Nate Silver's Blog, page 64

Silver Bulletpoints: Iowans Seem To Like Warren And Buttigieg

We’re less than two weeks from the Democrats’ first debate in Miami on June 26 and 27. I’m looking forward to the occasion — not so much because I’m eager to hear Bill de Blasio trying to drop some too-clever-by-half insults on the front-runners, but because the debates should help us exit a doldrums phase of the Democratic primary in which not a lot has been happening.

Until then, we’re left with some pretty slim pickings for Silver Bulletpoints. So I want to focus this week’s edition around the recent Selzer & Co. poll of Iowa, which was conducted on behalf of CNN, the Des Moines Register and Mediacom. While I’m a little bit reluctant to give that much attention to a single poll, this is one of the only recent high-quality polls of Iowa — and Selzer & Co. is pretty much as good as pollsters can get.

Bulletpoint No. 1: Things are looking up in Iowa for Warren and Buttigieg

The Selzer poll shows a closer race in Iowa than what we’ve been seeing nationally, with Joe Biden on top with 24 percent of the vote, followed by essentially a three-way tie for second with Bernie Sanders at 16 percent, Elizabeth Warren at 15 percent and Pete Buttigieg at 14 percent. Kamala Harris is next at 7 percent, with no one else above 2 percent.

That’s already a pretty decent result for Warren and Buttigieg — but, in fact, the poll is a bit better than it looks for them on the surface. Selzer also asked voters for favorability ratings on each candidate; I translated those ratings to a 5-point scale in which 5 means “very favorable” and 1 means “very unfavorable,” throwing out voters who didn’t know enough about a candidate to formulate an opinion.

On average, Buttigieg had the highest favorability ratings on the scale (4.1), with Harris (4.0) and Warren (4.0) close behind him. Biden’s (3.8) and Sanders’s (3.7) favorability ratings were decent but behind the top three. Meanwhile, while Cory Booker (3.7), Amy Klobuchar (3.6) and Beto O’Rourke (3.6) have little first-choice support, they retain decent favorables.

Buttigieg, Harris, Warren are viewed most favorably in Iowa

Favorability ratings in the Selzer & Co. Iowa poll, June 2-5, 2019

Candidate
Very fav.
Mostly fav.
Mostly unfav.
Very unfav.
Favorability score*
First-choice support




Buttigieg
32%
29%
7%
5%
4.1
14%


Harris
30
33
8
5
4.0
7


Warren
37
34
10
7
4.0
15


Biden
36
37
14
9
3.8
24


Sanders
32
38
17
8
3.7
16


Booker
20
36
13
6
3.7
1


Klobuchar
12
32
13
4
3.6
2


O’Rourke
15
39
13
8
3.6
2


Castro
7
27
10
4
3.5
1


Inslee
5
16
7
3
3.4
1


Bullock
5
14
8
2
3.4
0


Swalwell
5
17
9
4
3.3
0


Gillibrand
7
31
17
6
3.3
0


Hickenlooper
6
18
12
4
3.3
0


Bennet
3
16
9
3
3.3
1


Delaney
6
21
12
5
3.3
1


Yang
5
14
10
5
3.1
1


Moulton
3
9
8
3
3.0
0


Ryan
2
14
10
4
3.0
0


Gabbard
5
18
11
9
3.0
1


Williamson
2
7
11
7
2.5
0


de Blasio
2
14
27
13
2.4
0


Messam
1
1
6
3
2.2
0

* Calculated based on a weighted average of favorability ratings, giving a candidate 5 points for a “very favorable” rating, 4 points for “somewhat favorable,” 2 points for “somewhat unfavorable” and 1 point for “very unfavorable,” and ignoring voters who don’t know or don’t have an opinion about the candidate.

Favorability ratings were calculated by a weighting of 90 percent of the responses from those who plan to caucus in person and 10 person of responses from those who plan to participate in the caucuses virtually.

I don’t have any hard-and-fast rule about how much to emphasize favorability ratings against first-choice support. It’s probably worth noting that President Trump’s favorables were often mediocre in polls of 2016 Republican voters, but he won the nomination anyway. Still, the Selzer poll is consistent with a story where voters who are paying more attention to the campaign are ahead of the curve on Warren and Buttigieg. And Warren and Buttigieg are good candidates for Iowa with a legitimate shot to win there.

Related:















Bulletpoint No. 2: Who makes for a good Iowa candidate, and who’s campaigning there?

What do I mean by a good candidate for Iowa? If I designed a candidate in a lab to win the Iowa caucuses, I’d want them to have four characteristics:

Perform well with liberal voters, since voters in the Iowa caucuses are pretty liberal.
Perform well with white voters, since Iowa is pretty white.
Be strong retail campaigners with good organizational skills.
Be from the Midwest.

Warren checks three-and-a-quarter boxes: She polls well among white liberals, she has a strong organization in Iowa, and she sorta counts as Midwestern if you think of her as being from Oklahoma rather than Massachusetts (and if you count Oklahoma as Midwestern). Buttigieg checks at least three boxes: He overperforms with white voters (and underperforms with minorities), he’s Midwestern, and by most accounts he’s a good retail campaigner. Sanders also checks three boxes (everything except the Midwest one).

But are the candidates who are the most Iowa-appropriate actually campaigning there more often? Last month, my colleague Nathaniel Rakich looked at which candidates have campaigned the most in Iowa and New Hampshire. I’m going to provide a twist by accounting for how long a candidate has been in the race. For instance, John Delaney has spent the most days in Iowa, but he’s also been campaigning for president since July 2017 (!).

Bullock, O’Rourke and Ryan are focusing the most on Iowa

Share of days with an Iowa event since campaign launch for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, through June 12, 2019

Candidate
First day of CAMPAIGN
No. of Days
Days with Iowa events
Share of days with Iowa events




Bullock
5/14/19
30
7
23.3%


O’Rourke
3/14/19
91
19
20.9


Ryan
4/4/19
70
12
17.1


de Blasio
5/16/19
28
4
14.3


Swalwell
4/9/19
65
8
12.3


Williamson
1/28/19
136
15
11.0


Klobuchar
2/10/19
123
13
10.6


Warren
12/31/18
164
17
10.4


Sanders
2/19/19
114
11
9.6


Bennet
5/2/19
42
4
9.5


Gillibrand
1/15/19
149
14
9.4


Booker
2/1/19
132
12
9.1


Hickenlooper
3/4/19
101
9
8.9


Delaney
7/28/17
685
57
8.3


Biden
4/25/19
49
4
8.2


Buttigieg
1/23/19
141
11
7.8


Gabbard
1/11/19
153
11
7.2


Inslee
3/1/19
104
6
5.8


Yang
2/10/18
488
28
5.7


Castro
1/12/19
152
8
5.3


Harris
1/21/19
143
7
4.9


Moulton
4/22/19
52
1
1.9


Gravel
3/19/19
86
0
0.0

The five leading candidates in the most recent Selzer & Co. poll of Iowa are highlighted.

Campaign launch dates reflect when candidates formed an exploratory committee, even if they hadn’t formally launched their campaign, since candidates generally do engage in campaign-style events during the exploratory phase. However, events only count if they occurred on or after the launch date listed in the table.

