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What If Republicans Can’t Pick A Nominee Before Their Convention?

The Washington Post published a story late Thursday that started a heated argument in the FiveThirtyEight offices. So we’re doing an extra 2016 Slack chat this week! The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): It comes up every presidential primary, and it’s always simultaneously fun and eye-roll-inducing when it does: the contested convention. The dream of all political obsessives, a contested convention occurs when no candidate enters with the required number of delegates to clinch the nomination. On Thursday evening, Robert Costa of The Washington Post reported that GOP bigwigs are “preparing for the possibility of a brokered convention as businessman Donald Trump continues to sit atop the polls in the GOP presidential race.” The basic plan: If the Republican establishment can’t stop Trump in primaries and caucuses, they’ll have to do it at the convention.

So, is a contested convention really possible?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Anything is possible, Micah.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): What is the definition of “really possible”? It’s really possible that Nate, Clare and I go to Vegas and play poker tonight, but chances are that it won’t happen.

clare.malone: I have no plans.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Plenty of flights still available. We could make it.

micah: Let me reframe: How likely do you think a contested convention is? And what would cause it?

natesilver: Back in August, I defined these three scenarios:

An actual brokered convention.The nomination is decided before the convention, but there’s genuine uncertainty about who the nominee will be after the last primaries.No candidate has technically clinched the nomination as of the date of the last primary, but the writing’s on the wall.

micah: Yeah, this chat is about No. 1.

natesilver: So where everyone goes to Cleveland genuinely unsure about who the nominee is? In August, I put the chances of that at 10 percent. Now, I’d probably put them at about 20 percent.

clare.malone: I love a good conspiracy theory/out of nowhere plot twist, so I think I’m gonna say 40 percent! Who knows what will happen in the land of Trump! No, I mean, not that high, but I think it is interesting that the party priests are so serious about it.

harry: All right, so here’s my thing: We are 53 days from the Iowa caucuses. Until we actually see how the primary will develop, I can’t say 20 percent. I can say 10 percent. I can see it. It can happen. But the problem is that I’ve heard this song and dance before. In fact, I found seven of the 11 open primaries since 1984 had at least some talk of a contested convention. It happened in 2012, 2008 Democrats and 2008 Republicans, 2004, 1992, 1988 and 1984.

So could this year maybe be different? Sure. But it’s going to take actual results to convince me it’s more than a marginal possibility.

clare.malone: Do you think people just like talking about it? Scare people straight in some way? Toward a more “viable” candidate?

natesilver: I dunno, 20 percent is not that high.

harry: Not as high as the folks at High Times, but to me it’s fairly high. The Eagles had only a 12 percent shot to beat the Patriots last week, according to our Elo ratings. I put a contested convention on about the same plane as that.

micah: Brief public service announcement on the terms we’re using from our managing editor, David Firestone:

A brokered convention is one (historical) form of a contested convention, when state party leaders (or union bosses) acted as brokers for their delegates in the convention horse-trading. Those bosses and brokers no longer exist, so the candidates will have to do the negotiating, along with leaders like RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, etc., who can hope to use their clout to sway delegates. Of course, there’s no recent historical precedent for that, since all the big rule changes, so no one really knows how this would work.

For more, see here and here (by our own Clare when she was writing for The American Prospect!).

End announcement.

natesilver: You’ve had a lot of near misses, however, Harry. And when there’s a small sample size, it’s important to look at the number of near misses. Put another way, we’ve come way closer in the recent past to having a brokered convention than having someone like Trump win a major party nomination. (Errr … contested convention. Excuse me.)

harry: Citing Wikipedia, a sign of first-rate scholarship. 1980 was a fantasy contested convention. Jimmy Carter had that thing wrapped up. 1984 was perhaps the closest. 1988 wasn’t really all that close; Michael Dukakis was the only guy acceptable to most of the party and clearly won enough delegates. So, one out of 12 times. Seems fairly equal to my 10 percent or so estimate.

micah: Someone explain to me how a contested convention would come about.

natesilver: That part’s easy, or easy enough.

clare.malone: Trump just keeps trucking, right? Gaining steam.

micah: And Trump is gaining steam.

natesilver: It requires two basic ingredients. First, Trump stays in the race, but hits a ceiling in his support. Anywhere from 20 percent to 35 percent of the vote or so would do. Second, the GOP establishment is torn between resigning itself to Ted Cruz and some other choice, most likely Marco Rubio.

Both of those things seem … entirely possible to me.

clare.malone: I’m interested in the idea of seeing the candidates do deals behind the scenes. Who would align with whom?

micah: All the establishment candidates — Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich — could unite! But I guess that’s why Cruz is crucial.

harry: In other words, it requires three candidates sticking around long enough. Nate thinks it’s Cruz, Rubio and Trump. I think Cruz is the most important here, but it could be Cruz, Rubio and, dare I say, Chris Christie.

micah: Yeah, Cruz seems to be the main ingredient for a contested convention; you could see him not playing ball with the establishment to stop Trump.

clare.malone: Was about to say, that guy has a lot of enemies in the GOP. A collaborative atmosphere does not seem like it would be his thing.

natesilver: See, I’d assign a fairly low likelihood to that possibility, Harry. If the establishment has the ability to win the nomination just by choosing between Christie and Rubio, it’s going to pick one of those two rather than risk Cruz or Trump being nominated. Of my 20 percent likelihood, I’d say about 15 percentage points are specifically the case where you have Trump, Cruz and one of [Rubio, Christie, Bush, Kasich].

micah: You need Trump and Cruz.

harry: Why couldn’t it be Christie, Cruz, Rubio and Trump? Why not four?

natesilver: WHAT’S WITH YOUR CRUSH ON CHRIS CHRISTIE, HARRY, ARE YOU A COWBOYS FAN TOO NOW?

harry: Look, I will put up with a lot of your guff, Nathaniel Read, but not recognizing and appreciating my Buffalo Bills fandom is just disgusting. You should be ashamed. Clare knows this, being from Cleveland. We take pride in our NFL teams that don’t win.

clare.malone: Underdogs 4 lyfe.

micah: IDK, I think if Trump is still trucking, the GOP closes its eyes, takes a deep breath and bear hugs Cruz — that’s why I think 20 percent is too high.

clare.malone: Do you think the leaked story was a way of them sending a signal to give that big ole bear hug?

micah: I think it’s too early.

natesilver: But some of the reporting suggests that the GOP is almost as desperate to stop Cruz as it is to stop Trump.

micah: Nate, if both Trump and Cruz are in the race down the road, that means the third person, the establishment candidate, is pretty weak. So they’d be forced.

natesilver: Yeah. The scenario I’m thinking about is where (say) Rubio is picking up a lot of second and third places and not winning very many states. Maybe he’s benefiting a bit from the GOP’s delegate rules, too. But he’s not being impressive enough to have earned a mandate from the establishment.

micah: Is predicting the outcome of a contested convention a fool’s errand? Would the establishment have a good shot of taking down Trump?

harry: They could rake Trump down a peg or two and still have a contested convention. The way it doesn’t happen is if there’s an establishment candidate that consolidates support. To expand on that: Trump doesn’t need to “beat” the establishment for there to be a contested convention. There still might be one even if he tops out at 25 percent of the vote. The way you avoid one is if an establishment candidate can get 45-plus percent of the overall vote, which would probably lead to more than 50 percent of the delegates available.

clare.malone: I think they could take Trump out of things, but they would have to accede to some conservative faction demands in the platform.

natesilver: Yeah, let’s talk Trump. One thing that separates FiveThirtyEight’s position on Trump from a lot other places is that we haven’t necessarily expected his polls to decline immediately. We’re convinced he’s very unlikely to win the nomination; that does not mean he’ll self-combust any time soon.

