check out all our other shows.

If you’re a fan of the elections podcast, leave us a rating and review on iTunes, which helps other people discover the show. Have a comment, want to suggest something for “good polling vs. bad polling” or want to ask a question? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Who’s The Best Pick Among Trump’s B-List VP Choices?

In this week’s politics chat, we weigh the pluses and minuses of Donald Trump’s potential vice-presidential picks. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Let’s start with the basics: Harry, who’s on Trump’s VP shortlist?

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Reportedly, it’s:

Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana;Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey;Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House;Mike Flynn, retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army;Unknown.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Isn’t “unknown” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): FLYNNSANITY. I really wish he were a top choice so we could make that catch on, but I feel like his pro-choice oopsies this weekend really take him out of the running.

natesilver: Although, maybe we need a “wild card” category (Ivanka Trump! Ben Carson! Stanley McChrystal!)

clare.malone: Who’s saying McChrystal? That seems … truly wild.

micah: As opposed to Ivanka?

clare.malone: I mean, Ivanka is clearly an indulgence on the part of the media. It’s fun, but it ain’t gonna take. A former general who was once floated as a potential DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate is another thing.

harry: I haven’t heard Sessions as much recently. McChrystal says he’s not interested:

That speculation about GEN McChrystal being considered as Trump VP choice? I am told he has no interest and has not been contacted.

— Martha Raddatz (@MarthaRaddatz) July 10, 2016

natesilver: The whole veepstakes is sort of an indulgence, really. And there are a lot of mutually reinforcing incentives to put BS rumors out there. For the candidate (Trump, in this case) it builds up suspense and creates drama. And you get to say “look at all these wonderful people who would love to be my running mate.” For the would-be VPs, it gets their name out there before a national audience, which is typically pretty hard to do under ordinary circumstances unless you (i) run for president, or (ii) royally screw up somehow.

micah: Is Trump’s list really that wonderful?

harry: (For those at home, Nate and Micah are currently quarreling off-chat.)

natesilver: From my vantage point, Micah, it contains one league-average name (Pence) and then a bunch of other candidates who would range from mildly to severely problematic.

clare.malone: He’s also had a couple people drop out of the running publicly, which is interesting.

micah: To me, that’s the first headline: A-list Republicans apparently don’t want aboard the Trump train.

clare.malone: Bob Corker and Joni Ernst both said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

micah: And who knows who else quietly said “no”?

harry: That list really isn’t impressive. You have Gingrich, whose polling at times has been worse than Trump’s; Christie, whose approval rating in New Jersey is lower than Snooki’s; and Flynn, who looked out of his depth on ABC’s “This Week.” Finally, there’s Pence, who is fighting for his political life in Indiana and is, to quote Nate, “average.”

clare.malone: So what you’re saying is, this is a great election for the B-list? I think that’s true. Newt Gingrich is on his eighth political life, which I find oddly comforting and very American.

natesilver: Of course, there’s the question of whether the Republicans have an A-list at all. But it’s conspicuous that none of the people who survived the longest against Trump — meaning Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Marco Rubio — are on the short list.

clare.malone: I think they do have an A-list, Nate. Paul Ryan is on it. I’m not quite sure who else at this point? Maybe Nikki Haley and some of the other governors.

micah: Susana Martinez? Rubio?

clare.malone: No one wants to be caught up in this year’s highly possible train wreck. If things go awry, they want plausible deniability that they had anything to do with it.

micah: Let’s give Nate a second to tout Rubio as VP …

natesilver: Rubio has gone from overrated to underrated. [hit by falling anvil] But he would check a lot of boxes: Florida, Hispanic, vetted enough (considering that he ran for president).

You could argue that his exit from the race was not particularly dignified, that he isn’t a good political performer, etc. But a “normal” Republican nominee would have Rubio on his shortlist, whether or not he was ultimately the pick. And probably Haley too.

harry: One does wonder if Trump has a super secret name waiting. Trump’s campaign has been so unpredictable, so wouldn’t someone like a Rubio almost fit? (Then again, Rubio just declared he was running for Senate like two seconds ago.)

clare.malone: I’m skeptical the Trump camp could keep a super secret choice secret.

harry: That’s what they’d like you to think.

natesilver: Trump’s has been very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get campaign so far. They do theater, but they don’t really do subterfuge.

micah: All right, so let’s talk about the real (supposedly) list. Pence first. The conventional wisdom is that Pence is a play to shore up the conservative base.

clare.malone: He is very Koch-y. He’s the guy that you go to because he would know how to work Congress, would maybe get the campaign some money from people who otherwise feel that it’s on a runaway train to political hell.

natesilver: I don’t know about that, Clare. He’s not much of a libertarian on social issues, and made pretty much no one happy on how he handled the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (aka Indiana’s anti-gay law).

harry: Pence is quite conservative. He was more conservative than 86 percent of Republicans in his last term in the House.

clare.malone: The Koch connections I think are less libertarian than they are the money/relationship trail — people who have worked for Pence work for Americans for Prosperity; he once worked for one of their state-level think tanks. There is still a lot of common ground.

And also, I would say it’s perhaps not thought of as a bad look for Trump to appeal to a base of conservative Christians who might still have qualms about his personal life and the way he comports himself generally.

harry: The website OnTheIssues describes Pence as a “hard-core conservative” with about an equal score for social and economic conservatism. I also know a guy who drove Pence around during one of his congressional bids. He was very think-tanky.

clare.malone: Also, Pence looks a little bit like Bobby Knight, who we know Trump loves. So. There’s that.

natesilver: Harry, you’re starting to sound like Thomas Friedman or Peggy Noonan — having conversations with your taxi driver.

micah: Picking Pence seems very not Trumpian, in the sense that it wouldn’t entail much showmanship/excitement.

natesilver: I wouldn’t overthink it. Pence is basically a generic, qualified, league-average conservative (maybe very conservative) Republican. Which would make him a B-/C+ choice under ordinary circumstances. But it still probably makes him the best choice on Trump’s list.

clare.malone: It’s the hand of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, at work, I would say. He’s trying to maintain a sense of order and also a reason for conservatives to get excited — a guy who used to run a think tank about conservative ideas is likely to get those people going, i.e., some of the Cruzians.

harry: Let’s put it this way: Pence is not a Dumpster fire pick, and that in itself may be good enough.

natesilver: There’s the question, however, of whether Pence would say yes. The reporting suggests he would say yes, but he has more to lose than most of the others on Trump’s list.

micah: What does he have to lose?

clare.malone: Well, Pence also has a pretty close re-election race in Indiana. Maybe he’s nervous, and veep seems like a good option, all things considered.

natesilver: First, Trump is probably going to lose. Look at the track record of what happens to VPs on losing tickets. It’s pretty ugly.

harry: Excuse me, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. won the 1964 New Hampshire primary.

natesilver: Second, Pence couldn’t run for both VP and governor at the same time, per Indiana law. So he’d give up a probable — though far from assured, based on the polling — second term. Third, there’s the chance that Trump’s campaign will not hold up very well to history and will seem reactionary and revanchist. And Pence might go down in the history books as the Trivial Pursuit answer to “Who was Donald Trump’s running mate?” as Curtis LeMay did to George Wallace.

micah: Which is maybe why so many Republicans have bowed out. And why someone like Gingrich would be game?

clare.malone: I think those who will survive the 2016 cycle are going to be the patient ones, the ones who resisted the siren song of ingratiating themselves to Trump for the quick accumulation of power … i.e., doing the opposite of what Chris Christie did.