Source: Des Moines Register Candidate Tracker

Measured by the proportion of days with an Iowa event since their campaigns began, the most Iowa-centric candidates have been Steve Bullock, O’Rourke and Tim Ryan. Among the top tier, Harris has spent a notably lower share of her time in Iowa than the others. Perhaps that makes sense — she doesn’t check a lot of the boxes I described above. But it may also explain why she isn’t converting high favorability ratings into much first-choice support.

Bulletpoint No. 3: Biden is falling back to the pack

Six weeks ago, amidst Biden’s polling surge, I put him an extra step ahead of the other Democrats in my periodically updating, not-to-be-taken-too-seriously presidential tiers, demoting Sanders, Buttigieg and Harris from tier 1b to tier 1c and leaving tier 1b blank to indicate the distance between Biden and everyone else.

But we’ve promised to make these tiers fairly polling-driven, and while the decline in Biden’s national numbers is predictable — pretty much all the previous candidates to get bounces have also seen them fade — I err on the side of paying more attention to Iowa and New Hampshire polls than to national ones. So that Selzer poll in Iowa is enough for me to repromote Sanders, Buttigieg and Harris back to tier 1b and to move Warren to there for the first time.

Nate’s not-to-be-taken-too-seriously presidential tiers

For the Democratic nomination, as revised on June 13, 2019

Tier
Sub-tier
Candidates




1
a
Biden



b
Warren ↑, Sanders ↑, Buttigieg ↑, Harris ↑


2
a
O’Rourke



b
Booker, Klobuchar


3
a
Yang, Castro, Abrams*



b
Inslee, Gillibrand, Gabbard



c
Bullock, Hickenlooper, Ryan, Bennet, de Blasio, Williamson

* Candidate is not yet officially running but may still do so.

For Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg, the case for promotion is reasonably clear. They’re all plausible Iowa winners — and if they win Iowa, they’ll have a pretty good shot at New Hampshire. I continue not to be super-duper impressed by Sanders’s polling, but he’s fairly consistently held on to second place nationally, and I’m not going to try to overthink things too much. Warren has some momentum, even if it’s a little overstated by the national media. Buttigeg’s modest name recognition could give him room to grow later, as he already seems to be doing in the early states.

Harris is the trickiest case, but her favorables remain pretty good, she’s a decent bet to do well at the debates, and it seems unlikely that a party in which 40 percent of voters are nonwhite is going to be entirely content choosing between three or four white candidates. All that said, Harris could also have a Marco Rubio-esque problem of being broadly acceptable but few voters’ first choice.

 

Politics Podcast: Is Elizabeth Warren Surging?

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver and Clare Malone, Galen Druke, Nate Silver and Clare Malone and Galen Druke, Nate Silver and Clare Malone












 












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Recent reports on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign have suggested that she is gaining traction in the Democratic primary based on the force of her policy proposals. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast crew examines whether that is actually reflected in the data. The team also discusses why former Vice President Joe Biden reversed his support for the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding of abortions in most cases, and what it says about the Democratic Party.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN app or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

What’s It Going To Take For You To Believe In The Raptors?

neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): Much to the surprise of the casual basketball-watching world, we’re three games into the NBA Finals and the Warriors are … DOWN 2-1. (Who could have seen a competitive series like this coming? ) But in all seriousness, this was also a game the Raptors absolutely needed to win if they wanted a chance to win the series, right? With not only Kevin Durant but also Klay Thompson scratched from the lineup, they were never going to get a better shot at a depleted version of the Warriors than this.

tchow (Tony Chow, video producer): Don’t forget Kevon Looney, Neil. But for sure, this was a must-win for Toronto.

chris.herring (Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): Yeah, there was definitely a must-win feel to this game. To their credit, the Raptors were really solid from start to finish. Steph Curry ate them for lunch, with 47 points, but he also pretty much had to do that, since no one else on his team could create any offense. I was really impressed by Toronto’s Kyle Lowry and Danny Green.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It was a VERY high-leverage game for a Game 3 because it really cuts both ways: Toronto needed the win, but also, with the loss, Golden State is in quite a bit of trouble now.

Having to win three out of four against a team that’s pretty thoroughly outplayed you so far is not terribly easy, even if you wave a wand and everyone is magically healthy.

tchow: Well, the FiveThirtyEight model still gives the Warriors 33 percent chance of winning the title. And 30-something-percent-chance things happen quite often, or so I’ve been told.

neil: Ooooh, Tony.

sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, assistant sports editor): If Toronto can’t beat a lineup that includes Quinn Cook, Jonas Jerebko and Andrew Bogut, that’s a problem.

neil: Right, the Warriors would be more panicked if they had rolled out Klay and KD and still lost. At least now they can still tell themselves that the “injured guys returning” trump card exists.

natesilver: Handicappers still have the Warriors as ever-so-slight favorites, though pretty close to 50/50. So our model is still a little out of line with the consensus.

tchow: Handicappers are really not appreciating what Toronto has done this series.

sara.ziegler: No one believes in the Raptors!

neil: (Still.)

sara.ziegler: (Except us, obviously.)

natesilver: Yeah, it’s a bit nuts. Like, this could easily be a 3-0 series. Toronto clearly played better in the two wins, and Game 2 could have gone differently if they’d hit more shots.

chris.herring: I do think there’s something to be said for how much the matchups differ with GSW’s main guys healthy.

neil: For sure.

natesilver: To me, the Warriors with KD and Klay back (but without Looney, although he has a shot to return) feel like about a 50/50 proposition to win three out of four games (one of which would probably have to be a Game 7 on the road).

chris.herring: With a healthy Durant, Kawhi Leonard presumably has far less energy for offense — regardless of whether Durant is rusty. Wednesday was Golden State’s worst-case scenario, basically.

natesilver: Yeah, Golden State’s problem has really been on defense so far.

chris.herring: Yes, 100 percent.

I used to think the worst-case was, “What if Durant throws off their rhythm?” But it’s clear that just having him there, rhythm or not, would help them a great deal. Even more so with Klay being back, too.

neil: The Warriors put Draymond Green on Kawhi, and it didn’t really work. Leonard scored 15 on Green with 5-of-8 shooting. But they needed Andre Iguodala on Pascal Siakam for a good chunk of the game (which worked well in Game 2). Klay being out really messed with their ability to match up defensively.

chris.herring: Their defense was horrendous at times on Wednesday. DeMarcus Cousins was really problematic defensively and just looked a mess.

natesilver: But, also, Toronto is goooooooooood, we certainly don’t know that KD is healthy, and even if GSW is slightly better at full strength, Toronto has a game in hand.