There are a lot of barriers to his winning the nomination. One of them is whether his support in polls translates to actual votes. We’ll know a lot more about that after Iowa and New Hampshire. But another is that there’s still good reason to suspect he has a ceiling. And unless his ceiling is high enough to the point he can win a majority of delegates or come close to it, the party is going to do everything in its power to trip him up. Including a brokered convention, if necessary. That’s why I thought Costa’s reporting was so interesting (and insightful). It seemed to imply that the GOP would rather have a contested convention than resign itself to Trump winning.

clare.malone: Yeah, Trump said that himself:

“I’ll be disadvantaged,” he continued. “The deal-making, that’s my advantage. My disadvantage is that I’d be going up against guys who grew up with each other, who know each other intimately and I don’t know who they are, okay? That’s a big disadvantage. … These kind of guys stay close. They all know each other. They want each other to win.”

harry: Well, the contested convention gives them some chance of beating Trump. Trump getting a majority of delegates gives them no chance. And if they think Trump is poison, then they’ll hope for anything to avoid him winning.

natesilver: One other thing that people may not know. The GOP’s delegate math is somewhat fuzzy. In particular, there are various sorts of unbound delegates. This is much clearer in the case of the Democrats with their superdelegates, but there are some equivalent cases within the GOP. That maybe gives the GOP a 5-10 percent fudge factor, depending on how you count different categories of delegates. Usually, that fuzzy math helps the establishment to consolidate around a nominee. But the party could also seek to use those delegates to hold out for a contested convention rather than having to nominate Trump.

micah: All right, to close, assign probabilities to each of these eventualities. A contested convention would:

Result in a Trump nomination.Result in an establishment nominee who is currently running.Result in an establishment nominee not currently running.Result in Ted Cruz.Destroy the GOP.Other.

natesilver: No. 5 doesn’t seem to be mutually exclusive with the other choices.

micah: That’s on purpose.

natesilver:

10 percent35 percent20 percent35 percent

harry:

20 percent40 percent10 percent25 percent5 percent5 percent

clare.malone:

I think there is no chance of this.I give this a 70 percent probability.I don’t think this happens, either.30 percent chancedestroy the GOP — 50 percent

natesilver: It depends greatly on how close Trump is to winning the nomination. If he comes in with only one-third of the delegates, there’s no way that he gets the nomination. But if he’s at 45 percent, and the convention is a last-ditch effort to prevent him from getting to 51 percent, maybe he still gets over the top.

micah: Nate, you didn’t do Nos. 5 or 6. Clare, you didn’t answer No. 6.

natesilver: What does “other” mean?!?

clare.malone: I second Nate.

micah: An asteroid hits. Or, the GOP doesn’t nominate anyone; they just say “fuck it” and go home.

clare.malone: Mercy ruled.

natesilver: As long as the Warriors win 73+ games before that, I’d be cool with the asteroid.

micah: OK, just do No.5, the GOP is destroyed.

natesilver: The brokered convention would be the symptom of that and not the cause. In terms of the party’s long-run future: a brokered convention is bad, but a considerably less disastrous outcome for the GOP than a Trump nomination.

What If Ted Cruz Wins Iowa?

In this week’s 2016 Slack chat, we unpack the potential paths leading out of Iowa, depending on who wins there. As always, the transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, deputy editor, politics): A Monmouth survey came out yesterday showing Ted Cruz leading in Iowa — the first poll to show Cruz atop the GOP heap there. And overall, Cruz has crept into second place in the RealClearPolitics Iowa aggregate. So let’s break down the current state of play in Iowa and New Hampshire. To get us going: What happens if Cruz wins Iowa? Let’s say the Monmouth survey is dead on, and Cruz finishes first, Donald Trump second, Marco Rubio third and Ben Carson fourth. How do the dominoes fall?

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): First off, I think the Monmouth poll is a very good sign for Cruz. I’ve written about Cruz’s potential strength before, and a win in Iowa would put him on the national map. Further, unlike past Iowa winners such as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, Cruz’s numbers in New Hampshire are not terrible relative to the non-Trump candidates. It’s conceivable that Cruz could launch out of Iowa and not get tripped up in New Hampshire.

micah: He could win New Hampshire? He’s not really the type of candidate that typically wins New Hampshire, though, right?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): The tricky thing is that the bounce a candidate gets out of Iowa depends as much on the media’s expectations as how well he or she performs in an absolute sense. So, hypothetically, if Cruz is polling at 33 percent by the time we get to the caucuses, and he wins Iowa but with 23 percent of the vote instead, he might not get much of a bounce.

Leaving that aside, I don’t think a win in New Hampshire would be completely off the table for Cruz.

harry: I’d point to our five-ring circus that shows Cruz sitting on the overlap of the tea-party and Christian-conservative wings of the party:

As opposed to some past Iowa winners, like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who were more exclusively Christian conservative candidates.

natesilver: Yeah. There are plenty of tea party voters up in New Hampshire. It’s definitely not a good state for outright evangelical candidates, but Cruz is more than that and has more than a little bit of Pat Buchanan in him too.

micah: Cruz sounds pretty formidable according to you two.

harry: Well, it depends on Iowa.

micah: Does Cruz NEED Iowa?

natesilver: I don’t think Cruz wins New Hampshire if he doesn’t win Iowa. It’s certainly possible that Cruz wins Iowa, someone else wins New Hampshire, and then he comes back to win the nomination later in the race. Still, that’s contingent on him winning Iowa. So my answer is “yes,” to a first approximation.

harry: And further, it’s quite possible that Cruz wins Iowa and not New Hampshire. Say we have a close finish between Cruz and a rising Rubio in Iowa, then Rubio could easily win New Hampshire. Or if Chris Christie, whose favorable ratings have been climbing in Iowa, does better than expected even if he doesn’t finish in the top two, then he could win in New Hampshire.

micah: Harry is basically working for the Christie campaign at this point.

natesilver: To me, there are four basic cases in Iowa: Cruz wins, Trump wins, Rubio wins, and Carson/Huckabee/Santorum wins.

Likewise, there are four basic cases in New Hampshire: Cruz wins, Trump wins, Rubio wins, and Christie/Bush/Kasich wins.

Which would yield 16 possible scenarios, except some are implausible — I highly doubt that Rubio wins Iowa but Cruz wins New Hampshire, for instance.

micah: Yeah, and the reactions to Trump’s proposed ban of all Muslim immigrants and tourists really threw into relief who’s making a play in Iowa vs. New Hampshire. Christie/Bush/Kasich hit Trump much harder than Carson/Huckabee/Santorum.

Alright, let’s take the next scenario: Trump wins Iowa.

natesilver: BOOM!

micah: Who is that worse for? (Besides Nate.)

natesilver: DOOM! Seriously though, we’ve been saying for months that Trump could win Iowa or another early state. What we’ve said is that he’s quite unlikely to win the nomination. And he’d still probably be an underdog conditional on winning Iowa, although that depends on a lot of things.

What’s clear, though, is that if Trump gets a lot of people to turn up for him and vote in Iowa, that’s an epistemological game changer.

micah: That should be the name of your next book, Nate: “Epistemological Game Change.”

natesilver: Right now, there’s some reason to wonder about what Trump’s standing in the polls really means. Is it just drive-by voters gawking at the accident? Is it people recalling his name because he’s the only candidate they’re hearing about? Is it “unlikely voters” who will not turn out to vote in the primary or caucus? Or is it actual, genuine popularity that translates into votes? The media has tended to presume the latter — support in the polls is equivalent to votes — and has done an insufficient job of exploring alternative hypotheses, in my view.

But if Trump actually does get lots of people to vote for him — especially if he’s up toward say 30-35 percent of the vote instead of 20-25 percent — that changes a lot.