I think someone like Gingrich, who is older than Trump — both in their 70s, which is striking for a ticket! — is looking for relevance again, and honestly, I’m sure being on the Trump campaign seems kinda fun to him.

natesilver: There’s also upside, of course! There’s a 20-25 percent chance (if you trust our forecasts) that Trump wins and that you’ll become vice president! And maybe Pence is enough of a bit player that he figures he doesn’t have much to lose, or that he’s serving the greater good by tempering Trump’s worst instincts.

What we know, though, is that a lot of the people in a vaguely similar position to Pence — Corker, say — have weighed the pluses and minuses and bowed out. So I don’t totally rule out that Pence could have a last-minute change of heart. But Gingrich — now, there’s a guy you don’t even have to ask. You just call him and tell him he got the job.

clare.malone: I think what it tells us is who are the real optimists in Trump world — he’ll win! — or as Nate says, the people who have nothing to lose.

harry: Gingrich hasn’t won an election to anything in 18 years. He was born in 1943. Pence can win re-election to be governor. He was born in 1959. The differences couldn’t be starker.

micah: What are Gingrich’s pluses and minuses as a VP from Trump’s POV?

natesilver: He’s like a Trump Mini-Me, basically.

clare.malone: Which I think is a downside. Trump might worry that Newt would steal some limelight. He too says wacky things!

micah: Steal the limelight from Trump!?

harry: Moon Colony.

natesilver: He’s Geena Davis to Trump’s Susan Sarandon as they ride off into the abyss together:

harry: That 1990s reference fits in very well with this election.

micah: Gingrich would bring experience with Congress, if Trump is thinking about governing. But is Gingrich popular? Among the electorate overall or Republicans in particular?

natesilver: Gingrich is just as unpopular as Trump, which isn’t easy to accomplish. He’d also be the oldest person elected vice president ever.

harry: Gingrich has a favorable rating of 32 percent and an unfavorable rating of 48 percent, according to a recent YouGov survey. His favorable rating is 56 percent among Republicans, however! I should also note that this is an improvement from what his favorable rating was when he ran for president in 2012. (It was 24 percent then.)

clare.malone: What’s Trump’s right now? With the base?

harry: Trump’s favorable rating among all Americans in the YouGov poll was 32 percent. Among Republicans, it was 66 percent.

clare.malone: Hmmm.

harry: Christie has a 34 percent favorable rating in the same YouGov survey. Among Republicans it is 54 percent.

clare.malone: Wow, beaten by Newt.

natesilver: Absent any reporting, I would have thought that Christie — and maybe Sessions — would have represented the more likely choices for Trump. They’re both quite likely to say yes, and they’re both Trumpian enough, but they aren’t quite the flaming Dumpster fire that Gingrich would be. But the reporting has seemed to refer to Christie as more of a backup option.

clare.malone: I thought Sessions was a for sure serious kinda pick — he basically forms Trump’s policy bona fides, he’s an immigration hard-liner and his former staff now serves on Trump’s campaign.

natesilver: I’d buy some Sessions stock on betting markets, where he’s at just 6 percent. But for Christie — being “better than Newt” is damning with faint praise, obviously. Christie has a lot of natural political acumen — good debater, good speaker — but there’s a lot of evidence that the public has grown really tired of his act.

micah: If Trump were going just by favorability, Harry, who would he pick?

natesilver: Bernie Sanders.

clare.malone:

FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO NBA Projections

What’s New In Our NBA Projections For 2016-17

FiveThirtyEight’s NBA projection system, CARMELO,1 is back for a second season after a strong rookie campaign.

The basics of CARMELO are the same as last year. We’ve run projections for 485 veterans and 82 rookies. The system identifies historical comparables since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976 to project the career path of today’s players. LeBron James’s top comparable is Larry Bird, for instance, while the system likens Lakers rookie Brandon Ingram to Andrew Wiggins.

Like any sophomore, CARMELO has undergone a few changes around the margin — more about those in a moment. First, though, a quick review of how the system performed last year. Analyzing the projections for individual players is hard, because there aren’t really a lot of publicly available projection systems to compare CARMELO against. The list of players the system liked the most holds up pretty well, however, having been a little ahead of the curve in identifying the value of Kawhi Leonard and Draymond Green, and the breakout of Giannis Antetokounmpo, among other successes. On the flip side, there were CARMELO’s inexplicable crushes on Marcus Smart and Elfrid Payton, who will have to show significant improvement this season to live up to the system’s lofty expectations.

Another way to evaluate CARMELO’s performance is through its team-by-team projections, for which we can make some direct comparisons — namely, to projected team win totals from Las Vegas before last season. That comparison makes CARMELO look good. If you’d been betting on its projections, you’d have gone 18-11 against the Las Vegas spreads (skipping a bet on the Memphis Grizzlies because the CARMELO and Vegas projections were identical), or 13-4 if you restricted yourself to cases where the CARMELO and Vegas lines differed by at least two wins. CARMELO also had a higher correlation with actual win totals, and a lower root-mean-squared error, than Vegas did.

PROJECTED WINSTEAMCARMELOVEGASACTUAL WINSPhiladelphia 76ers22.021.510Milwaukee Bucks34.443.533Chicago Bulls47.849.542Cleveland Cavaliers63.256.557Boston Celtics49.242.548Los Angeles Clippers56.156.553Memphis Grizzlies50.550.542Atlanta Hawks45.749.548Miami Heat37.745.548Charlotte Hornets39.432.548Utah Jazz43.840.540Sacramento Kings38.330.533New York Knicks24.831.532Los Angeles Lakers22.129.517Orlando Magic36.132.535Dallas Mavericks38.038.542Brooklyn Nets21.728.521Denver Nuggets26.326.533Indiana Pacers37.742.545New Orleans Pelicans44.947.530Detroit Pistons36.633.544Toronto Raptors44.545.556Houston Rockets52.654.541San Antonio Spurs57.158.567Phoenix Suns38.236.523Oklahoma City Thunder58.057.555Minnesota Timberwolves24.925.529Portland Trail Blazers36.226.544Golden State Warriors61.360.573Washington Wizards41.045.541Correlation with actual.82.76—Root-mean-square error7.68.9—CARMELO projections beat Vegas last season

Source: Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook

And CARMELO correctly identified the best teams in each conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. It was somewhat too optimistic about the Cavaliers’ regular-season win total and too pessimistic about the Warriors’ but found some redemption when the Cavs beat the Warriors in the NBA Finals.