And in some ways, our model is being generous to the Warriors. Like, it’s treating Cousins as fully effective, which he obviously isn’t.

neil: Yes, the Warriors really needed Cousins to provide extra scoring punch. But he struggled a lot — he only scored 4 points on 1-for-7 shooting. Steph scored 47 points, but the rest of the team only scored 62 total. Only three Warriors scored in double figures. Even Curry can’t do it alone.

sara.ziegler: ^^^ that point share is just amazing

neil: Curry also led the Warriors in assists AND rebounds!

natesilver: In my series preview, I talked about how Klay and KD aren’t super compatible with one another. But being without BOTH is really tough. The Warriors constructed a team around not really needing a lot of usage or shot creation because you have so much of it with those three guys. But it means some of the lineups you put out there when two of them are hurt are pretty terrible.

chris.herring: I saw a pretty wild stat: A handful of guys1 have scored 43 percent or more of their team’s points in a finals game the past 10 years. Every single one of those showings was in a losing effort.

natesilver: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the Warriors could really use like a … Michael Beasley type to score points off the bench.

sara.ziegler:

chris.herring: I can’t believe you’re saying that, either! He would make the defensive issues worse! But I totally know what you mean, and there’s probably some merit to that

Nick Young served that purpose once upon a time, though they used him as more of an off-ball sort of guy. The truth is, Klay’s absence hurts them there, too, because they always use him with the second unit.

natesilver: I’m just saying that a guy who can rule the garbage-time minutes is worth something.

chris.herring: Absolutely.

natesilver: Especially if the Raptors were tending to sub out Kawhi at the same time the Warriors had some of their weaker lineups on the floor, which IIRC was mostly true on Wednesday.

chris.herring: The truth is, there wasn’t enough shooting. And not enough shot creation, as Nate is saying. They Warriors made a grand total of two shots off the dribble that weren’t from Steph himself, according to ESPN Stats & Information Group. That’s just not enough.

neil: Toronto was better (+8) with Kawhi off the court than on (+6), which speaks to those sub patterns, Nate. I’d think that can’t be true if you’re going to beat Toronto.

natesilver: I almost wonder if that was a mistake on Nick Nurse’s part — having Leonard out there during those non-Curry lineups. The Warriors’ lineups without Steph were so bad — basically a lottery/G League team — that maybe you want to maximize those opportunities.

sara.ziegler: No Golden State player had a positive plus-minus on Wednesday, but the bench actually had higher numbers than any of the starters — even Curry.

chris.herring: I was pretty surprised by just how bad Cousins looked. Especially after a really, really good Game 2 from him.

neil: Yeah, after that double-double, I think people were ready to declare, “He’s back!”

tchow: I think everyone was expecting a repeat of his Game 2 performance or something better.

chris.herring: But he also wasn’t being relied on to play like a star for most of Game 2. Without Klay, the role became bigger. And he just didn’t look himself.

natesilver: I’ll make the obligatory video game analogy, but with Cousins, it’s a bit like if you took the same shell of a player and tuned all his attributes down by 10 points. He looks sorta like himself, but just a much worse version of himself.

chris.herring: A MUCH worse version. Sliders all the way down.

A couple of really costly plays, including one where he fell down, appeared to want a foul call, and as he sat on the ground, Kawhi hit a backbreaking three in transition.

natesilver: And again, I wonder if our model is not being too optimistic about how well, say, KD will play upon his return.

He’s not even really practicing yet. You’d have to imagine that if it were the regular season, they’d take another week to figure it out before even considering giving him playing time in a game.

neil: I wonder how much of the “Warriors are hopeful KD might return for Game 4” talk is situational. They wouldn’t be saying that if they were up 2-1.

sara.ziegler: I’ll believe he’s healthy when I see him on the court.

natesilver: Mayyyyybe it’s a good sign for KD’s return that the Warriors didn’t feel the need to rush Klay out there on Wednesday?

Because 2-1 is a pretty devastating disadvantage if you don’t think you’re getting Durant back. With him, not quite as scary.

neil: Did they need Klay dressed and on the bench just to literally meet the minimum requirement for warm bodies necessary for a game?

sara.ziegler: LOL

natesilver: I wonder if there’s a part of the Raptors that almost wants all those guys to get healthy. Because if the Raptors win, the narrative about the series will probably be, “Oh yeah, that was the year everyone got hurt.”

neil: Well, I definitely wanted to talk about that, Nate. Will this series carry questions of whether they really beat THE Warriors?

tchow: I definitely think so. They don’t want any asterisk next to their win if they do win the whole thing.

neil: It’s like the Ship of Theseus. How many All-Stars can the Warriors lose before they’re not really THE Warriors anymore?

natesilver: At some point on Wednesday — I think the Vegas closing line had the Warriors by 4 or something? — people were just believing in the laundry, as Jerry Seinfeld might say.

neil:

tchow: Let’s say the Warriors never come back fully 100 percent at all during these finals and the Raptors win their first ring. I think it’ll be really unfair to diminish what Toronto has done to get that banner to say it’s only because the Warriors aren’t healthy. You play the team in front of you.

natesilver: It was a lot like some of the LeBron James series where the Cavs were depleted (i.e. pretty much all of the Cavs’ finals except 2016) where it’s just like — even if the guy’s the best player in the world, there’s only so much he can do by himself.

tchow: There was a similar narrative when Kawhi got hurt when the Spurs played the Warriors, and I wasn’t a fan of it then either.

natesilver: Michael Jordan isn’t winning the finals if he had Shaun Livingston and injured-ass DeMarcus Cousins in your starting lineup

chris.herring: Steve Kerr is talking right now here at practice. Klay will play tomorrow, barring a setback. He said Durant won’t, though.

natesilver:

chris.herring: Said Durant won’t be scrimmaging today like he initially hoped, and that they’ll play it out over the next couple of days.

natesilver: Gotta go update the model.

tchow: Do you believe him, Chris?

chris.herring: I do believe him.

It still sounds like it’s fair to ask whether Durant will be able to make it back at all.

sara.ziegler: ding ding ding

natesilver: Speaking of LeBron, it feels a little bit like with the Lakers this year how LeBron’s timetable kept slipping back.

chris.herring: I honestly thought Klay would play in Game 3, so I definitely feel like he will for Game 4. But the Durant news is concerning, for sure.

neil: Sounds like Klay honestly thought he would play too.

chris.herring: Klay was going to make an argument to be out there regardless.

sara.ziegler: Klay wanted to play SO BAD.

neil: He probably would have played better than Shaun Livingston anyway.

chris.herring: Kerr took a really good question from The Athletic’s Joe Vardon on Wednesday: If there’s any concern that he could make things worse, will he play tonight? And Kerr essentially said, that’s the whole issue. If he was still at a place where he could potentially injure himself worse, they didn’t want to risk it. Which makes sense, but they are running out of time — concerning the Durant injury, too.

natesilver: I mean … if they throw Durant out there down 3-1 in the series, he has a chance to be a hero, I guess!

tchow: Oh, man, can you imagine if they come back from 3-1 down to win it?

neil: Imagine the memes.

sara.ziegler: Cavs fans would be MAD.

chris.herring: I think maybe Knick fans would be mad if Durant led them back from 3-1.