He’d still have some major hurdles to overcome. Other candidates will probably gain more as the field is winnowed. And the party will be doing everything in its power to stop him. But it’s a different ballgame at that point.

micah: OK, back to my question: Who is Trump winning in Iowa worse for?

harry: I think it’s Chris Christie.

micah: Explain.

harry: Well, I think Trump pulls from a similar moderate, macho-guy vote.

natesilver: Harry, you seem to be living in a fantasyland where Christie is a leading candidate. He’s got a shot, but it’s a bankshot.

micah: It’s a bank off a Trump collapse in Iowa, right?

harry: Well, who do YOU think it’s worse for? You got fingers. You got a computer. Speak, my young sir. Speak!

natesilver: Well, it depends on how the candidates line up behind Trump.

If it’s like Trump 30, Cruz 20, Carson 15, Rubio 8, that creates a huge opening for someone to emerge as the Great Establishment Hope. Which could be Christie, for all we know.

harry: One could also argue, Nate, that such a finish could demonstrate that the best the establishment can hope for is a candidate not named Trump. Therefore, there’s a rally around Cruz.

natesilver: But here we get back to how Cruz performs relative to expectations. And my guess is that those expectations will be fairly high. I doubt that Monmouth will be the last poll to show him ahead in Iowa. The narrative that comes out of Trump 30, Cruz 20, Carson 15, Rubio 8 is probably HOLY SHIT THE ESTABLISHMENT REALLY IS IN DISARRAY!!!!! Whether the establishment resigns itself to Cruz at that point or looks to Christie or Bush or Kasich instead, or starts stalking Mitt Romney, or even sticks with Rubio for want of alternatives, is hard to say.

micah: Next, let’s consider a more establishment-friendly eventuality: Rubio wins Iowa. Let’s say Cruz finishes second and Trump third.

natesilver: Then Rubio’s probably the nominee, and all of the fuss over the past six months will look pretty silly.

harry: And then Rubio will sweep the field. This is 2004 Democratic primary all over again.

micah: I think you’re both too confident in that. New Hampshire can get quite contrarian; let’s say Rubio wins Iowa, then Kasich/Christie/Jeb wins New Hampshire.

natesilver: Well, first, Kasich or Christie would have to make a lot of gains in the New Hampshire polls between now and February. Right now, they’re actually a pinch behind Rubio in New Hampshire, and he’s only going to gain ground if he wins Iowa.

micah: Well, I DO expect the polls to change a lot between now and February

natesilver: Sure, I do too. But that could put you in a GOP 2000 scenario. Rubio, the establishment-backed front-runner, wins Iowa. Christie — or whoever plays the role of John McCain — wins New Hampshire and a few liberal states. But it shapes up to be Rubio’s nomination.

harry: Let me also add that in 2000, George W. Bush had led in Iowa for a VERY long time. If anything, Steve Forbes outperformed and Bush underperformed in Iowa. Also, McCain led in the New Hampshire polls. And Bush still went on to win the whole thing with some ease.

micah: Yeah, Rubio would have to win Iowa but miss expectations.

natesilver: I’m not sure there’s enough room to the left of Rubio for someone like Christie in a world where Rubio looks formidable coming out of Iowa. I know that Rubio is a really conservative guy, but the GOP is a really conservative party. There are enough votes for someone like Christie in New Hampshire, but not nationally. Instead, they need Rubio to disappoint so the establishment starts casting about for alternatives.

harry: Right. I think there’s a consistency here: It’s almost as much about expectations as it is about the actual result in Iowa.

micah: OK, a final, catch-all scenario:

What if Carson/Huckabee/Santorum wins Iowa? Does that make you re-evaluate those candidates? Or does it make you think Iowa will be a one-off, sort of like it was when Huckabee won in it in 2008?

harry: I think this is the best scenario for Christie.

micah: CHRISTIE!

harry: It’s a total reset and none of those candidates you mentioned could carry New Hampshire.

natesilver: I think, given the history of how Huckabee and Santorum didn’t make all that much out of their Iowa wins, the media would tend to treat Iowa as a mulligan. Or not a mulligan exactly, but I think they’d look a lot at the second-place finisher. A finish like Carson-Rubio-Cruz-Trump is a pretty good outcome for Rubio, for instance.

The exception is that I don’t think Trump would get a lot of credit for finishing in second place, given the expectations he’s set for himself.

harry: It wasn’t for Mitt Romney in 2008: Finishing second in Iowa didn’t work. I think the question is where the polls are at the beginning of January. That probably gives us a good idea of what the expectations will eventually be for Feb. 1.

micah: To close: To win the nomination, do you have to win either Iowa or New Hampshire?

natesilver: The short answer is “no.” The medium-length answer is “yes, unless you’re the establishment’s leading hope despite not winning either state.” Usually, some candidate who’s acceptable to party elites wins Iowa or New Hampshire, if not both — and then the party consolidates around him and makes his path easier. Other party-backed alternatives drop out, meanwhile. But if, say, Carson wins Iowa and Trump wins New Hampshire, the party certainly isn’t going to give up the fight.

harry: Right. Remember Bill Clinton didn’t win either Iowa or New Hampshire in 1992. That’s because Iowa was won by Tom Harkin, who was from there. Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire. The party just waited for Clinton to win a Southern primary, and he was off to the races. If any one of the “acceptable” candidates wins Iowa or New Hampshire, then you have to win there to win. If only “unacceptable” candidates like Carson or Trump win there, then the eventual nominee doesn’t have to win Iowa or New Hampshire.

How Republicans And Polls Enable Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s probably unconstitutional1 proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States was soon denounced by … exactly who you might expect to denounce it. The three remaining Democratic candidates immediately condemned it. So did several Republican candidates — Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham — who are running in the New Hampshire “lane” of the GOP primary, hoping to cultivate more moderate voters.

The more conservative Republican candidates were slower on the draw. Marco Rubio waited three hours before saying (on Twitter) that he disagreed with Trump. Ted Cruz’s and Ben Carson’s campaigns clarified their candidates’ positions rather than saying much about Trump’s. Mike Huckabee, as of early Tuesday, still hadn’t commented.

It’s not obvious what Republican voters will think of Trump’s proposal — no pollster, as far as we can find, has directly asked about a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the U.S.2 Trump, however, evidently thinks his proposal is good politics: He retweeted a claim from Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent David Brody that the plan could “give [Trump] a boost with evangelicals,” a key group in the Iowa caucuses.

Cruz, Rubio and the other campaigns are arguably acting in their narrow best interest. Cruz’s campaign has been “drafting” off Trump’s for months, staying as close to it as possible without quite colliding with it. (It seems to be working: Cruz has been gaining in the polls, especially in Iowa.) Rubio has also been slowly but steadily improving in the polls and gradually adding endorsements to his tally. Kasich, Bush and Christie, who are struggling everywhere but New Hampshire, have much less to lose.

What’s more perplexing is the reluctance of Republican Party leaders to speak out against Trump. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan declined to comment on Trump’s anti-Muslim proposal, for instance. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus hadn’t issued any statement as of late Monday night. And of the past three Republican nominees — George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney — only McCain had said anything.

Perhaps these Republicans are waiting to craft the right language — Romney, in particular, has had no trouble criticizing Trump before. Or perhaps they think any such statements wouldn’t be helpful — or could even backfire, given the distrust of the establishment that the GOP base has. It’s not clear that the GOP has anything in the way of a living elder statesman or stateswoman who has unimpeachable credentials to speak up about Trump. In a poll conducted by Gallup last year, the most admired male politician among Republican voters was … Barack Obama, who was chosen by 8 percent of Republicans. (George W. Bush was next, at 3 percent.) Condoleezza Rice (9 percent), Hillary Clinton (5 percent) and Sarah Palin (4 percent) were the most admired female politicians among Republicans.

But it’s also possible that the Republican reluctance to criticize Trump stems from a surfeit of short-term thinking — combined with a possible misreading of the polls. Several times so far in the campaign, we’ve witnessed the following cycle:

Trump says something offensive or ludicrous.Some pundits loudly proclaim that it could bring about the end of Trump’s campaign.Instead, Trump’s position remains steady or even improved in ballot-test polls.3The same pundits therefore conclude that Trump is indestructible and impervious to criticism.