The most noticeable addition to this year’s version provides some context for all the record-setting contracts being signed under the league’s new salary cap. We’ve added a category called market value, which translates wins above replacement into a dollar figure for each player. (See here for a description of the thought process behind this calculation.) For the upcoming season — after a massive jump in the salary cap — we estimate that each win is worth about $5.2 million in market value. Next season, that dollars-per-win exchange rate will increase to $5.6 million.

Be aware, however, that CARMELO regards the best players in the league and the best rookies as being massively underpaid, and therefore most other players will appear to be overpaid. Essentially, these numbers reflect what salaries might look like if there were a team salary cap but no individual maximum salary. It projects stars like James to be worth $60 million a year or more, far more than the max.

Other changes are relatively technical. First, whereas last year CARMELO projections were based on a combination of Box Plus/Minus and Real Plus-Minus, they’re now based on BPM only. One problem with RPM is that it’s only available for recent seasons, whereas BPM can be calculated with standard player and team statistics dating to the 1970s. That poses a problem for a system that relies heavily on making historical comparisons. Although there are workarounds, we’ve decided — having had a year to review the system’s performance — that a BPM-only approach strikes a better balance between simplicity and accuracy. Frankly, we have designs on our own plus-minus metric that would eventually displace both BPM and RPM, but that’s something that will have to wait for a future incarnation of CARMELO.

The next change is even more technical. CARMELO projections are generated through a two-step process. First, the system produces a baseline projection for each player based on regression analysis. Then, it adjusts the forecast and generates a distribution of possible outcomes based on the comparable players. Although the second part of this process is almost exactly the same as last year, we’ve put more work into the first step, the baseline projection. The system is now a bit smarter about handling players with limited playing time. It also recognizes that different statistics have different amounts of predictive value. For instance, because shooting can be streaky, players who generated strong performances on the basis of good shooting seasons are more apt to regress to the mean than others. By contrast, generating shots, drawing fouls and taking 3-pointers are correlated with improved performance in future seasons. Rebounding, blocking shots and, especially, accumulating steals are also correlated with stronger future performance.2

All in all, this year’s projections should be a little better than last year’s, and last year’s did OK for themselves.

Election Update: Swing State Polls And National Polls Basically Say The Same Thing

Welcome to our first Election Update, FiveThirtyEight’s regular feature where we’ll, uh, update you about the presidential election. More specifically, we’ll use this column to look at the election through the lens of FiveThirtyEight’s forecasting models, which we launched last week.

If you read FiveThirtyEight in 2008 or 2012, you might remember that we used to update our forecasts once a day, usually in the late afternoon or early evening. Then we’d write a post like this one to accompany it. The timing meant our forecasts were often half a day behind as new polls came in.

So this year, we’ve switched over to running model updates as new data becomes available, sometimes several times per day. I won’t promise you that we’ll interrupt everything to run an update if an Idaho poll drops at 1 a.m., but this method should allow us to stay more up-to-date, especially during regular working hours.

We’ll still run these Election Update columns — a couple of times a week at first and, eventually, almost every weekday. However, their focus will often be more macro than micro — before Labor Day, it usually isn’t worth sweating individual polls. We’ll tend to focus on big-picture themes instead.

Here’s one theme that I expect us to revisit repeatedly, for instance: How are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump polling in swing states relative to their national numbers?

This is a trickier question than you might think, in part because there’s more than one way to define “national numbers.” One way is to calculate an average of national polls. As of late Tuesday evening, for instance, Clinton led Trump by 5.3 percentage points in our adjusted average of national polls, according to our polls-only forecast. But go to the polls-only homepage, and you’ll find that the forecast has Clinton beating Trump by 6.3 percentage points instead. It’s not a huge discrepancy, but what accounts for the difference?

The reason is that our forecast models use both state and national polls to estimate where the national race stands. In fact, they put most of the emphasis on the state numbers. Historically, it’s been more accurate to take a “bottom-up” approach — first, forecast the vote in each state, then sum the numbers together — than to force everything to match the national numbers. (See the users guide to the forecast for the gory details on how the methodology works.)

So that means Clinton’s swing-state numbers must be really good, right? They’re pretty good — but not great, although she’s gotten some better numbers in the past week. Instead, her biggest comparative strength — and Trump’s biggest comparative weakness — comes from red states rather than swing states.

Here, for instance, are the numbers in red states, which I’ll define as every state that was more Republican-leaning than North Carolina in 2012. (Georgia, by this reckoning, is the bluest red state.) To keep things relatively simple, these figures show FiveThirtyEight’s unadjusted polling average in states where there’s been at least one poll since November, and compare it to President Obama’s result against Mitt Romney in 2012.

STATE2012 MARGINFIVETHIRTYEIGHT UNADJUSTED POLLING AVERAGE, 2016SWING VERSUS 2012UtahRomney +47.9Trump +3.0Clinton +44.9OklahomaRomney +33.5Trump +20.0Clinton +13.5IdahoRomney +31.7Trump +17.0Clinton +14.7West VirginiaRomney +26.7Trump +28.9Trump +2.3ArkansasRomney +23.7Trump +11.0Clinton +12.7KansasRomney +21.6Clinton +2.6Clinton +24.2TennesseeRomney +20.4Trump +9.0Clinton +11.4LouisianaRomney +17.2Trump +16.0Clinton +1.2TexasRomney +15.8Trump +5.9Clinton +9.9AlaskaRomney +14.0Trump +5.2Clinton +8.8MontanaRomney +13.6Trump +21.4Trump +7.8MississippiRomney +11.5Trump +3.0Clinton +8.5South CarolinaRomney +10.5Trump +4.4Clinton +6.1IndianaRomney +10.2Trump +7.5Clinton +2.7MissouriRomney +9.4Trump +2.0Clinton +7.4ArizonaRomney +9.0Trump +0.1Clinton +8.9GeorgiaRomney +7.8Trump +3.5Clinton +4.3Weighted averageRomney +16.0Trump +6.9Clinton +9.1Trump is substantially underperforming Romney in red states

Romney won these states by an average of 16 percentage points in 2012, weighted by their turnout. By contrast, Trump leads them by an average of only 7 percentage points, a net swing of 9 points toward Clinton. She’s competitive in a few of these states, such as Georgia, Arizona and — more exotically — Utah and Kansas. If you saw polls from these states only, they’d be suggestive of a double-digit landslide against Trump.