Kerr is trying to clarify that there wasn’t a setback with Durant, by the way. For whatever it’s worth.

natesilver: I mean, it sounds like there was a setback if he was supposed to scrimmage and then didn’t?

neil: They’re going to be “optimistic” that he’s on a timetable to return by Game 8. Maybe Game 9.

natesilver: Not that I want to put too much weight on this, but KD didn’t look particularly limber in those images of him in the tunnel and what not.

neil: You’ve been spending a lot of time updating our injury spreadsheet, Nate. Were you breaking down that footage like the Zapruder tape?

sara.ziegler:

tchow: I feel like every NBA fan has become a body language doctor, especially after watching this series.

chris.herring: May be double talk, I guess. Kerr basically said that he hoped KD might be able to scrimmage. But that was merely a hope, not an expectation that he would for sure. I think it’s fair to parse it, though.

natesilver: It’s hard to know what to do with some of this, Neil! Since we literally do have to quantify injuries in our spreadsheet, there’s a fair amount of guesswork involved. And to some extent, sure, I’ll pay attention to fairly subtle signs.

chris.herring: It is interesting that the Warriors may get Looney back at some point. But that and Klay, without Durant, will feel like getting a $10 refund when you’re still owed $20.

natesilver: I guess “KD saves the Warriors” pretty much is the nightmare scenario for the Knicks, though. Although at this point, maybe even if that happens, KD would just be like, “I saved your asses and now you can go eff off anyway because I’m going to New York.”

chris.herring: This whole series has been so weird. I really would like to see both teams at full strength. I’m convinced it would be a great series that way. Maybe it still will be.

neil: Have there been any other finals in recent memory that was so ruled by injury reports? Maybe that Cavs-Warriors series with Love and Kyrie both out?

sara.ziegler: Ban injuries, Chris!

neil: Speaking of NBA2K, gotta toggle the injuries off for your franchise next time, Adam Silver.

natesilver: Let’s remember that the Raptors’ two wins have come by 9 points and 14 points, respectively. Those are pretty solid margins. I know you can’t be quite this linear because of gameflow and all that, but our model figures that a healthy Warriors team is maybe 6-ish points per game better than the version they’ve been putting out there, so maybe Games 1 and 3 are still narrow wins for the Raptors.

neil: And yet, didn’t it feel at times down the stretch of Game 3 that maybe — mayyyyyyybe — the Warriors would make a push?

tchow: Yes! Everytime they cut it to 8 or 9, I was like, “here we go.”

neil: That was the least safe-feeling 10-point lead ever.

natesilver: They were on the verge of being on the verge, but never on the verge.

I think the 14-point scoreline pretty accurately reflected how competitive the game was.

tchow: Credit to Toronto for making shot after shot to not allow the comeback to really have momentum.

natesilver: They did sink a lot of shots, yeah. Except in that stretch in the second quarter. But they don’t squander very many possessions on EITHER end, and that counts for a LOT.

tchow: I can replay four or five possessions in my head right now of a Toronto shot that I was positive was not going to go in and would allow the Warriors to cut it to a two-possession game, but either Lowry with a ridiculous three or Danny Green with a shot-clock-beating three or Fred VanVleet with a rainbow, they all seemed to go in at the right time.

chris.herring: It’s weird. I actually didn’t ever feel like the Warriors were RIGHT there. Partly because you knew they weren’t capable of the same sorts of runs we’ve grown accustomed to without the same sort of firepower on the court.

Steph can’t do all that by himself.

But yeah: The Raptors never let it get any closer than 7 down the stretch. They hit a big shot every time they needed one.

sara.ziegler: Is it all about who you’re rooting for? Cuz I was sure the Warriors were coming back.

neil: (Sara is pro-FiveThirtyEight model pre-series projection, and therefore staunchly pro-Raptors.)

sara.ziegler: (Obviously.)

natesilver: The Warriors’ third-quarter comebacks are also not something magical, though. It’s about having so much weaponry that they’re almost impossible to beat when they’re locked in and maybe the other team is worn down a bit.

But you take away that weaponry, and you can’t have the shock-and-awe type comeback.

chris.herring: Exactly.

sara.ziegler: Nate, IT IS MAGIC.

Stop using your fancy analytics talk.

natesilver: It FEELS like magic in part because KD, Curry and Klay all have such nice shooting form and such uncanny ability to drain shots from anywhere on the floor. So it LOOKS like they aren’t even working for it.

But you take two of those guys off the floor, and even with Curry scoring 47, it’s pretty hard to overcome a 10-ish-point deficit against a good opponent, even at home.

chris.herring: Especially when you’re defending the way they were. The Raptors scored on five possessions in a row between the eight- and five-minute mark in the fourth quarter. That was essentially all she wrote at that point.

neil: It is worth pointing out that they did have two recent All-Stars in that game in Curry and Draymond. (Plus another one in Cousins, which perhaps shouldn’t count.) How many other teams would love “only” that many stars?

natesilver: The thing about Draymond is that he’s maybe one of the 10 best guys in the league to be in your lineup if you already have Curry/KD/Klay. But if you were starting a team from scratch, he might be, like, 40th? Because he doesn’t provide enough scoring punch.

neil: Right, they are the wrong kind of All-Stars.

But it kind of speaks to how insanely stacked the Warriors are at full strength that it feels like they are now, idk, the Atlanta Hawks or something.

tchow: Orlando Magic.

natesilver: FYI, the Warriors’ odds just fell from 33 percent to 29 percent (exactly what Trump’s were on ELECTION DAY!!!!) when I updated the model with Klay being healthy for Game 4 but KD’s timetable being a little pushed back.

chris.herring: Nate is setting himself up for attacks from all sorts of people who don’t understand probability in case the Warriors win.

tchow: That’s what I’m saying!

natesilver: Oh, those will happen anyway, Chris.

tchow: Déjà vu!

chris.herring:

From ABC News:

Check out our latest NBA predictions .

Politics Podcast: Should Washington, D.C., Be The 51st State?

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In recent months, Democrats have stepped up their push to make Washington, D.C., a state. They’ve introduced statehood bills in both the House and Senate, and next month, the House will have its first hearing on the issue in 26 years.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Nate and Galen head to the District to discuss the issue with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Passage in the House could happen during the current Congress, but convincing Senate Republicans to grant statehood to a largely Democratic area is another story.

FiveThirtyEight On The Road is brought to you by WeWork. You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes , the ESPN app or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen .

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Bernie Sanders Has The Highest Floor — And It’s Pretty Damn Low

Today is June 6, that time of year that astronomers say is spring, meteorologists say is summer, and fancy-assed salad chains say is “early summer” and charge you $14 for a delicious bowl of greens that will leave you hungry three hours later. This is Silver Bulletpoints, the column where we tackle three topics related to the 2020 Democratic primary in 300 words or less.

Bulletpoint No. 1: Everybody has a low floor

Bernie Sanders has been getting better news in the polls recently, generally polling in the high teens instead of the mid-teens, as he was immediately after Joe Biden entered the race. It’s not a huge shift, and Sanders is off his March peak in the mid-20s. But he’s consolidated his hold on second place, while Biden’s numbers have declined slightly.

A recent YouGov poll, which asked Democrats to list all the candidates they were considering rather than requiring them to pick just one, also seems to suggest that Sanders has a relatively high floor of support. Among Democrats who were considering only one candidate, 28 percent were considering only Sanders, and 27 percent were considering only Biden. Everyone else was in the single digits on this question.