This is not a ridiculous interpretation. But there are some potential problems with it.

One is that most Republicans are still not paying all that much attention to the campaign. Some controversies that garner wall-to-wall coverage from the political press may only reach one-quarter to one-fifth of Americans at home. That mutes the impact of most things the candidates are doing. And any actual effects can easily be overwhelmed by noise in the polling, making it hard to make inferences about causality.

The second big problem is that in a field that still has 14 candidates, more media coverage — even negative media coverage — potentially helps a candidate to differentiate himself and thereby improve his position on the ballot test. In general, there has been a strong correlation between how well a candidate is performing on the ballot test and how much media coverage he’s receiving, although the causality is hard to determine. Trump seems to understand this; indeed, he seems to issue his most controversial remarks and proposals precisely at moments of perceived vulnerability.4

Put another way, the media’s obsession over the daily fluctuations in the polls — even when the polls don’t predict very much about voter behavior and don’t necessarily reflect people who are actually likely to vote — may help enable Trump. Republicans are afraid to criticize Trump in part because it rarely produces instant gratification in a “win-the-morning” political culture that keeps score based on polls.5 Without seeing any repercussions, Trump goes farther out on a limb, shifting the window of acceptable discourse along with him and making it harder to rebuke him the next time around.

UPDATE (Dec. 8, 1:35 p.m.): Although a Trump spokeswoman initially said the ban would include American citizens traveling abroad, Trump said in an interview on Tuesday morning that citizens would be able to travel freely.

2015-16 NBA Predictions

So What Happens If Alabama And/Or Clemson Lose?

That’s the big question going into this Sunday’s College Football Playoff selection. Our staff college football fans sat down to talk through the scenarios on Slack. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

blythe (Blythe Terrell, general editor): OK, so the conference championships are this weekend. The real test of our new College Football Playoff model is IMMINENT.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor-in-chief): Well, it’s not much of a test, since the scenarios are either pretty obvious or the model’s like all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

andrewflowers (Andrew Flowers, quantitative editor): Yeah, if Alabama and Clemson cruise to win their conference titles, this is an open-and-shut case: They both get into the playoff, alongside Oklahoma and the Big Ten winner. But if one or both lose, all hell will break loose.

natesilver: Probably where the model most disagrees with the conventional wisdom is in thinking Clemson might still have a pretty good shot — even with a loss.

andrewflowers: Exactly, @natesilver. That makes the ACC championship the most interesting game to watch. If Clemson loses, the playoff committee has a difficult job. Will UNC get in? Or could Stanford take their place if they win the Pac-12?

Or will Clemson sneak in despite losing?!

blythe: Part of me hopes it gets exciting (since I’ve got no team in the game). I want something weird to happen. And part of the model is trying to predict how the committee members will think, right?

natesilver: Yeah, the whole point of the model is that it’s trying to replicate human thinking. So since everyone else is all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about what happens if Clemson or Alabama loses, maybe that means it’s right in some sense!

What it can do, though, is think an extra step or two ahead. For instance, it recognized that Stanford still had an outside path to making it into the playoff even after Stanford’s second loss to Oregon a few weeks ago. Why? Because it knew that Stanford could potentially beat Notre Dame, then win the Pac-12 — and that might look pretty good to the committee.

Likewise, it recognized that a Big 12 team that got hot was likely to leapfrog Notre Dame — and it turned out that Oklahoma did exactly that, even before Notre Dame lost to Stanford.

blythe: Stanford sneaking in would make SOMEONE here happy (@allison)

allison (Allison McCann, visual journalist): AND WE DID BEAT NOTRE DAME!

blythe: Oh, yeah, what ever happened to the Irish?

andrewflowers: I get emails from Notre Dame fans asking for their playoff odds if they had beaten Stanford.

blythe: Everyone is on a quest for hope, Andrew.

natesilver: If there were a six-team playoff, like there should be, Notre Dame would be a bubble team right now. But maybe let’s get back to the cases at hand?

allison: Stanford is sitting with a 13 percent chance of making the playoff, but they almost certainly need a big-time loss from someone else this weekend, right?

andrewflowers: That’s right @allison — Alabama and/or Clemson need to lose for the Cardinal to get in.

blythe: So, the Big Ten winner gets in. And Oklahoma is a lock. That’s where we stand, right? Those are the two knowns?

natesilver: And that Alabama and Clemson are locks if they win. So there could be no drama at all, if the favorites win out.

blythe: Right. So the interesting scenarios …

allison: Yeah, forget favorites. Give us all the drama.

blythe: If Clemson loses and Alabama wins, then what?

allison: Does that make Ohio State next in line? (It’s NOT Stanford, which is garbage.)

andrewflowers: Our model is high on Clemson even if they lose; they have the highest odds to get in, at 42 percent (assuming Alabama wins). But the Pac-12 game really matters here. If Stanford beats USC, they might get in.

allison: I am completely unashamed of my favoritism here. Stanford could be more likely than Ohio State to make it in if they win that conference title! THAT’S WHAT ANDREW WROTE!

natesilver: Yeah, let’s unpack a few things here. First, the model thinks that four teams have a credible case — Stanford, Clemson, UNC and Ohio State. It likes Stanford’s chances a little better than UNC and Ohio State — if Stanford wins. And it puts Clemson right up there with Stanford, in defiance of the conventional wisdom I guess.

But when I think through the politics of the committee’s decision, I like Stanford’s chances a little better than the model does.

allison: Because of Condi???

andrewflowers: Think of it like this: if Clemson loses, they can point out they’ve played a more challenging schedule than UNC, and had a signature win over Notre Dame, too. And, relative to Stanford, they’d have fewer losses despite not winning their conference. It’s a tough call for the committee.

But the ultimate nightmare is if Clemson and Stanford lose. Will that pave the way for Ohio State to sneak in? Don’t sleep on the Buckeyes!

natesilver: @allison: I think the committee starts from the premise that it doesn’t have much respect for UNC and thinks they’d get demolished if they were in the playoff. So it wants to find an excuse to leave them out. But it has trouble taking Clemson over UNC when UNC just beat Clemson. How about Ohio State? Maybe, but they’re not a conference champion either — and frankly, if you’re going to take a one-loss nonchampion, Clemson’s resume is at least as good as Ohio State’s. That leaves Stanford. They’re a politically correct choice, having won their conference title and having played a much better schedule than UNC.

allison: And because of Condi ;-).

Okay fine, Andrew, I’ll go with you and consider losses from both Clemson and Stanford. You’ve written that our model consistently likes the Buckeyes more than the committee — why?

andrewflowers: Would the committee really pick UNC over Ohio State if the Tar Heels beat Clemson and Stanford also loses? That to me is the existential question. Lots of $$$ is involved in these selections. I don’t mean to sound too conspiratorial, but with Ohio State’s national football fanbase, it’d be awfully tempting to pick them.

blythe: Let’s look at another scenario. What if the Tide get rolled and the Tigers beat the Tar Heels? Then you have Florida as the SEC champ over ‘Bama. What does that do? Could a two-loss Gators team show up in the playoff?

andrewflowers: Um, no.

natesilver: Ohio State’s a fascinating case, @allison. Because, remember, the model’s job is to replicate human thinking. And it thinks humans should really like Ohio State for some pretty basic reasons. One-loss power conference team. Defending national champion. (That’s factored in implicitly in way the model uses Elo ratings, which carry over slightly from season to season.) Coming off a HUGE win against Michigan. Only loss was against another very good team, Michigan State.