In the swing states, however, the numbers look more like the final results from 2012, when Obama beat Romney by 3.7 percentage points nationally and by slightly more than that in the swing states. Clinton is outperforming Obama in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. She’s underperforming him in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. And she’s running basically level with him in the other states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

STATE2012 MARGINFIVETHIRTYEIGHT UNADJUSTED POLLING AVERAGE, 2016SWING VERSUS 2012North CarolinaRomney +2.0Clinton +1.4Clinton +3.4FloridaObama +0.9Clinton +4.6Clinton +3.7OhioObama +3.0Clinton +3.2Clinton +0.2VirginiaObama +3.9Clinton +5.7Clinton +1.8ColoradoObama +5.4Clinton +0.7Trump +4.6PennsylvaniaObama +5.4Clinton +6.1Clinton +0.7New HampshireObama +5.6Clinton +5.3Trump +0.3IowaObama +5.8Clinton +5.0Trump +0.8NevadaObama +6.7Trump +0.6Trump +7.3WisconsinObama +6.9Clinton +9.6Clinton +2.7MinnesotaObama +7.7Clinton +11.0Clinton +3.3MichiganObama +9.5Clinton +11.7Clinton +2.3New MexicoObama +10.1Clinton +8.0Trump +2.1Weighted averageObama +4.2Clinton +5.6Clinton +1.4Clinton is slightly outperforming Obama in purple states

You can get more detailed than this if you like — by noting, for instance, that the Virginia polls are fairly out of date, and that there isn’t very much polling at all in New Mexico, whereas we have lots of data about Florida. Our models have various ways to adjust for those considerations. But on average, both our fancy models and the comparatively simple analysis I’m conducting here get you to the same conclusion. Clinton is ahead by 5 or 6 percentage points in the swing states, close to where national polls have the race.

Finally, we have the blue states, which I define as everything bluer than New Mexico in 2012. (Oregon is the reddest blue state.) Clinton leads by 19.1 percentage points in those on average, so Trump is probably dreaming if he expects to put states such as California and New York into play. Still, that’s slightly behind the 21.5 percentage point advantage that Obama had on average in these states in 2012.

STATE2012 MARGINFIVETHIRTYEIGHT UNADJUSTED POLLING AVERAGE, 2016SWING VERSUS 2012OregonObama +12.1Clinton +6.4Trump +5.7WashingtonObama +14.8Clinton +12.0Trump +2.8MaineObama +15.3Clinton +7.5Trump +7.7IllinoisObama +16.8Clinton +18.8Clinton +2.0ConnecticutObama +17.3Clinton +6.0Trump +11.3New JerseyObama +17.7Clinton +11.4Trump +6.4CaliforniaObama +23.1Clinton +19.8Trump +3.3MassachusettsObama +23.1Clinton +29.3Clinton +6.1MarylandObama +26.1Clinton +35.1Clinton +9.0New YorkObama +28.2Clinton +21.5Trump +6.7Weighted averageObama +21.5Clinton +19.1Trump +2.4Clinton is slightly underperforming Obama in blue states

All of this yields some slightly complicated conclusions. On the one hand, according to our models, Clinton’s state polls tell a stronger story for her than the national polls do. On the other hand, a lot of that advantage is concentrated in traditionally red states. If Trump underperforms in states such as Texas and Mississippi, that will hurt his position in the popular vote without compromising his Electoral College math — provided, of course, that he doesn’t actually lose them. Hence, our models conclude that Trump is more likely to win the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote than the other way around, although either possibility is unlikely.

Nonetheless, Trump’s overall position has improved slightly. He has a 22 percent chance to win the election according to the polls-only forecast, as compared with a 19 percent chance when we launched last Wednesday. And in polls-plus, which also accounts for economic conditions, his chances have improved to 29 percent from 26 percent.

Related:

Trump’s Racist Tweet Problem

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FBI Director James Comey spent most of his news conference Tuesday sharply criticizing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, but he also said the FBI was advising the Justice Department not to press charges. The podcast crew breaks down how the announcement, after more than a year of controversy, might affect the election.

Then the team takes on Donald Trump’s latest Twitter fiasco — his apparent use of the Star of David in accusing Hillary Clinton of being corrupt — and what that says about the online networks he’s tapped into. This isn’t the first time Trump’s Twitter feed has included racist content.

Plus, Nate Silver answers questions from listeners about the general election forecast model.

You can stream or download the full episode above. You can also find us by searching “fivethirtyeight” in your favorite podcast app, or subscribe using the RSS feed. Check out all our other shows.

If you’re a fan of the elections podcast, leave us a rating and review on iTunes, which helps other people discover the show. Have a comment, want to suggest something for “good polling vs. bad polling” or want to ask a question? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Did The FBI End Clinton’s Email Problems Or Make Them Worse?

In this week’s politics chat, we discuss the FBI’s announcement on Tuesday that it’s not recommending charges be brought against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): I’m back from vacation! Two weeks down the beach really did me some good. But we’re not here to talk about my newly beautifully bronzed skin. There was some news with the FBI and Hillary Clinton today. Before we get to how it might affect the election, someone give us a quick overview of what happened.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Bronzed or pinkened?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): You do look like a young Richard Burton.

micah: If I’m being honest, it’s more a reddish pink.

clare.malone: Synopsis: Hillary Clinton used a private email account that she shouldn’t have, along with her staff, and some of the stuff she sent and received was classified. Today, James Comey, the director of the FBI, recommended that the Justice Department not pursue criminal charges, but he had some pretty harsh words for Clinton’s conduct. He said Clinton’s email use was wrong, and polls show that most Americans agree with him.

natesilver: There was that language, “extremely careless,” which we’d be likely to hear in Donald Trump attack ads, if Trump were organized enough to run attack ads.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): This is the funniest damn thing about Trump. Clinton was basically called incompetent, and Trump could have run with it. Instead, he said the system is rigged. Of course, Comey is a Republican and has donated to Republican candidates in the past.

micah: But as far as non-indictments go, this is bad for Clinton, no? I mean, no one serious really thought she would be indicted, and Comey was very critical. It also made the whole scandal a little more corporeal — from The New York Times:

natesilver: That’s my view, basically, Micah. The chance of an indictment was extremely low. And conditional on there not being an indictment, this wasn’t a great outcome for Clinton. Comey was quite critical of Clinton and elevated the issue above the partisan fray a bit, in a way that could play well in attacks down the line.

harry: (If Trump can afford any ads.) Comey basically confirmed what many people already thought about Clinton: She’s untrustworthy. That’s a major reason she has such poor favorability numbers.

micah: Harry, where do her trust/honest numbers stand?

