Nate Silver's Blog, page 66
May 13, 2019
Politics Podcast: Should Democrats Worry About The Downsides Of Impeaching Trump?
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In the wake of the Mueller report, Democratic leadership in the House has continued to investigate President Trump while downplaying the prospects of impeachment. The Trump White House, meanwhile, has so far stonewalled House requests for information from the executive branch. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said that “Trump is goading us to impeach him.”
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew debates what the repercussions of impeaching President Trump would be for Democrats. Plus, in a round of “Good Use of Polling or Bad Use of Polling?” the team looks at how the left-wing YouTube show “The Young Turks” tried to discredit a CNN poll.
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 .
May 10, 2019
Did The Rockets Miss Their Chance?
gfoster (Geoff Foster, sports editor): After a lopsided and — let’s face it — largely uninteresting first round, the second round of the NBA playoffs is delivering on its promise. We have only one team that’s already punched its ticket (Milwaukee). Philadelphia and Portland were each able to force a Game 7 last night with clutch wins at home, but let’s start with the Golden State-Houston series, which resumes with Game 6 in Houston tonight. The extent of the Kevin Durant injury is not totally known, but we do know he is out for the remainder of this series. This possibly devastating news was likely a little bit easier to swallow for Golden State fans considering that many people (including myself) looked at that noncontact injury Wednesday and assumed he injured his Achilles.
Does this give Houston a legitimate shot to take this series? Or did they blow a crucial opportunity by not stealing Game 5 when KD went down?
chris.herring (Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): Both.
If they lose the series, they’re going to kick themselves for what happened in Game 5. But that said, they still have a decent shot to pull the upset. The margin for error is so much less now without KD there. They have to play well enough on offense while hoping that either Steph Curry or Klay Thompson are simply ineffective for a game or two. Steph reached down deep and remembered who he was in that fourth quarter, but it’s not inconceivable to me that Houston takes advantage of this.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It absolutely gives them a shot. Golden State was basically the equivalent of half a star player better than the rest of the top tier (Houston, Milwaukee, Toronto). Take that player away, and they’re probably a half-step behind instead. Without KD, they’re underdogs in a neutral-court series against all of those teams. HOWEVER, the Warriors only need to win one of the two remaining games to close out against Houston, and one of those games is at home, so they’re still overall favorites (64 percent favorites, more precisely) to win the series.
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): The elephant in the room is how eerily similar to last year this is playing out. The Warriors were in the same spot Houston is, down 3-2, with the opponent suffering a key injury. (That time it was Chris Paul who was out, and Golden State stormed back, obviously.)
chris.herring: Right.
natesilver: At the same time, although Harden disappeared down the stretch run for Game 5 and that wasn’t great, I think Houston gets a little bit too much grief. Beating the KD-less Warriors is still a big feat — remember, they won 73 games without KD! — especially at Oracle Arena.
chris.herring: It’s just that Houston had erased a 20-point Warriors lead and taken the lead on the road, with KD out of the picture, and Steph struggling. If you win that game, you’re up 3-2 with a chance to close it at home. They can still do it, but now they have to come back instead of merely going in for the kill.
neil: We often talk about the seeming inevitability of Golden State winning these past few years. But if they win again, that fourth quarter will be looked back at as a turning point of sorts, I think. A place where they made their stand as the season could have begun slipping away. Curry even started to get things rolling in that fourth quarter, after a brutal series for the most part.
natesilver: I don’t know — the whole game felt like Golden State’s to lose. The first half in particular was wide-open and sloppy, which you’d think was the Warriors’ jam more than Houston’s.
chris.herring: Just a couple of really clear things that killed the Rockets. Paul has never shot that poorly in a playoff game. Kevon Looney basically became PJ Tucker for a night, with all the offensive rebounds. The bizarre, fluke play at the end of the game.
natesilver: Sometimes I wonder if these analytics-heavy teams don’t emphasize offensive rebounding enough. Of course, they’ve spent way more time looking at the data than I have. But certain types of situations increase offensive rebound percentage more than others, and it can be a hidden source of value.
chris.herring: Maybe it was just GSW’s game to take unless the Rockets took it from the Warriors, which goes to Nate’s point about the game having been in Oakland.
I’m just really stuck on the “What if?” of that outcome. What if that was the last game at Oracle, potentially, and the Rockets could close this out tonight at home? The hype surrounding tonight would be insane.