But the narrative that developed around Ohio State was poor. I actually thought the Ezekiel Elliott comments after the Michigan State loss might have hurt them — it made it seem like they had blown their chance instead of reminding voters that this was a very good football team that had a chance to redeem itself against UM.

blythe: That Florida State loss was pretty brutal. So no Florida. But how does that change the picture? A ‘Bama loss and Clemson win?

andrewflowers: A ‘Bama loss is less of a headache than a Clemson one. Sorry Florida fans, but if you win, the SEC is getting shut out. Stanford is in pole position to make it if they win the Pac-12; and if they slip up, then Ohio State is waiting in the wings.

To be specific — Stanford has a 61 percent shot at the playoff if Alabama loses, Clemson wins and the Cardinal beat USC.

blythe: But ‘Bama is pretty unlikely to lose, right?

natesilver: Florida would have to DEMOLISH Alabama. If they win 42-3 or something … and Stanford loses … and the committee decides it really prefers conference champions after all, they might get a look.

andrewflowers: Very unlikely, @blythe. They’re 78 percent favorites.

natesilver: And having seen a bunch of Florida over the past few weeks … I’m not taking the 22 percent side of that bet.

blythe: OK, so the final scenario: If ‘Bama and Clemson both lose, then what? MAXIMUM CHAOS!

andrewflowers: In this nightmare scenario, Stanford is a great bet if they win the Pac-12 (62 percent). But, honestly, it gets messy real fast. Five teams possibly competing for two spots.

natesilver: Here’s something interesting, though. According to the model, Ohio State would rather have Alabama lose and Clemson win than both Alabama and Clemson lose.

andrewflowers: But don’t count out just-beaten Clemson, either: They’re right with the Cardinal at 59 percent. And that’s right, @natesilver — Buckeye fans should be rooting hard for Clemson.

blythe: This seems like the real ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ situation.

natesilver: They should be rooting for Clemson only if Alabama loses. If Alabama wins, though, they need Clemson to lose to have any shot at all. It’s like some weird prisoner’s dilemma.

blythe: As college football should be.

natesilver: But the thinking here is that if both Alabama and Clemson lose, the committee would resolve its UNC-Clemson “problem” by letting both teams in. Especially if Stanford loses, too.

andrewflowers: One last thing: We’d be remiss without mentioning how @natesilver rigged the model to favor Michigan State. The Spartans are obviously in if they beat undefeated Iowa; and vice versa for the Hawkeyes. Zzzzz…

natesilver: Ha! The main question is how far Sparty will move up into the top four with a win.

Excuse me — WHEN they win. Weirdly, it might be best for them to stay at No. 4 — because most computer rankings think No. 1 Clemson isn’t as strong as No. 2 Alabama or No. 3 Oklahoma.

andrewflowers: BTW, a strong Michigan State win makes Ohio State look good. Another thing for Buckeye fans to root for.

allison: Should I [Stanford fans] be rooting for a Michigan State or Iowa? What’s my prisoner’s dilemma here?

natesilver: Yeah, that could help Ohio State a bunch. Historically, the times when we’ve seen two teams from the same conference rank in the coaches poll or AP top four is when the second team’s only loss came to the team ranked ahead of it. Which works for Ohio State is Sparty wins, but not if it’s Iowa instead.

So you should be rooting for Iowa, @allison, because it makes Ohio State’s case weaker.

blythe: So basically, the likeliest situation is that ‘Bama and Clemson win their conference titles and everything is very boring (or great, depending on your team preference) with Oklahoma, Iowa/Michigan State, Clemson and ‘Bama. But we’ll see if UNC or Florida makes it interesting on Saturday.

andrewflowers: Should be fun!

Read more: All The Wild Scenarios That Could End The College Football Season

Big Phony And Loser Nate Silver Can’t Even See Donald Trump Is A Winner! What A Joke!

We’re talking Donald Trump — again — in this week’s 2016 Slack chat, but with a thespian twist. As always, the transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): OK, we’re going to do some role-playing today. We’ve been very skeptical of Donald Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination here at FiveThirtyEight. To really stress-test that position, Nate Silver, our editor in chief, is going to be his normal self (a Trump skeptic); Harry Enten, our senior political writer, is going to pretend he’s a Democratic-leaning political scientist who thinks the Republican Party is in a such a mood that Trump could win (we’ll call him “PhDemocrat”), and I’m going to play the role of a die-hard Trump fan named “Trumpfan1959” (drawing inspiration from the many Tweets and Facebook comments his supporters have sent us).

PhDemocrat: Nate, you always talk about small sample sizes, and there is perhaps no better case of a small size than presidential nomination races. We have had only 12 open primaries in which the “Party Decides” hypothesis — that the party establishment, including elected officials and party operatives, has a lot of control over who wins the nomination — has supposedly held true. So tell me why we should be putting so many chips on a theory with so little data backing it up?

natesilver: Well, PhDemocrat, if you wanted to argue that Trump’s chances are higher than zero, I’d agree with you. But the conventional wisdom isn’t just saying that Trump has a chance. It’s increasingly seeing him as one of the MOST LIKELY nominees. Betting markets — as good a quantification of the conventional wisdom as you’ll find on short notice — have him at 22 percent. Higher than Cruz. About twice where they have Jeb Bush. Trump is four times more likely to be the nominee than Christie is, they’re saying. I think 22 percent is too high.

It’s also significant that not only have Trump-like candidates not won, but they haven’t come particularly close to winning.

PhDemocrat: What is a Trump-like candidate? Part of the reason Trump-like candidates haven’t won is because they haven’t run. In most presidential primary campaigns, it’s only people who have held elected office who have run. The only examples of candidates like Trump running I can think of are Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, Herman Cain in 2012, and maybe Ben Fernandez in 1980. (Granted, Fernandez had experience in government.)

Trumpfan1959: Listen, if either of you ever left your East Coast liberal hangouts, you’d realize that there haven’t been any Trump-like candidates. This is someone who built a multi-billionaire dollar empire. He led a hugely successful reality show. He wins. We’ve never had a candidate like that, so the normal rules don’t apply.

natesilver: By a Trump-like candidate, guys, I mean someone who openly defies his party and whose party is openly rooting against him. It’s one thing to say that the party chooses its nominee. That’s not always true. But can the party prevent someone from hijacking its nomination when the consequences for it would be disastrous? My guess is that it can.

Also, we do have some empirical data on how non-politicians perform in campaigns. It’s not uncommon to see them in U.S. Senate races, for instance. And the answer is that they tend to perform poorly. They often fade down the stretch run — look at Meg Whitman in 2010, for example — because of a tendency to commit gaffes and a lack of organization on the ground-game side of things.

Trumpfan1959: Trump has committed plenty of “gaffes” — at least, according to you people — and he still leads every poll.

PhDemocrat: Yes, Nate, but they also win. David Perdue won in Georgia in 2014, for example, and he survived both a competitive primary and a general election campaign. And Perdue also committed some gaffes. What I hear from you is a lot of guessing.

natesilver: You guys are arguing against a straw man. I’m not saying it’s impossible for Trump to win. But it’s unlikely — less likely than betting markets and the conventional wisdom hold.

Also, there’s an important difference between a one-off election like a Senate or gubernatorial primary and a presidential nomination. In a presidential race, voters and the party establishment have time to read and react. You’ve had candidates like Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan win individual states before, but they haven’t been able to sustain their momentum.

Will an onslaught of super PAC ads against Trump hurt him or help him? I dunno! But the party has a lot of time to experiment until it finds the right formula.

Trumpfan1959: It seems to me that you have no idea what’s going to happen — maybe there’s zero empirical evidence that candidates like Trump can win, but there’s just as much evidence that candidates like Trump CAN’T win. Trump is dominating the race, media and polls. How is that not the best position to be in?

natesilver: Let me turn this around a bit. You both seem to be placing a lot of emphasis on Trump’s polls. I don’t think they mean very much.