harry: A CBS News poll from mid-June found that just 33 percent of voters say she is “honest and trustworthy.” That isn’t good. The news that came from Comey on Tuesday doesn’t make me think those numbers will climb.

micah: That’s really bad.

clare.malone: Comey said this kind thing has in the past meant some sort of administrative discipline for people.

micah: But what Harry says suggests this is already baked in?

harry: The prediction markets, for what it’s worth, haven’t moved a lot today.

natesilver: Actually, Harry, prediction markets have moved TOWARD Clinton in the last 30 minutes or so, as people have had more time to digest the news. So they disagree with me and Micah, I guess. We see this as being neutral to slightly negative for Clinton, and the markets see it as being slightly positive.

clare.malone: Not a great outcome, but not a catastrophic one, given that like half the country already thinks she was, I don’t know, applying for Iranian citizenship or something in those emails? I kinda think all this does is confirm to Republicans/people who already don’t like her that she did something wrong. I don’t see it as blowing up. It’s been blowing up for months and months and months. At a steady rate.

natesilver: I should mention that Clinton’s gains in the prediction markets haven’t come at Trump’s expense, btw, but instead from Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, who were probably implausibly high to begin with.

micah: Maybe the markets thought there was a small chance of an indictment? That her gains came from Sanders and Biden suggests so.

natesilver: So maybe that’s all pretty reasonable. Markets priced in a small (I’d argue it should have been even smaller, but your mileage may vary) chance of an indictment, which would result in a Sanders or Biden nomination. There’s no indictment, so their chances disappear. Meanwhile, it’s fairly neutral for Clinton’s chances against Trump.

harry: I go back to what I wrote two months ago, Clare: “Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking.” Republicans should be walking away with this election. Instead, they nominated Trump, who does stuff like this.

micah: Clare, do you think this is the last shoe to drop?

clare.malone: At this point, we’re basically all lying on top of a pile of shoes, Micah. It’s hard to pull apart the inflection points in this scandal because it’s just been this sort of simmering thing for so long. Unfortunately for Clinton, people just think this is the kind of thing that’s in keeping with her character.

I’m not sure what James Comey said today makes a huge difference for the typical American voter … other than, there’s gonna be no charges. OK. Fine.

natesilver: But maybe Comey rises above the partisan fray a bit, and the person at the margin is more convinced by language like “extremely careless” than the way Republicans tend to talk about the scandal, where it gets blurred in with a million other things?

And, also, whether or not there’s any news here, it takes the focus off Trump and puts it on Clinton and, furthermore, on a negative issue for Clinton. For Clinton, this is a zugzwang election where she’d rather stay out of the way and let Trump make the news.

clare.malone: I mean, sure, it’s a bad news cycle for her and makes people forget for the moment that Trump’s account tweeted some anti-Semitic stuff over the weekend.

But I’m not sure that the Clinton campaign doesn’t just ride this out, take advantage of President Obama being on the trail with them for the first time, etc., to make some other news.

harry: The question is for how long. Trump has managed to dominate news cycles in ways we’ve never seen. At first, it was for good. Now, it is for bad. He’s probably seconds away from saying Comey is Satan or something.

natesilver: Yeah, and that’s probably the counterargument. I heard some pundits saying over the weekend that the timing of this was bad for Clinton because it stepped on what had been a fairly positive month for her. I actually think the timing is pretty good for Clinton because this is about to get stepped on by a whole host of other stories.

Namely, the VP selections in both parties, the conventions and maybe a Sanders endorsement.

clare.malone: Can I just say, for the record, that Comey gave an admirably dull, lawyerly presser? Like, lots of talk about “email slack space,” etc., etc.

The thing that most people won’t hear is the part where he basically sort of said, “They never had bad intent; they were just kinda idiotic about all this.” But intent, in the law, is very important — something that gets lost in the politics.

harry: I’ll just go back to the well here: People are going to hear what they want to hear, I think.

clare.malone: Yes. Agree.

natesilver: Again, I see this as a slight negative for Clinton. But I don’t get paid for guessing the impact of events like these. Instead, I get paid for waiting for the data. It does seem to me like Trump had some not-so-bad polls lately — he’s moved up slightly in our 2016 election forecast — and maybe that could continue for a week or so.

clare.malone: He’s coming from a fairly large deficit, though.

micah: So, Nate, I assume you’ve input this latest news into the model?

natesilver: Haha! No, the polls-only model takes a purely wait-and-see approach (waiting for polls). And the polls-plus model bakes in some information from economic data but is otherwise also wait-and-see. There are no manual adjustments whatsoever.

harry: (I too see Trump gaining some ground in the polls. But I’ve learned from this season that it’s better not to get out in front of the polls. In other words, I’ve been burnt too many times for trying to be too smart.)

clare.malone: We should really have a clinton-emails-polls-plus model, Nate. This seems like an oversight.

micah: Agreed!

natesilver: I know you guys are being sarcastic, but that’s exactly the point of keeping a model simple. If we have a Clinton email variable, should we also have a Trump University variable? Or a ground game variable? Or whatever else? It’s generally the case that even things that people think are pretty big deals tend to have small and/or unpredictable effects.

The other thing to be mindful of is that events like these can sometimes have a short-term effect, which then can fade.

The forecasts are designed to take a long-term focus, at least at this point in the campaign. If I’m Clinton, I’m not particularly excited about seeing what the tracking polls say at this point next week. On the other hand, I don’t care all that much because the VP announcements and conventions are going to reset everything anyway and the long-term trend has been pretty good for me so far. That logic is baked into the model as well.

micah: fwiw: Clicking around different news sites and the various cable channels, the story is being headlined/chyroned as “FBI suggests no charges against Clinton.” So maybe this will be, as the markets suggest, a positive for her. The CliffsNotes version of this news is better for her than the unabridged version.

clare.malone: I’m always relieved when I don’t get indicted.

harry: I got indicted for being too romantic last week.

micah: I’m not sure what that means, but I’m afraid to pick at it.

clare.malone: I think Nate’s got a point about the conventions/VP picks, etc., making a nice buffer for this news.

natesilver: Again, though, I think the subject matter is sometimes more important than the substance, at least for people who are paying only a little bit of attention. Is the chyron “Prosecutors: Politician XX Didn’t Beat His Wife” a positive for Politician XX? It depends.

clare.malone: The Bill Clinton/Loretta Lynch tarmac meeting will probably be spun into some kind of conspiracy theory ad, though.

natesilver: Right, yeah, and Trump is leaning into the conspiracy angle rather than the incompetence/security risk angle. Which maybe is a mistake. Because Trump thinks everything is a conspiracy, so that takes the halo off the very harsh and attack-ad-friendly words that Comey had for Clinton.

micah: So what should Trump do?