Here’s the catch, though: Only 28 percent of Democrats fell into the category of considering only one candidate. (By comparison, 67 percent are still considering multiple candidates, and 5 percent aren’t considering any current candidates.) So Sanders isn’t getting 28 percent of 100 percent — he’s getting 28 percent of 28 percent. That means just 8 percent of the overall Democratic electorate truly falls into the “Bernie or bust” category.

A different way to look at the Democratic electorate

Share of Democratic voters considering one candidate vs. multiple candidates, according to a May 18-21 poll

CATEGORY
Share of voters




Considering multiple candidates
67%

–
–



Bernie Sanders or bust
8

–
–



Joe Biden or bust
8

–
–



Someone else or bust
6

–
–



Not considering any current candidates
5

–
–



Elizabeth Warren or bust
3

–
–



Beto O’Rourke or bust
1

–
–



Cory Booker or bust
1

–
–



Pete Buttigieg or bust
1

–
–



Kamala Harris or bust
1

–
–

Source: YouGov

So while Sanders might have a slightly higher floor than other candidates — about half of the voters who currently prefer Sanders are only considering Sanders — it’s still pretty low in the broader scheme of things. About two-thirds of Democratic voters are still up for grabs, and they’re probably going to take their time to make a decision.

Bulletpoint No. 2: Actually, the candidates care about Iowa and New Hampshire just as much as ever

The New York Times’s Jonathan Martin recently made a claim that struck some of us in the office as dubious: that various factors “have created more of a national primary than ever before,” different from past campaigns when candidates would spend “the vast majority of their time in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

What’s Martin’s evidence? Democrats “have already combined to visit more than 30 states and territories … far more than in any past nominating contest,” he writes. But that doesn’t really prove the point. There are far more Democratic candidates than ever before, 23 by the Times’s count, and the campaign has gotten off to an earlier start than usual. It’s a lot easier to cover 50 states with that many candidates. And while there may have been a stray visit to Idaho or Mississippi, Democrats have already combined to hold around 800 events in Iowa and 500 in New Hampshire.

We don’t have a comprehensive list of candidate visits in every state, but we do have an extensive database of polls. The amount of polling in a state is generally a good proxy for the amount of attention that campaigns and the media are paying to it, since polling primary voters is expensive and organizations investing in polls want their results to be newsworthy.

So far, Iowa and New Hampshire are getting as much attention from pollsters as ever. They’ve combined for 40 percent of the state polls so far in our database, a slightly larger share than the long-term average of 35 percent in the year before the primary.

Pollsters are focusing on Iowa and N.H. as much as usual

Number of presidential polls in the year before the primary, by state

Year
Party
Iowa
New Hampshire
All states
Share of polls in IA and NH




1980
D
3
5
26
31%

–
–



1980
R
3
3
13
46

–
–



1984
D
5
6
18
61

–
–



1988
D
13
14
40
68

–
–



1988
R
7
12
35
54

–
–



1992
D
3
9
36
33

–
–



1992
R
0
4
7
57

–
–



1996
R
10
11
65
32

–
–



2000
D
9
39
124
39

–
–



2000
R
10
36
103
45

–
–



2004
D
22
49
165
43

–
–



2008
D
78
66
472
31

–
–



2008
R
79
67
475
31

–
–



2012
R
67
46
280
40

–
–



2016
D
24
42
216
31

–
–



2016
R
29
54
293
28

–
–



2020*
D
10
12
55
40

–
–



2020*
R
2
6
21
38

–
–



Total

374
481
2,444
35

–
–

* Through June 4

There may be less emphasis on Iowa and New Hampshire now than there was in the 1980s. But there’s no evidence that it’s less than in recent campaigns.

Bulletpoint No. 3: Younger Democrats care less about electability. Here’s a theory about why.

It’s no secret that older Democrats are more moderate than younger ones. Relatedly, older Democrats put more emphasis on electability. Last month’s Monmouth University New Hampshire poll asked Democrats whether they’d prefer a “Democrat [they] agree with on most issues but would have a hard time beating Donald Trump or a Democrat [they] do not agree with on most issues but would be a stronger candidate against Trump.” Among Democrats 65 or older, only 13 percent wanted the candidate they agreed with if the candidate would have a hard time beating Trump. But among Democrats younger than 50, 42 percent were willing to take a chance on the less electable candidate.

Share of New Hampshire Democrats who would prioritize issue agreement with a candidate vs. a candidate’s ability to beat Trump, according to a May 2-7 poll

Age
Agree on issues
Stronger against Trump




18-49
42%
55%


50-64
20
71


65
13
76

SOURCE: MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY

The cause and effect is difficult to sort out. Maybe younger voters deemphasize electability because they’re more liberal and think the concept is being used to prop up more moderate, establishment friendly candidates like Biden.

But it’s at least possible that some of the causality runs the other way: Younger voters are more liberal because their lived experience gives them less reason to think there’s an electoral penalty for liberalism.

Consider the experience of 27-year-old voters. As they were coming of age, they’d have seen George W. Bush’s popularity fall to pieces and a guy named Barack Hussein Obama upend the Hillary Clinton juggernaut and win in a landslide against John McCain. Then they’d have seen the supposedly cautious and “electable” Clinton lose to Trump.

This analysis has several issues, including that voters actually saw Trump as more moderate than Clinton in 2016. Still, younger Democrats don’t have a lot of the memories that might scare older Democrats, such as the landslide defeats of George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale, or the electoral success of Bill Clinton running on a more moderate platform.




From ABC News:

Politics Podcast: How Candidates Are Handling The ‘Electability’ Question

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux












 












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More women are running in the Democratic presidential primary than ever before. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses what we know about how voters respond to female candidates and how different women in the race are addressing questions about their identity. The team also weighs the upsides and downsides of President Trump’s decision to double down on his strategy to use tariffs as a negotiating tactic.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN app or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Politics Podcast: How Candidates Are Handling The ‘Electability’ Question

By Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Galen Druke, Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux












 












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More women are running in the Democratic presidential primary than ever before. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses what we know about how voters respond to female candidates and how different women in the race are addressing questions about their identity. The team also weighs the upsides and downsides of President Trump’s decision to double down on his strategy to use tariffs as a negotiating tactic.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN app or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast publishes Monday evenings, with additional episodes throughout the week. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes . Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

Silver Bulletpoints: Who’s In Danger Of Missing The Third Debate?

Welcome to a special edition of Silver Bulletpoints, where today we’ll fire all three of our bulletpoints at one topic: the DNC’s decision to substantially tighten the qualifying criteria for the third presidential debate, which will take place on Sept. 12 and 13 on ABC News.1

For the third debate, candidates will need to meet both a polling threshold and a fundraising threshold to qualify — previously it was just one or the other. And those thresholds have been raised from what they were before:

Instead of needing 65,000 unique donors to qualify, candidates will need 130,000.
Instead of needing to achieve 1 percent in each of three polls, candidates need to hit 2 percent in each of four polls released between June 28 and August 28. The criteria for which polls qualify has also been amended slightly.

This is an important change, one that could serve to quickly winnow the field from 22 candidates to a dozen or fewer. Of course, candidates can still run their campaigns even if they can’t debate … but it will deprive them of a lot of oxygen.

Bulletpoint No. 1: 6-8 candidates look pretty safe for the third debate. Then it gets dicey.