Trumpfan1959: If Marco Rubio were winning, you’d be citing the polls all the time. You just don’t like what they show.

natesilver: Dude, this isn’t complicated. Go back and look at past polling frontrunners at this stage of the campaign. They have a poor track record. By contrast, go back and look at who was leading in general elections in late October. They have a very good track record.

The point of being empirical isn’t that you love polls. It’s that you learn from experience, and our experience tells us that polls aren’t reliable predictors at this stage of the race.

PhDemocrat: 1980: Reagan led in polls and won. 1984: Mondale led in polls and won. 1988: Bush led in polls and won. 1996: Dole led in polls and won. 2000: Bush and Gore led in polls and both won. 2012: Romney was top of polls for most of primary and won. That’s seven out of 12 times the person who led in the polls at this point has won. That’s greater than 50 percent. And it’s far greater than the chance you give to Trump at this point.

natesilver: Most of those candidates had far more of the vote in polls than Trump’s 25-30 percent.

PhDemocrat: Romney didn’t.

natesilver: But Romney had more room to grow because he had establishment support and was not a divisive figure within his party. It’s those qualities — the voters and elites consolidating around a broadly acceptable nominee — that historically allow candidates to zoom up from 25 percent to 50 percent or whatever once they win a few states.

But more importantly, voters aren’t paying a lot of attention. Only 20 percent or so of the voters in Iowa have come to a final decision. Half the voters in New Hampshire won’t decide until the final week of the campaign.

BTW, the same conventional wisdom that is increasingly keen on Trump’s chances also insisted for months that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was in disarray and that Joe Biden would enter the race.

Trumpfan1959: I don’t have much faith in that self-reported “when I decided” data.

PhDemocrat: Yeah, keep in mind that some 30 percent of voters in the 2012 general election claimed they didn’t decide whom to vote for until the last two months of the campaign. Twenty percent said they waited until the final month. But you and I both know that there are VERY few real swing voters deciding that late.

natesilver: It’s interesting to me that more legitimate sorts of Internet polls, which also have trouble drawing a random sample, show Trump doing a lot better than traditional random-digit-dial polls do.

As Harry said to me earlier today, Ann Selzer, who has as good a track record as anyone, doesn’t have Trump doing all that well in her Iowa polls. And she was the one who caught Obama’s surge of new voters in 2008.

You guys are also neglecting something else. Some voters may be coughing up Trump’s name in polls because he’s the only candidate they’ve been hearing about. The media has given his campaign more coverage than literally all the other Republicans combined.

Trumpfan1959: So why aren’t you citing that as a Trump advantage? He knows how to draw attention to himself. You don’t think Rand Paul or Lindsey Graham would kill to have that skill?

PhDemocrat: I’d still like to note that Nate, who prominently featured that exit poll data, should acknowledge that even though exit polls are good, they are not gospel, especially when it comes to people self-reporting when they decided. And I should note that even Ann Selzer gets it wrong once in a while. She had John Kerry carrying Iowa in 2004. That was wrong. She had the establishment candidate, Terry Branstad, winning the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary by 28 percentage points. He won by only 10 points. She’s good, but she isn’t perfect.

natesilver: Because coverage will probably tend to even out a bit as we get closer to the election. Also, voters will draw more from local news sources in addition to the national ones.

Trumpfan1959: This is all starting to sound very pundit-y.

natesilver: It was interesting that we saw Trump’s numbers wobble a bit after the first couple of debates. Also interesting that he seems to be a bit lower in Iowa, where voters are paying more attention, than everywhere else.

PhDemocrat, no pollster is perfect. Nor are we! But you and TrumpFan1959 are creating a moving target.

You say: WOW! LOOK AT TRUMP’S POLLZ!

I say: Polls don’t mean much at this stage and aren’t very predictive.

So then you say: you can’t prove they’re NOT predictive. Which is a much different standard.

Trumpfan1959:

nuff said.

PhDemocrat: Hold on a second. Hold on a second. No, what we’d say is that there is a strong correlation. Heck, there’s a strong correlation between polls from the first half of the year before the election and primary results. The polls aren’t perfect, but what we’d say is that more often than not the polling front-runner does win. And for you then to say, it’s only a 5 percent chance — that, I think, is wrong.

natesilver: A polling front-runner wins more often than not when the front-runner is at 50 percent in the polls, like Hillary Clinton is now. But Trump’s at 25-30 percent nationally and a bit less than that in Iowa. Also, if you built a simple model with polls and endorsements, it would not have Trump doing all that well.

I guess what it comes down to is that there’s a difference between saying “EVERYTHING LOOKS GREAT FOR TRUMP” and “THERE’S A LOT OF UNCERTAINTY ABOUT THE RACE.”

I emphatically agree with the second statement, not the former.

Trump doesn’t have the profile of a traditional nominee. Both in the sense of his running an anti-establishment campaign, and in terms of his metrics. Polling at 25-30 percent doesn’t mean all that much unless you have a lot of other things going for you too, which will allow you to continue adding support as you move through the process.

HOWEVER, none of the other candidates looks all that great either.

Rubio has a lot of upside potential, but it’s not like he’s sitting there with hundreds of endorsements. Cruz could be a perfect bridge between the establishment and insurgent sides of the party, or get the worst of both worlds — maybe he doesn’t win establishment backing either, but he can’t fire voters up as much as Trump does.

PhDemocrat: Exactly, none of the other candidates looks that good. None of them has raised a TON of money in non-super PAC cash. Trump has a ton of personal money if he needs to spend it. Let’s say you have Trump at 8 percent or whatever, and I have him at more than double that. You say there is uncertainty and so do I. But then you take that uncertainty and still peg Trump at only 8 percent to win. Here’s where I am: There’s a lot of uncertainty, so just because Trump leads now doesn’t mean he’ll win. But he has led in the polls, there is no clear money front-runner, there is no endorsement front-runner, Trump has money, GOP voters are upset, and the betting markets have Trump’s chance of winning north of 20 percent… So you know what? I’m going north of 20 percent too.

natesilver: A completely uninformed model would give Trump a 1 in 14 chance, since there are 14 candidates left. Which is 7 percent. So I’m actually pretty close to that.

But if you want to think about this in a technical way: it’s not just that Trump has no support from his party. It’s that the party is actively looking to stop him because he’d be a catastrophe as their nominee.

Endorsements are just a proxy for party support. Jim Gilmore doesn’t have any party support — or any endorsements to speak of — but he isn’t in the same category as Trump. If you were building a model, it’s as though you’d want to give Trump negative-100 endorsement points.

Trumpfan1959:

Read more: John Kasich’s Quiet Campaign To Cut Abortion Access

Will Your Holiday Flight Be On Time?

Thanksgiving is traditionally a driving holiday: AAA estimates that some 42 million Americans will travel by car to their Thanksgiving dinners this week. But there will also be about 3.6 million people taking to the skies — and enduring security lines, potential delays and a critical lack of real estate in the overhead compartments.

INTERACTIVE:Using detailed flight data from October 2014 through September 2015, we determined the best and worst airlines, airports and routes. Look up your local hub or plan your next flight »

Flying during the holidays can be anything but cheery, but our fastest flights finder is designed to help take the edge off. We’ve assessed airlines’ performance, delays at airports and the quickness of different routes, and we’ve just updated our tracker with the most recent year of

Pop over to the interactive to plan your travel over the winter holidays and to see the best airlines and airports for your upcoming trip. And enjoy your favorite regional Thanksgiving side dish on Thursday!

Dear Media, Stop Freaking Out About Donald Trump’s Polls

Lately, pundits and punters seem bullish on Donald Trump, whose chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination recently inched above 20 percent for the first time at the betting market Betfair. Perhaps the conventional wisdom assumes that the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris will play into Trump’s hands, or that Republicans really might be in disarray. If so, I can see where the case for Trump is coming from, although I’d still say a 20 percent chance is substantially too high.