harry: If I were Trump, I’d say, “Look, Clinton claims that you’re taking a chance if you choose me because she is competent. This proves that she is incompetent. She acted with extreme carelessness.”

clare.malone: Or willful entitlement.

harry: It defeats the purpose of her candidacy.

clare.malone: I think the fact that she didn’t want to apologize for a long time is a damning thing — a lot of people think she thinks she’s above the fray. That kind of stuff strung together over time and hammered away at could give her that establishment patina that candidates are trying to get rid of.

harry: The Clintons have this ability to show that they believe their appearance doesn’t matter. You see that with Bill Clinton meeting with Lynch.

natesilver: In a weird way, Trump has in microcosm the issue that Clinton usually has with Trump: There are so many ways to attack that maybe you get flustered and aren’t particularly effective because you have trouble picking the right one. You can attack on email on grounds including trustworthiness, security risks, the system being rigged, Clinton being above the fray, etc. But if you do all four at once, it just seems like kind of a muddle.

clare.malone: Above-the-fray and untrustworthy seem to be the smartest attacks to me. If I were Paul Manafort, I’d be pushing stuff along those lines. The trouble is, conspiracy theories seem to be in the DNA of that campaign and the subreddit internet that follows it closely.

natesilver: See, I think the national security angle is more promising, in part because the untrustworthy stuff is pretty baked in. I agree, though, that the conspiracy angle is the least likely to persuade undecided voters.

harry: I think you have two worthy angles, and Trump is instead choosing a different one that would make Alex Jones proud.

micah: So basically the headline on the FBI’s very critical, non-indictment of Clinton is: This would be really bad for Clinton … if she weren’t running against Donald Trump.

natesilver: Hmm. It would be bad for Clinton if it came out of the blue. It didn’t, though. A lot of this is priced in, and we can argue whether today was slightly negative (my view) or slightly positive (betting markets’ view) for Clinton relative to expectations.

Now, it might also be true that Trump might be less poised to take advantage of this issue than some other candidates might be. But that isn’t his only problem.

clare.malone: Today just seems like yet another “Groundhog Day” moment of the 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton is in the middle of yet another bias-confirming swirl of events for those who think she’s not worthy of the office. This day almost feels just like going through the motions, the inevitable course of headlines, cable gab-offs. Rinse, repeat.

natesilver: Here’s the thing that gets lost, though. Right now, both candidates have a lot of work to do. National polls have the race about 43 percent for Clinton, 37 percent Trump, or something on that order. Does today give anybody a reason to vote for Clinton or vote for Trump? Obviously not, in my view. So at some point, Trump has to make the connection: Hillary is Crooked and here’s why you should vote for me.

harry: What Clinton essentially needs to do from here on out isn’t to convince people to vote for her, but to convince people not to vote for Trump. Trump needs to do both: convince people not to vote for Clinton and to vote for him. I’m not sure today will do that. It may do the former, but I’m not sure it does the latter. One could easily envision Clinton winning 47 percent to Trump’s 43 percent, with the rest going to the other candidates. Is it pretty? No. Does it get you to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Yes.

natesilver: She needs to do a bit of convincing. She probably isn’t going to win the election with 43 percent of the vote, even if there’s a large third-party vote. 47 percent? Sure, that might work.

Now, the good news for Clinton is that the polls that show her in a tighter race still show her with some room to grow among Sanders supporters.

So let’s see how Sanders reacts to this. It removes some of his ostensible justification for not conceding the race. But there’s still a fairly large group of Sanders voters who are saying they’re undecided or will vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, instead of Clinton. What happens with those voters will probably be more important in the end than anything that happened today.

Even With Kevin Durant, The Warriors Probably Won’t Win 73 Games Again

Kevin Durant announced Monday that he was leaving the “comfort zone” of Oklahoma City and joining the team with the best record in the NBA: the 73-win Golden State Warriors.

Durant is expected to sign a two-year, $54.3 million contract with an opt-out after the first year, making him the highest-paid player in the league. Technically, this still hinges on the Warriors clearing some space to fit him within their salary cap, but for our purposes let’s assume the other 29 NBA teams don’t pull off the mass collusion necessary to block it. He could have signed for five years and $153 million in Oklahoma City, or four years and $114 million in Golden State, but the 1+1 deal makes him eligible for a much bigger contract after next season ($163 million to 177 million in total over the five-year period, according to ESPN Stats & Info’s estimate) because Durant reaches a milestone for service time after next season. Stars like Durant will probably never be paid what they’re truly worth, but this structure goes part of the way to covering the difference.

FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO player projections expect Durant’s play to fall off just the slightest bit — it’s actually dropped his “category” from “MVP Candidate” to “All-Star.” At age 28 next season, Durant will be at the age where some players begin a gradual decline, and CARMELO is still worried about his 2014-15 campaign, when he missed most of the season due to injury.

Still, he still projects to have the seventh-most Wins Above Replacement in the league over the next five seasons, with 40.0 WAR. Over those same five years, Harrison Barnes — the guy whose job Durant is taking — projects to produce just 13.1 WAR. (Andrew Bogut, who will likely be traded to make room for Durant, comes out to 12.5 WAR over that stretch.)

Just how good might the Warriors be with Durant on the roster?

As we’ve seen with Kevin Love over the past two seasons, not all stats are portable from team to team, but Durant’s numbers come with the certainty of having been stress-tested in deep playoff runs, whereas Love had never played in the postseason before arriving in Cleveland. Intuitively, it might seem as though you take a 73-win team, add another superstar to it, and wind up with a win total in the stratosphere, somewhere in the mid-to-high 70s.

In practice, however, it might be hard for the Warriors to equal their 73-win benchmark from last season, even with Durant on the team.

One reason is simple reversion to the mean. Of the 10 previous teams to win at least 67 games during the regular season, all but one saw their win total decline in the following season, falling to an average of 60.5 wins from 68.1 the previous season. The Warriors already showed some signs of mean-reversion in the playoffs, with a season-ending Elo rating of 1756, a championship-worthy but not all-time-great figure.

Another question is diminishing returns. How much value can a high-usage player like Durant realistically add to what was already perhaps the most efficient offense in NBA history? The Miami Heat made four straight NBA Finals during the LeBron Big Three era, but imperfect offensive fits between the stars and a necessarily thin bench kept regular-season win totals far lower than most expected.

Finally, there’s the issue of depth. If, as anticipated, Andrew Bogut is traded, and Harrison Barnes and Festus Ezeli are let go, the Warriors will have only six players with a material amount1 of NBA experience signed to a contract: Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston.

If we use CARMELO to project the Warriors on the basis of these six players only (see here for details on the methodology), assuming they’ll fill the rest of their minutes with replacement-level players, we wind up with a projected record of 66-16. That would be one of the better records in NBA history, but nonetheless a seven-win decline from last year.