Technically, no candidates have yet qualified for the third debate because only polls released beginning on June 28 count toward it. However, we can make some good guesses about who’s likely to make it. Five candidates — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke — already had at least 130,000 unique donors as of their first-quarter fundraising reports. Joe Biden had almost 97,000 donors in his first 24 hours, so it’s safe to assume he’ll hit 130,000 soon if he hasn’t already. (The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for an updated donor count.) Andew Yang said on Wednesday that he had only about 20,000 more donors to go, which should also be no problem.

The polling criterion might be harder for some candidates, including Yang. Only eight candidates — Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker — have routinely polled at 2 percent or higher. And the relatively narrow time frame from when polls are considered will make it harder for candidates to get lucky.

Here’s my overall assessment of everyone’s chances, keeping in mind again that the polling number in the chart reflects all polls since Jan. 12 and not yet the ones that will actually count toward the third debate.

Which candidates are good bets to make the third debate?




Candidate
Qualifying polls*
Unique donors
Nate’s assessment




Sanders
9
525,000 as of 3/31
Almost certain


Warren
9
135,000 as of 3/31
Almost certain


Harris
9
138,000 as of 3/31
Almost certain


Biden
9
96,926 as of 4/26
Almost certain


Buttigieg
8
158,550 as of 3/31
Almost certain


O’Rourke
9
163,000 as of 3/31
Almost certain†


Klobuchar
8
65,000+ as of 5/3
Probable


Booker
8
65,000+ as of 5/3
Probable


Yang
1
110,000 as of 5/29
Tossup


Castro
2
65,000+ as of 5/3
Tossup


Gabbard
1
65,000+ as of 4/10
Tossup at best


Gillibrand
1

Tossup at best


Inslee
0
65,000+ as of 5/24
Tossup at best


Hickenlooper
1

Tossup at best


Williamson
0
65,000+ as of 5/9
Leaning against


Ryan
1

Lots of work to do


Bullock
0

Lots of work to do


Delaney
0

Lots of work to do


Swalwell
0

Lots of work to do


de Blasio
0

Lots of work to do


Bennet
0

Lots of work to do


Moulton
0

Lots of work to do

* Qualifying polls at 2%+ since Jan. 1. Only polls released from June 28 to August 28 count toward the third debate. This column reflects how many polls released since Jan 1. would have qualified under the rules that will be used for the third debate.

† Barring further polling collapse

The eight candidates I mentioned in the previous sentence all look reasonably safe to qualify, although Klobuchar and Booker have some work to do on the fundraising side, and O’Rourke needs to avoid a further polling slump. After that, Yang and Julián Castro probably have the next-best chances, although they’re far from guaranteed of inclusion. If I were anyone else, I’d be feeling pretty nervous.

Bulletpoint No. 2: The change helps the sorts of candidates that the DNC probably likes

There’s nothing better than being the last person in line to make the roller coaster before the amusement park shuts down for the day. The debate equivalent is being one of the last candidates who safely meets the qualification threshold. That probably means O’Rourke, Booker and Klobucahar, who are behind frontrunners such as Biden and Sanders, but nonetheless reasonably safe bets for inclusion. Polling surges often begin in debates, and there are usually only one or two of them at a time. With fewer opponents on stage, folks like Klobuchar will have better odds of being the flavor-of-the-month.

It may not be entirely coincidental that it’s candidates like these who benefit from the DNC’s decision. Booker and Klobuchar are traditionally well-credentialed candidates who have compiled a fair number of endorsements, signaling party support. O’Rourke isn’t as well-credentialed, but his ability to raise money from grassroots donors is something the party probably wants to reward.

Yang and Castro are somewhere in between, both in terms of whether the rules change helps them and how “party elites” probably feel about them. I’d imagine Democrats probably do want Castro, the only Latino candidate, at the debate — but if not then maybe he could turn around and run for Senate. Yang may be unorthodox, but brings a lot of policy substance and a different kind of voter to the table.

Who’s hurt? Well, everyone below Yang and Castro, but also any candidates such as Stacey Abrams who might seek to enter the race later on. Sanders, who has a high floor but perhaps a low ceiling, would probably want the field to remain as fragmented as possible for as long as possible, so any move to encourage winnowing hurts him too.

Nate’s not-to-be-taken-too-seriously presidential tiers

For the Democratic nomination, as revised on May 30, 2019

Tier
Sub-tier
Candidates




1
a
Biden



b
[this row intentionally left blank]



c
Harris, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg


2
a
O’Rourke



b
Booker, Klobuchar


3
a
Yang, Castro, Abrams* ↓



b
Inslee ↓, Gillibrand ↓, Gabbard



c
Bullock ↓, Hickenlooper ↓, Ryan ↓, de Blasio ↓, Bennet ↓, Williamson ↑

* Candidate is not yet officially running but may still do so.

Bulletpoint No. 3: Which of the third-tier candidates is most poised for a debate-related surge? Maybe Jay Inslee and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Of course, odds are that at least one of the candidates currently in what I think of as the third tier — that is, everyone behind O’Rourke, Klobuchar and Booker — will have surged by the time we get to September, most likely based on their performance in the first two debates. It’s probably a fool’s errand to guess at the most likely surgers, but I’m a fool so let’s run the errand. My wild guess is: Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee.

As discussed here, I tend to see debates as resetting the race toward the “fundamentals.” In particular, they tend to reset or reverse media narratives, which can often drive short-term surges or slumps in the polls. So one view on which candidates are most likely to be helped are those that have reasonably good credentials, but who have been underachieving so far because they’re ignored by the media or are getting largely negative coverage. My list of underachieving candidates — the ones where I really can’t figure out why they’re not doing better — is headlined by Gillibrand, Inslee and Castro.

Another answer is candidates who have relatively distinct messages or viewpoints. Candidates high on that list probably include Inslee again, with his focus on climate change, along with Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. Gillibrand, who has distinctive messaging around women’s issues, might qualify here as well.

FInally, although it’s a very rough prior, you might give a little bit of credit to candidates who have experience as lawyers, especially as prosecutors or litigators, and who therefore have had to do a lot of thinking on their feet in contentious settings. Inslee is a former prosecutor, and Gillibrand has an impressive legal resume. Harris and Klobuchar (although they’re not in the third tier) also come to mind, of course.

Are The Raptors Really Favorites Against The Warriors?

If our NBA model could talk, here’s what it might say about the NBA Finals:

Bleep, bleep, bloop. Based on their accomplishments over the past few seasons, the Golden State Warriors are better than the Toronto Raptors at full strength. However, the Warriors will start the NBA Finals without Kevin Durant, and possibly also without DeMarcus Cousins. To state the obvious, being without those guys makes them a worse team. Meanwhile, Toronto is also a really good team, and its regular-season record somewhat understates its performance because its current lineup is stronger than it was for most of the season. Plus, the Raptors have home-court advantage. Run the numbers, and the Raptors come out as slight favorites in the series. Bloop, bloop, bleep.

Make sense? Well apparently not, at least not to those of you who are wagering your hard-earned income on the series. Betting market prices imply that the Warriors are about 72 percent favorites to win the championship.