Quite often, however, the Trump’s-really-got-a-chance! case is rooted almost entirely in polls. If nothing Trump has said so far has harmed his standing with Republicans, the argument goes, why should we expect him to fade later on?

One problem with this is that it’s not enough for Trump to merely avoid fading. Right now, he has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.) As the rest of the field consolidates around him, Trump will need to gain additional support to win the nomination. That might not be easy, since some Trump actions that appeal to a faction of the Republican electorate may alienate the rest of it. Trump’s favorability ratings are middling among Republicans (and awful among the broader electorate).

Trump will also have to get that 25 or 30 percent to go to the polls. For now, most surveys cover Republican-leaning adults or registered voters, rather than likely voters. Combine that with the poor response rates to polls and the fact that an increasing number of polls use nontraditional sampling methods, and it’s not clear how much overlap there is between the people included in these surveys and the relatively small share of Republicans who will turn up to vote in primaries and caucuses.

But there’s another, more fundamental problem. That 25 or 30 percent of the vote isn’t really Donald Trump’s for the keeping. In fact, it doesn’t belong to any candidate. If past nomination races are any guide, the vast majority of eventual Republican voters haven’t made up their minds yet.

It can be easy to forget it if you cover politics for a living, but most people aren’t paying all that much attention to the campaign right now. Certainly, voters are consuming some campaign-related news. Debate ratings are way up, and Google searches for topics related to the primaries1 have been running slightly ahead of where they were at a comparable point of the 2008 campaign, the last time both parties had open races. But most voters have a lot of competing priorities. Developments that can dominate a political news cycle, like Trump’s frenzied 90-minute speech in Iowa earlier this month, may reach only 20 percent or so of Americans.

We can look deeper into the Google search data for some evidence of this. In the chart below, I’ve tracked the aggregate share of primary-related searches in the 2008 and 2012 presidential cycles, based on the number of weeks before or after the Iowa caucuses.2 As you can see, public attention to the race starts out quite slow and only gradually accelerates — until just a week or two before Iowa, when it begins to boom. Interest continues to accelerate as Iowa, New Hampshire and the Super Tuesday states vote, before slowing down again once the outcome of the race has become clear.

To repeat: This burst of attention occurs quite late — usually when voters are days or weeks away from their primary or caucus. At this point in the 2012 nomination cycle, 10 weeks before the Iowa caucuses, only 16 percent of the eventual total of Google searches had been conducted. At this point in the 2008 cycle, only 8 percent had been. Voters are still in the early stages of their information-gathering process.

When should you start paying attention to the polls?

But maybe you don’t trust the Google search data. That’s OK; exit polls like this one have historically asked voters in Iowa and New Hampshire when they made their final decision on how to vote. These exit polls find that voters take their sweet time. In Iowa, on average, only 35 percent of voters had come to a final decision before the final month of the campaign. And in New Hampshire, only 29 percent had. (Why is the fraction lower in New Hampshire than in Iowa? Probably because voters there are waiting for the Iowa results before locking in their choice. In fact, about half of New Hampshire voters make up their minds in the final week of the campaign.)

SHARE OF IOWA VOTERS WHO DECIDEDELECTION> 1 MONTH OUT1 WEEK TO 1 MONTH OUTFINAL WEEK2004 Democrats30%27%42%2008 Republicans2831402008 Democrats4924272012 Republicans322146Iowa Average352639SHARE OF N.H. VOTERS WHO DECIDEDELECTION> 1 MONTH OUT1 WEEK TO 1 MONTH OUTFINAL WEEK2004 Democrats26%19%54%2008 Republicans2922502008 Democrats3417482012 Republicans282646New Hampshire Average292150

By comparison, voters decide much earlier in general elections. In Ohio in 2012, for example, 76 percent of voters had settled on Mitt Romney or Barack Obama by the end of September. This is why it’s common to see last-minute surges or busts in nomination races (think Rick Santorum or Howard Dean), but not in general elections.

If even by New Year’s Day (a month before the Iowa caucuses, which are scheduled for Feb. 1) only about one-third of Iowa voters will have come to their final decision, the percentage must be even lower now — perhaps something like 20 percent of voters are locked in. When you see an Iowa poll, you should keep in mind that the real situation looks something more like this:3

CANDIDATESUPPORT IN IOWAUndecided80%Donald Trump5Ben Carson4Ted Cruz3Marco Rubio2Jeb Bush1Carly Fiorina1Mike Huckabee1Chris Christie1

So, could Trump win? We confront two stubborn facts: first, that nobody remotely like Trump has won a major-party nomination in the modern era.4 And second, as is always a problem in analysis of presidential campaigns, we don’t have all that many data points, so unprecedented events can occur with some regularity. For my money, that adds up to Trump’s chances being higher than 0 but (considerably) less than 20 percent. Your mileage may vary. But you probably shouldn’t rely solely on the polls to make your case; it’s still too soon for that.

Read more: “The Perfect Republican Stump Speech”

Are The Patriots More Likely To Go Undefeated Than Lose In The Playoffs?

http://c.espnradio.com/s:5L8r1/audio/2616292/hottakedown_2015-11-17-190932.64k.mp3?ad_params=zones%3DPreroll%2CPreroll2%2CMidroll%2CMidroll2%2CMidroll3%2CMidroll4%2CMidroll5%2CMidroll6%2CPostroll%2CPostroll2%7Cstation_id%3D2786Subscribe: iTunes |Download |RSS |Video

Welcome to this week’s episode of Hot Takedown, our podcast where the hot sports takes of the week meet the numbers that prove them right or tear them down. On this week’s show (Nov. 17, 2015), Nate Silver sits in to discuss how Peyton Manning can solidify his all-time-great status and get benched in the same game. We also look at the New England Patriots’ fantastic start in the NFL and whether it suggests a perfect season is likely, talk to ESPN FC’s Mike Goodman about Chelsea’s awful start in the English Premier League, and get a significant digit on Ronda Rousey’s stunning defeat over the weekend.

Stream the episode by clicking the play button, or subscribe using one of the podcast clients we’ve linked to above. Links to what we discussed are here:

Neil Paine breaks down Manning’s brilliant career, and terrible Sunday.With or without Julian Edelman, the Patriots are more likely to win the Super Bowl after an undefeated season than they are to lose in the playoffs, says Ian O’Connor of ESPN.FiveThirtyEight breaks down Chelsea’s awful start.The Guardian looks at Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho’s magical run and whether it’s coming to a close.Peyton Manning is still the best

If you’re a fan of our podcasts, be sure to subscribe on iTunes and leave a rating/review. That helps spread the word to other listeners. And get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments. Tell us what you think, send us hot takes to discuss and tell us why we’re wrong.

How Will U.S. Voters React To The Paris Attacks?

The terror attacks in Paris on Friday will have diverse, global consequences. And although the effects on the U.S. presidential election are far from the most important, they do exist. So while Paris isn’t principally an election story, this week’s politics Slack chat deals with how the attacks might alter the 2016 campaign. As always, the transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Since the terror attacks in Paris, political analysts have put forward a number of — sometimes contradictory — theories of how the attacks will upend the Republican and Democratic presidential nomination contests. It does seem safe to say, at least in the short term, that foreign policy and national security will be paramount campaign issues. But what effect will the attacks have on the election long term? Let’s take these theories one by one:

Effect No. 1: The attacks will elevate the “more serious” candidates, while hurting Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who currently sit atop national Republican polls.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): First, our thoughts are with the people of France and others who were affected by this terrorist attack. In terms of politics, any effect assumes that people are listening to the statements that candidates are making in the first place. Patrick Ruffini over at Echelon Insights ran a very interesting Google Consumer Survey this weekend and found that the vast majority of adults hadn’t even heard Jeb Bush’s statement about Syrian refugees on Sunday.