PLUS-MINUS PER 100 POSS.PLAYING TIMECONTRIBUTION TO TEAM TOTALPLAYEROFF.DEF.PGSGSFPFCOFF.DEF.Stephen Curry+9.6-0.170————+6.7-0.1Klay Thompson+2.6-1.5—70———+1.8-1.1Kevin Durant+6.5+0.5——3525—+3.9+0.3Draymond Green+1.4+3.3———2545+1.0+2.3Andre Iguodala-0.3+1.1—1035——-0.1+0.5Shaun Livingston-1.4+0.22515———-0.6+0.1Replacement-level players-1.7-0.355305055-2.5-0.4Team Total+10.3+1.6Warriors CARMELO projections with Kevin Durant

The Warriors, however, have a knack for finding bench talent — and talented bench players have a knack for finding teams like the Warriors who give them a chance at a championship ring — so they’ll probably add a few more wins to that baseline once the roster is filled out.

And the real impact could be in the playoffs, where the Warriors will benefit from stealing Durant from the Thunder, one of their foremost conference rivals. And the Durant announcement came on the same day it was reported that the San Antonio Spurs’ Tim Duncan was “leaning strongly” toward retirement.

That’s all for another day, though. For now, it doesn’t have to be that deep. Here’s Barnes’s shot chart this past season season, via StatMuse:

And here’s Durant’s:

The Warriors are getting Kevin Durant, and Kevin Durant is still a beast.

CORRECTION (July 4, 6:15 p.m.): An earlier version of this article erroneously referred to Jason Thompson as being under contract with the Warriors. Thompson was waived by the team in February.

An 80 Percent Shot Doesn’t Mean Clinton Is A Sure Thing

In this week’s politics chat, we discuss FiveThirtyEight’s general election forecast for 2016, which launched Wednesday and will be updated through Election Day. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

David (Firestone, managing editor): After a lot of work, our general election forecast has gone live! But not everyone fully understands what a forecast model is. Some people think it’s a poll or are incorrectly saying, “Nate calls the race for Clinton.” Can we start by explaining at a basic level what a forecast model tells us?

Clare (Malone, senior political writer): Say it very, very slowly and use small words, please.

Nate (Silver, editor in chief): Pro buh bil it eez.

Harry (Enten, senior political writer): Looks like some artisanal tea that I’d buy in hipster Brooklyn.

Nate: Not everything 0 percent or 100 percent! Some things in between! Cookie Monster like numbers in between!

Harry: I believe Cookie Monster now eats vegetables.

David: And that in-between number gives Hillary Clinton about an 80 percent chance of winning, which obviously doesn’t mean it’s over.

Clare: Did Cookie vote Trump? Or is he a Bernie Bro?

Nate: I’m sort of annoyed by it being 80 percent, because I feel like that’s the number people most misinterpret. When you say 80 percent, people take that to mean “really, really certain.” It’s not, particularly.

David: I liked your ballgame analogy, Nate, in the article you wrote to accompany the forecast. Teams come back from 20-percent-win situations frequently. In fact, about 20 percent of the time!

Nate: Absolutely amazing how that works!

Clare: You’re annoyed that it’s a high number because people are going to glom onto that and think it holds for the whole election? Not realizing that this is where things stand as of June 29 and that it’ll change as things go on and polls come in?

Nate: It can change, sure. But let’s be clear — 80 percent is the forecast Clinton has to win on Nov. 8. That’s our best estimate of her chances, accounting for the uncertainty between now and then, based on the historical accuracy of presidential polling. If the election were held today instead, she’d be a safer bet still.

The polls can change a lot between now and Nov. 8. And they probably will. But there’s a chance those changes benefit Clinton, and not Donald Trump. And since she’s up by about 7 points now, there’s the chance they help Trump … but not enough to allow him to win.

And that’s the thing. Of the 80 percent of the time Clinton wins — PLENTY of those times are going to involve her sweating. Either because Trump makes it very close at the end or because there are some periods in which things look very tight along the way, as they did for Obama against McCain and against Romney.

But Clinton will win a lot of those close calls, along with her share of landslides.

Clare: So the Clinton campaign should not change its warm-up song to “Landslide” just yet? (The Fleetwood Mac version, obvs, not the Dixie Chicks cover.)

David: Because it’s a model, we’ll be feeding new polls into it as they come out every day, or whenever we have them. And the polls-plus version also changes with economic performance. So we can expect to see fluctuations in the numbers regularly, and sometimes those can be serious changes.

Clare: This model eats!

Harry: Only the best food, no fast food.

Clare: Yeah, can you explain what the “pluses” are in polls plus? The sauce on our model’s low-fat, totally organic polls, if you will.

Nate: The “plus” is the economy, basically. Which isn’t so good right now, but also not so bad. But certainly, in the abstract, you’d expect this to be a close election. With no incumbent and an average economy, that should mean a level playing field.

Harry: I should point out that our model does not take into account something like the president’s approval rating, which isn’t strongly tied to the final result without an incumbent but isn’t nothing either. And the president’s approval rating isn’t terrible right now.

David: If this were a normal election, or even a closer one, what patterns in the polls could we expect to see after the primaries? Bounces after the conventions, movements based on big speeches or ads?

Harry: After the conventions, you may not see big bounces. You sort of saw one last time after the first presidential debate, but that wasn’t a big one in the state polls. I think the clearest case of movement was probably 1948, and that was when the economy was getting better and better. (Truman, of course, closed a big gap in the polls and shocked everyone by winning the election. There were no public polls conducted in the final weeks of that campaign.) It’s not that the polls cannot move. It’s just that they usually move to where the economy might direct it to — not because of a big speech.

David: So it sounds like the biggest changes in the polls could come from factors the candidates themselves can’t control? Like major news events or economic changes?

Nate: I dunno. We’ve had a couple of major news events, and they didn’t seem to move the needle as much toward Trump as he might have hoped. In fact, they didn’t seem to help him at all.

Harry: Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that some people were saying the attack in Orlando could help Trump?

Clare: I think few people expected his tactless, self-congratulatory response.

David: Yeah, he seems to step on his opportunities whenever they happen, including suggesting that the Brexit vote was great for his Scottish golf course.

Clare: But are there things outside of the economy and a terrorist attack that could hurt Clinton a lot, if this is hers to lose? Email shenanigans, perhaps? Is that just no longer that big of a factor? We’ve all talked about it ad nauseam, it seems. I wonder if peoples’ opinions have changed much on the subject.

David: A lot of Republicans are hoping for an indictment, which seems highly unlikely. Hard to see how the email thing will get worse for her if that doesn’t happen.

Harry: What’s so great about modeling, though, as Nate has mentioned to me, is it can give you an insight into something you cannot see yourself. I don’t know what event can turn Trump’s campaign around, but I know it is possible.