We think our NBA forecasts, in their current, improved form, are pretty smart, but we also think sports betting markets tend to be really smart. (Note: This isn’t true for political betting markets, which are mostly pretty dumb.) So we wouldn’t suggest that you go out and wager all your loonies on the Raptors to become the first Candian team to win a title in a “Big 4” sport since … to the chagrin of literally every Canadian NHL team … the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays.

Still, it’s interesting to see the series through our model’s eyes. So while we also talked about our forecast on this week’s edition of Hot Takedown, I want to go through it in more detail here. Basically, I’m going to work through everything in the italicized paragraph, starting with the least controversial claims and moving to the most contentious ones.

“Run the numbers, and the Raptors come out as slight favorites in the series.”

OK, so that’s actually the most contentious claim — we’ll loop back to it at the end. But I do want to point out that “slight” really does mean “slight” in this instance. The Raptors are merely 55 percent favorites in the series, at least based on our current understanding (as of early Wednesday morning) of the injury prognosis for Durant and Cousins. In our election forecasts, we’d label a race like that as a “toss-up.”

“Plus, the Raptors have home-court advantage.”

In a seven-game series between two equal-strength teams, the home team should win about 54 percent of the time, according to our model. So basically, the entirety of the Raptors’ very small edge in the series is because a Game 7 would be played in Toronto. If the Warriors had won two more regular-season games and had home-court advantage instead, they’d be roughly 53 percent favorites to win the series, per our model.

And if anything, our model might be understating the impact of home-court advantage in this series. The Warriors are generally regarded as having one of the biggest home-court advantages in the league, and Toronto is 40-11 at home between the regular season and the playoffs.

“Based on their accomplishments over the past few seasons, the Golden State Warriors are better than the Toronto Raptors at full strength.”

Our NBA team projections are derived from our CARMELO player projections, which use data from the past three seasons plus the current season.

That’s a good thing for the Warriors, because if you based the projections based on this season’s data alone, the Raptors would be more substantial favorites. Three of their five starters — Pascal Siakam, Danny Green, Marc Gasol — have significantly outperformed their preseason CARMELO projections. (Reserve swingman Norman Powell has also outperformed them to a lesser extent.) For the Warriors, conversely, Cousins significantly fell short of his preseason projections — no doubt because of his injuries — and his current projection is probably too optimistic. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green also slightly underperformed their projections, although Green has been great in these playoffs. Andre Iguodala and Kevin Looney have outperformed their projections, but overall, the Warriors are helped by the fact that we’re looking at multiple years of data.

So even though both teams played about equally well this year — the Raptors went 58-24 to the Warriors’ 57-25, but the Warriors had a slightly better point differential and played a slightly tougher schedule — our model would have the Warriors as 65 percent favorites if each team was at full strength to start the series (or 69 percent if the whole series were played on a neutral court).3 This reflects the Warriors’ accomplishments over the past several seasons in addition to having more playoff experience, a factor that our model accounts for — although the Raptors, with as well as Green (118 career playoff games), Kyle Lowry (80) and Gasol (77), have plenty of experience of their own.

In other words, our model takes some countermeasures to the fact that veteran, championship-driven teams like the Warriors tend to lollygag their way through the regular season. It looks at longer-term performance, and it accounts for playoff experience, as well as the increased playing time that’s given to top players in the playoffs, which helps top-heavy teams like Golden State. Is it doing enough to account for those factors? Maybe not, and our model has had plenty of challenges with teams like the Warriors and LeBron James’s Cavaliers in the past. But it’s at least aware of these issues, and it doesn’t hold the Warriors’ good-but-not-great regular season all that much against them.

“Toronto is also a really good team, and its regular-season record somewhat understates its performance because its current lineup is stronger than it was for most of the season.”

The Raptors were often without the services of what our model regards as their two best players. They played 22 regular-season games without Leonard, who was frequently rested for “load management,” as well as 17 games without Lowry. In addition, they only acquired Gasol in February, and he’s a significantly better player than the center he replaced, Jonas Valanciunas, according to our model. It also took some time for Toronto to take full advantage of Siakam, who played fewer minutes and took fewer shots early in the season.

Thus, the current version of the Raptors is associated with an Elo rating that would peg them not as a 58-win team, but somewhere in the mid-60s instead.

Until recently, however, that elite version of the Raptors existed mostly on paper. The Lowry-Green-Leonard-Siakam-Gasol lineup played only 161 regular-season minutes, although it was highly effective when it did play, outscoring opponents by 12.2 points per 100 possessions. That group has now played 314 minutes together in the playoffs, and — somewhat remarkably given that the Raptors have been playing extremely tough competition in the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers — it’s still outscoring opponents by 12.1 points per 100 possessions.

So Toronto’s starting lineup has begun to prove itself — you have to be really good to win four straight games against the Bucks, who were the NBA’s best regular-season team. And I should probably mention that our model also had the Raptors slightly favored against Milwaukee4 despite the Bucks having been heavily favored in Las Vegas.

“However, the Warriors will start the NBA Finals without Kevin Durant, and possibly also without DeMarcus Cousins. To state the obvious, being without those guys makes them a worse team. ”

Durant is out for at least Game 1, with no clear timetable for his return. Cousins is questionable for Game 1, but from the tone of the Warriors’ comments, he looks highly likely to return at some point in the series.

You can see the impact of Golden State’s injuries in the evolving point spreads that our model establishes for each game of the series. In Game 1 — with Durant out and Cousins 50 percent likely to play (based on the very rough science of translating the Warriors’ vague injury guidance into probabilities) — the Raptors are 6-point favorites at home, per our model. In the event of a Game 7 in Toronto, by which point we assume that Cousins is definitely back and Durant is 80 percent likely to play — they’d be only 1-point favorites, conversely. Toronto would also be 4.5-point underdogs on the road in Oakland in Game 6. If the Raptors don’t strike early in the series, the odds will shift dramatically against them.

The Warriors will get tougher to beat as they get healthier

FiveThirtyEight point spread for the NBA finals

Likelihood of playing



Game
Date
Location
Durant
Cousins
FTE point spread




1
May 30
Toronto
0%
50%
Raptors by 6


2
June 2
Toronto
10
60
Raptors by 5


3
June 5
Golden State
30
70
Warriors by 2.5


4
June 7
Golden State
40
80
Warriors by 3


5
June 10
Toronto
50
90
Raptors by 2.5


6
June 13
Golden State
70
100
Warriors by 4.5


7
June 16
Toronto
80
100
Raptors by 1

Likelihood of playing for Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins reflect our subjective estimates based on news accounts about their conditions.

You’d think that all of that seems pretty reasonable. Our model is saying that having Durant and Cousins healthy-ish instead of injured-ish is worth about 5 points per game to the Warriors.

But that’s not the narrative surrounding the Warriors at the moment. Instead, the stat you’ve probably heard is this one: 31-1. That is, the Warriors are 31-1 in their last 32 games without Durant but with Stephen Curry playing. This has lead to plenty of talk-radio chatter about whether the Warriors are better off without Durant, who has an option to become a free agent at the end of the season.