Wrapped up a Google Consumer Survey testing recall of various comments made by candidates in recent weeks. Results: pic.twitter.com/z0WejnH6I2

— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) November 16, 2015

micah: So you don’t buy effect No. 1?

harry: I’m not saying that I don’t buy it. I’m merely saying that it’s difficult for anything any candidate says to break through. So I’m not sure that Carson or Trump not knowing what they’re talking about on foreign policy will make much of a difference.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): In the long run, it could elevate fitness-for-office, “red phone” types of questions. But it’s also possible that Republicans think of Trump, for instance, as being pretty darn presidential.

micah: So maybe we should differentiate between Carson and Trump?

natesilver: I guess I’m making a separate point, which is that the way that Acela Corridor elites see the candidates won’t necessarily match how voters see them. There were points during his rise four years ago that Newt Gingrich was viewed as highly “presidential” in polls, for instance.

With that said, it does seem as though the effects on Carson and Trump could be different, since Trump has placed so much more emphasis on national security.

Then again, the last Des Moines Register poll in Iowa found a plurality of Republicans calling Carson the “most presidential.”

harry: Here’s the thing: It will be very difficult to assign a Carson and/or Trump decline to any specific event. Most experts believed that Carson and Trump would not win the nomination anyway. Now, I think most people who analyze elections for a living believe the same thing.

natesilver:

harry: What’s the correlation about having the finger on the nuclear button and the horse race?

micah: That data does suggest that there is a chance voters will be less willing to “gamble” on Trump.

harry: I’m not sure that I agree with that, Micah. Here’s why: Take a look at the nuclear button question: 26 percent say Carson is most trusted with the nuclear button, and Carson gets 28 percent in the horse race in that poll. Fourteen percent trust Trump most, and he gets 19 percent in the horse race. There just isn’t that large of a difference. Maybe Carson and Trump do a little worse, but it’s not that much worse.

natesilver: I agree that most of this is a “halo effect.” I’m reminded of four years ago when lots of Republican voters described Newt Gingrich as “presidential.” People tend to become attracted to candidates for reasons they find hard to articulate. If they like one thing about them, they tend to think everything else is pretty groovy about them as well.

harry: Yeah, voters find who they like and then say they like them on issue questions, not the other way around.

micah: Nate, you seem to be a little all over the map here?

natesilver: I think there are a number of possible effects that are somewhere between marginal and unpredictable.

On the margin, it’s probably unhelpful for Trump or Carson for “red phone” questions to be elevated. But it’s probably not a huge effect. Meanwhile, it’s probably helpful for Trump that Islamic State is a big part of the story, since he’s been talking about it way more than the other candidates.

micah: Effect No. 2: The attacks in Paris will sideline economic issues, hurting Bernie Sanders’s chances in the Democratic primary.

harry: That implies that Sanders’s chances were high to begin with. I don’t think it has a major impact on the Democratic race.

natesilver: Yeah. It’s definitely not the focus that Sanders would prefer, which is why his campaign was pushing back against talking about Paris so much in the debate on Saturday. But at this point, the Democratic race is basically about whether there’s a major scandal or some other shoe to drop on Hillary Clinton.

It’s bad for Sanders in the sense that it gives him less time to talk from his economic playbook while he has a national audience. And it’s that national conversation that may be his goal more than actually winning office.

harry: One thing I want to point out is that there was a Pew Research Center survey from May that found that nearly as many Democrats were “very concerned” about global warming as were “very concerned” about Islamic State, so the Sanders pivot to global warming in the debate on Saturday night made a lot of sense.

If this race were more competitive, then sure, Clinton is probably helped. A CBS News poll released last week showed Democratic primary voters were a lot more confident in her ability to handle an international crisis than Sanders’s, but this race is probably over anyway unless Clinton drops out or does something tremendously wrong.

natesilver: To be honest, though, I wonder if we’re not being too short-term focused. We live in a troubled world. The news cycle can turn over pretty fast. For me, the questions are more about what comes out of this. In particular, (i) whether there are repeat attacks; (ii) what effect Paris has on the conversation about refugees and immigrants; (iii) what sort of military action might be taken against Islamic State and how involved the U.S. would be.

harry: That’s an interesting point about immigration. That’s where the focus seems to be right now. We’re talking about refugees being accepted by different states. If you have paid any attention to this race so far, you know the major Republican candidate who has been the most forceful on immigration: Donald Trump. How is a fight about immigration not being fought on his turf?

natesilver: And it’s interesting how even moderate blue-state Republican governors, like Rick Snyder in Michigan and Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, are talking about banning Syrian refugees. Definitely suggests that the debate on the GOP side is on Trump’s turf.

harry: At least for the time being — but again, the Iowa caucuses aren’t until Feb. 1.

micah: Effect No. 3: With the economy doing relatively well, Republicans have had to dance around a little to run a “challenger’s campaign” against President Obama (and, by the transitive property, the Democratic nominee). Since the attacks in Paris, GOP candidates have been unsparing in their criticism of Obama’s foreign policy. So if foreign policy stays a focus of the campaign, that helps the Republican nominee in the general election — especially because he or she can make the case against Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state too.

harry: Well, I sorta disagree with the premise of your question, but I agree with the larger point. As we previously talked about, I think (at least for now) the GOP is a slight favorite given the national conditions for 2016 if nothing else changes. Still, Pew found in July that — by a 10 percentage point margin — more Americans said the Republican Party was better able to handle a terrorist threat than the Democratic Party.

natesilver: As on the previous questions, I have some contradictory thoughts here. Sure, national security might be more of a Republican issue. But it may not be all that important an issue to voters, unless there’s an attack on the U.S. or the U.S. is putting a substantial number of troops on the ground somewhere. Even in 2004, in the shadow of both 9/11 and the Iraq War, only 19 percent of voters said terrorism was their most important issue, and 15 percent said Iraq.

Also, while at the margin a focus on national security might help Republicans, there are other marginal effects that could run in the opposite direction. In theory, there’s a rally-around-the-flag effect that could help the incumbent party (i.e., Democrats). And Clinton has more national security experience than the likely Republican nominees. With all that said, her defensiveness about national security during the debate changed my opinion about this some.

harry: Yes, but more Americans disapprove than approve of how Clinton handled her job as secretary of state, according to a recent YouGov survey:

I think on the whole it’s a net negative for Clinton for the focus to be on national security, especially given Benghazi. Americans are far more likely to disapprove than approve of her handling of that:

I agree with the larger point, though, that we don’t know what the focus of the race will be in a year, and it’s possible that this will not even be on the minds of most Americans then.

micah: Effect No. 4: A focus on national security hurts Marco Rubio’s chances because of his relative inexperience.

harry: Disagree. He’s one of the more hawkish of the bunch. If Republican voters become more hawkish in the wake of Paris, that helps Rubio.

natesilver: I think a more interesting question might be what it means for Jeb Bush.

harry: And what do you think it might mean for Jeb, Nathaniel Read Silver?

natesilver: It could plausibly cause some re-litigation of the Iraq War. (That also has reverberations for Clinton, of course.) Which is an interesting issue since there’s a huge split between the GOP and everyone else on the issue. Republicans still support the Iraq War 62-28, while independents are against it 26-65 and Democrats 16-78.

Perhaps related, a majority of Republicans favored using ground troops against the Islamic State even before Paris, while independents and Democrats did not.

harry: I’ll just say this on Bush: I don’t think he’ll win the nomination, but stuff like Paris proves why it’s stupid to dismiss (reasonable) candidates this cycle. Anything can change.

micah: All right, let me try to sum up the collective wisdom we’ve provided FiveThirtyEight readers in this chat:

It’s not clear how the attacks in Paris will affect the presidential race — and seeing how the attacks will have real, life-and-death consequences beyond politics — that’s where your focus should be.

harry: I think so, though this is an election issue. We just don’t know how it will affect the outcome as of yet.

natesilver: I mostly agree with that, Micah, but with the very important provision that the policy decisions that come out of Paris could have profound effects on both the campaign and the world.