Nate: Yeah, might I suggest that trying to come up with the scenario by which Trump wins is exactly what gets you in trouble? There are known unknowns, but a lot of the 20 percent is unknown unknowns.

Harry: Thanks, Rumsfeld.

Nate: Or it’s a case where several little things go wrong for Clinton, instead of one big thing.

Say a lot of the Bernie Sanders vote goes to Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, and the economy is taking some hits, and Trump’s voters turn out at greater rates than polls expect them to. No one of those factors is enough to overcome a 7-point deficit. But collectively, they could be enough.

Harry: I think one of the great polling questions is: How do you account for third-party candidates? Some pollsters just ignore them. Some aggregators ignore them. But I tend to think you should include them when they are probably going to be on the ballot in all 50 states and the candidate is regularly getting above 5 percent in the polls.

Nate: And most polls are including Johnson, these days. That’s generally been the rule of thumb. Once a candidate gets into the high single digits or low double digits, most polls will include him. And Johnson probably will be on the ballot in 50 states, or pretty close to it.

Clare: Do we anticipate Johnson’s support growing over time, being affected by various hits that candidates take throughout the campaign? Or could his support just fade out as we head into the fall? Did Perot, for instance, see a rise or a fall as the … fall came?

Harry: It could go either way. I hate to use this word, but third-party candidacies are often about “momentum.” Can the candidate catch on and be a viable choice? Perot was, in 1992, and his support held at near 20 percent after re-entering the race. (He was regularly in the 30s before exiting the first time.) Then you have someone like John Anderson, who in 1980 started in the 20s and slowly fell to just above 5 percent.

David: The most striking thing about the model to me is when you get to the state level, which of course is where the electoral battle is really fought. There are some unexpected colors there. Georgia isn’t dark red — it’s pink. In our polls-only model, Arizona is a light blue, as is North Carolina. Clinton even has a shot in my home state of Missouri, which I would never have predicted. Harry, how surprised were you by the roll of states?

Harry: I’m not surprised based on the polls I’ve been seeing from the states. The model puts a nice number on it. I’m more surprised by the results from states where we don’t have a lot of polling. I’m talking about places like Mississippi and South Carolina.

Clare: Yeah, Mississippi being so light red in our model really struck me! Texas too!

David: There’s only one poll in from Mississippi, and it shows Trump ahead — but only by 3 points.

Harry: We have had two recent Texas polls showing Trump up by less than 10 percentage points.

Nate: So the reason the model has states like Mississippi and Texas kinda close is because that’s where the polls have it. It’s been a pretty consistent pattern. It’s hard — not impossible, but hard — to find polls where Trump leads by double digits, even in the reddest states.

Harry: How about that one Kansas poll that had Clinton ahead!

Clare: Was there a state or group of states that surprised you the most as you were going through all this, Nate?

Nate: See, I thought it was quirky things about Kansas or Utah or whatever. But it’s really across the board. There have been Mississippi, Alaska and Texas polls that also show a pretty close race, and those states don’t have a lot in common with one another.

Harry: They all have vowels in them!

Clare: You are excused from this chat now, Harry.

Harry: Is that nice? Is that nice? To think I introduced you to Colin Quinn.

Nate: OMG Hollywood Harry. Getting all name-droppy.

Clare: It’s true. I will always be in Harry’s debt for that one.

Nate: We’re going to trade you to the “Keepin’ It 1600” podcast for a reporter to be named later

Harry: A friend of mine loves that podcast and keeps mentioning it to me.

Clare: Wait, so what’s the matter with Kansas? And Alaska and Utah? Educated guesses?

Nate: I guess what I’m saying, Clare, is that people are maybe overinterpreting why exactly it’s Utah and Kansas where Trump is doing badly, as opposed to Idaho and Nebraska.

Harry: Now as for Kansas, we see Trump doing worse in more traditionally Republican libertarian and religious states.

Nate: Part of it is just because there aren’t a ton of polls in any of these states.

David: In both Kansas and Missouri, Clinton has won a poll. OK, they’re B- or C- polls in our pollster ratings, but it’s a little hard to imagine, and seems to be a reflection of the disarray with the GOP. The hard-line conservatives and evangelicals in those states just aren’t checking the Trump box in the surveys. Yet.

Harry: I should note our polls-only model gives Clinton a 51 percent chance of carrying Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district and its one electoral vote.

Nate: Trump didn’t do all that well in the Midwest in the primaries. And I could come up with an argument for why the temperament there doesn’t suit him, but I’ll just say it’s totally reasonable to think he’ll have trouble in that Nebraska district given the polls in nearby states.

Clare: This is a good chance for you to talk about regionalism, no? States as blocs.

Nate: Maybe, but maybe that’s getting too granular? Trump’s getting only 37 percent of the vote or so right now. It’s been a long time since a major-party candidate did so poorly. Where are his “missing” voters? A lot of them are in red states, as best as we can figure. Which is good news for Trump, in a way. A lot of those voters were superfluous. Say you win South Carolina by 5 points instead of 12? Not that big a deal.

Harry: The two Texas polls had him at 37 percent and 39 percent.

Nate: On the flip side, it might mean that the low-hanging gains for Trump to make are mostly in red states and that if he gains 3 points on Clinton nationally, maybe he only gains half as much in swing states.

David: Clare, you’re going to be hitting some of these regions as the campaign goes on. Which ones are you most interested in visiting to learn some on-the-ground answers to these questions?

Clare: I’m pretty interested in the South and the voters who Nate says are missing, but maybe it’s not that big of a deal they’re missing. Regardless, I’m wondering if some of these people are those who haven’t voted in a while and whether there is a turnout strategy for them from the Republican National Committee, which seems like it’s going to be by default running Trump’s on-the-ground game.

David: It’s not clear anyone has explained the ground-game concept to Trump.

Clare: But also, obviously, places like Arizona that are surprisingly swingin’ this year.

Harry: Arizona is a state where our polls-only model says Clinton is a slight favorite. The reason? The polls.

Nate: I guess I’d just say the map looks strange in part because the map has been so steady over the past four or five elections. Over the long term, that’s actually pretty anomalous. Instead, the swing states shift around, sometimes gradually and sometimes more suddenly.

Harry: If you look at the 1996 election, Arkansas and Louisiana were heavily blue states. No Democratic presidential candidate has won them since. States do and will change.

Nate: To me, the notion that Arizona is a tossup or that Maine might be pretty competitive if Trump’s position improves — those aren’t even particularly radical changes. They’d be considered quite normal, by historical standards.

Harry: If you look at the 2012 campaign, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, Jeff Flake, barely won.

David: All this is why readers should tune into this model frequently over the next four months. States can and will change colors, and if you wake up early one morning, you might be the first to catch it on our site.

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