Like most narratives, that one leaves out some of the messy details. Our ESPN colleague Kevin Pelton has a long, detailed breakdown of the Warriors’ play with and without Durant. I’d suggest you read the whole thing. For one thing, that 31-1 record overstates the case somewhat, since it arbitrarily ignores the first six games that the Warriors played without KD (counting those, they’re 34-4) and since their point differential wasn’t quite as strong as their record in those games would suggest. Those games were also played against a fairly easy schedule.

Perhaps more importantly, Pelton finds based on game-by-game data that being without Durant lowered the Warriors’ ceiling. With both Durant and Curry in the lineup, the Warriors had so much firepower that they could take possessions off against mediocre teams, especially on the defensive end. In the NBA Finals, however, the Warriors will presumably be playing every possession at close to maximum effort, with or without Durant. So they’re deprived of a top gear they would have had with him healthy.

We can also look at the Warriors’ lineup data over the past three seasons (including both the regular season and the playoffs), which accounts for their performance on a possession-by-possession basis with various combinations of players. With both Curry and Durant on the floor, the Warriors outscored opponents by a dominating 15.2 points per 100 possessions. With Curry only, that number falls to 11.8 points per 100 possessions. That’s still a very good number — Curry is impossibly good! — but it’s in the same ballpark as the Raptors’ current starting lineup, and the Raptors have more depth and home-court advantage.

How the Warriors have fared with and without KD and Curry

Since 2016-17, playoffs and regular season

Lineup
Curry
Durant
Off. Rating
Def. Rating
Net Rating




Curry KD
✓
✓
115.0
99.8
15.2


Curry
✓

108.2
96.4
11.8


KD

✓
102.3
100.6
1.7


Neither


95.6
99.6
-4.0

Lineups are weighted by minutes played

Source: NBA

The most obvious conclusion from the lineup data, in fact, is that Curry is a lot better than Durant. With Durant but not Curry playing, the Warriors outscore opponents by a pedestrian 1.7 points per 100 possessions. But that’s not the same as saying they’re better without Durant. That’s especially true on offense, when there don’t appear to be any diminishing returns from having both Durant and Curry in the lineup at once.

Dig a little deeper, and you find that while Curry and Durant work just fine as a tandem, there may be some diminishing returns from playing Durant and Thompson together. Lineups with Durant and Klay playing but Curry off the floor have been mediocre, perhaps because Durant doesn’t like to pass and Thompson relies heavily on assisted field goals. Furthermore, lineups with Curry and Durant but without Thompson have been better than lineups with all three together. The Warriors give up a bit of offense in those lineups, but they make up for it with superior defense by having players such as Iguodala on the floor.

How KD, Curry and Klay play together

Since 2016-17, playoffs and regular season

Lineup
Curry
Durant
Thompson
Off Rating
Def Rating
Net Rating




Curry KD Klay
✓
✓
✓
115.9
100.9
15.0


Curry KD
✓
✓

111.7
96.1
15.6


Curry Klay
✓

✓
109.0
97.0
12.0


KD Klay

✓
✓
101.2
100.6
0.6


Curry only
✓


107.1
95.7
11.4


KD only

✓

104.9
100.6
4.3


Klay only


✓
98.4
98.9
-0.5


None of them



91.6
100.5
-8.9

Lineups are weighted by minutes played

Source: NBA

But the thing is, our projections actually account for all of this on-court/off-court data, at least to some extent. One of the metrics we use to fuel our projections, Real Plus-Minus (RPM), is largely based on the lineup data. So the fact the Warriors have played quite well with Curry but without Durant is accounted for in their respective ratings. Our forecasts think that Curry is quite a bit better than Durant — if Steph were injured instead of KD, it would really have Golden State in trouble.

You can also go too far in looking at the on-court, off-court stats. They can be noisy, and there are also a lot of technical complications in evaluating so many five-player lineup combinations together. In fact, we’ve found that RPM (which itself is a blend of box score statistics5 and lineup data) actually goes slightly too far in using the lineup data, so we hedge against it by blending it with another metric based on box score statistics called Box Plus/Minus or BPM.

“Run the numbers, and the Raptors come out as slight favorites in the series.”

So do I — Nate as a basketball fan, not as a model co-designer — really buy what our model says?

I mostly buy the part about the Raptors being better than they’re given credit for. Their current starting lineup has been very good, and I can imagine the betting public sleeping on it a bit because it’s involved several fairly subtle changes (e.g. upgrading Valanciunas for Gasol, Leonard playing every game, etc.). Nor do I see any obvious flaws with the Raptors, who can work effectively as either an up-tempo team (perhaps with Gasol off the floor) or in the half-court, with Leonard draining midrange jumpers and corner threes.

Leonard’s health is a concern, however, particularly insofar as it could affect his ability to effectively defend Curry, a tempting matchup for the Raptors.

As for how the model is evaluating the Warriors, I’m less sure. As I mentioned, the metrics behind our model (RPM and BPM) don’t actually like Durant that much; while he was repeatedly going off for massive games against the Clippers and Rockets, a few of us were complaining that the model underrated him. But there are a couple of things that worry me. First, although we have a few tricks to try to account for the Warriors’ variable effort level, their indifference during parts of the past few regular seasons may be contaminating the data to some degree. Second, our model tends to assume that building a lineup is a fairly linear process, when it isn’t. The Warriors are insulated against the loss of Durant to some degree because Thompson functions better as Curry’s Splash Brother sidekick than as a third wheel in Curry-Durant lineups.

The handful of minutes each game that the Warriors play without Curry on the floor are liable to be a disaster, however, and if Leonard somehow can bottle up Curry the same way he did Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Warriors are probably toast. And I think our model actually overrates Cousins, who isn’t likely to play up to his projections while recovering from his multiple injuries.

Overall, I think our model is mostly right about the Raptors, but more wrong than right about the Warriors. Since it only has the Raptors as extremely narrow favorites, that might be enough to tip the balance slightly in Golden State’s favor. But I find it hard to contemplate how the Warriors can be as heavy as 3-to-1 favorites, as they nearly are in Vegas. There is, if nothing else, a lot of uncertainty about how well the Warriors can play against a top-level team without Durant — I’m sorry if I don’t regard the Portland Trail Blazers as a top-level team — and the Raptors are good enough that the Warriors will probably have to bring their A-game.

Bleep, bleep, bloop.

Check out our latest NBA predictions .

Is There An Anti-Biden Lane In The Democratic Primary?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): After months of presidential candidate announcements, the Democratic primary field appears to be set (although never say never). And former Vice President Joe Biden is still the early polling front-runner. With candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg jockeying to peel off support from him, the race is on among Democrats to figure out who the non-Biden Democrat is.

So what does that race look like? Where, if anywhere, do we see support coalescing around a candidate who isn’t Biden? And what kind of strategies do we think candidates will use to take him on?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I just think it’s really hard to take on a popular former president’s vice president who is universally known and is well-liked within the party.

Certainly it’s not impossible — I think there’s a good chance Biden isn’t the nominee — but it’s not a task I envy the other candidates.

sarahf: But are we surprised that Biden has been able to hold onto such a large lead in the polls?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): What we know is that Biden’s support isn’t purely a matter of the field being divided. He also does very well in one-on-one matchups against potential opponents.