I guess similar to last year, when Houston had a 3-2 lead but without Paul.
neil: It’s worth noting that with KD on the court in the series, the Warriors are +8.8 per 100 possessions; without him, they’re -6.2. So this injury really does add a huge late wrinkle to what was already a mega-interesting series.
chris.herring: I know the Warriors have won championships without KD and have even played stretches without him since he joined the team. But I do think it’s interesting that they’d gotten so used to relying on him this postseason.
He’d led them in scoring for eight straight games.
neil: He also completely changes HOW they play. They run so many more isolations with KD.
chris.herring: Even for Steph and Klay, going from that to having to do it all themselves again is a shift.
gfoster: Obviously, Curry and Thompson will need to step up on the offensive side to make up for that lost production — and both have been pretty so-so if not bad. But without DeMarcus Cousins and with a thin bench, I wonder how this affects them defensively. How do you think both teams adjust?
chris.herring: I would assume the Warriors are going to start Looney without Durant there.
You don’t have a ton of options, really.
But the Rockets can shade their defense a lot differently without Durant in the mix.
natesilver: I guess the one thing about Golden State is that with both KD and Steph out there — and Klay! — there are probably some diminishing returns in terms of being able to get good looks. Meaning, KD won’t hurt quite as much as if they didn’t have another super-high-usage player (Curry) and another super-efficient player (Thompson). Maybe there’s less margin of error against Houston’s defense, though.
neil: If the Warriors’ lack of depth was ever going to finally catch up to them, it’s now.
natesilver: Yeah, what I really worry about for GSW is the bench units. Curry still doesn’t look exactly right, and if you’re playing him 42 minutes, or whatever, that probably isn’t great.
But also not great if you’re playing him 38 minutes and have 10 minutes of a pretty terrible lineup.
gfoster: Likewise, Draymond Green gets into foul trouble again, and it’s even more complicated.
chris.herring: It’s pretty wild to consider how inevitably we talk of the Warriors winning it all again when an injury like this — one that keeps him out the remainder of the series, but not for the entire playoffs — is so consequential.
neil: The flip side, though, is how they still have a good chance to win without a top-five player. Any other team loses a player of KD’s stature and it’s sorta over.
natesilver: For the past several seasons, our model has usually had Golden State at about 50 percent to win the championship when the playoffs begin. Sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower. Either way, though, that’s a long way from 100 percent.
chris.herring: I’m interested to see how Paul responds tonight. And to see whether Tucker is a pest again the way he was in Game 4.
He’s not a big-time offensive player, but Tucker not having to guard KD all game long could open things up for him, too.
neil: Tucker, Paul and (weirdly) Austin Rivers seem to be the bellwethers for Houston. When they play well, the Rockets have won. Harden, on the other hand, has been pretty even in production between wins and losses this series.
natesilver: Which is usually how it works, Neil. 
May 9, 2019
Live From Houston: What Happened To George W. Bush’s GOP?
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The Bushes, and in many ways Texas, shaped the identity of the Republican Party across three decades. In a live taping of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast in Houston, the crew discusses how and why the GOP has changed since the end of President George W. Bush’s tenure. Houston Chronicle columnist Erica Grieder also joins the conversation. Plus, the team drafts 2020 Democratic primary candidates and debates the meaning of Trump’s approval polling on the economy.
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.
A 2020 Draft: Which States Are Most Likely To Go Blue?
Today we’re bringing you a special edition of our weekly politics chat from an airport in Houston, where FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver and managing editor Micah Cohen have decided to do a semi-live politics chat in a series of tweets. Follow along!
OK, here's the rules. We're going to draft "teams" of states, based on their likelihood of going Democratic in 2020. Here's the twist: the winning "team" is based on how many *electoral votes* your states contain, provided that they actually go blue.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
Micah goes first, based on winning the coin toss, as you can see from this beautiful picture of the IAH carpeting. pic.twitter.com/MH0DRCPkP4
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
Bad pick. According to Mark Halperin, Jeb Bush is going to put California in play for Republicans next year. https://t.co/qaV4yb3Jhm
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
wait a sec… a two-person snake draft?!?!?!?
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
We're running out of good picks pretty fast. And the problem is, I don't know if I can catch up to your solid blue base. So I might have to gamble a bit. I'm going with FL and PA.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
You're prob right. I'll get a little more bold now.
VA and MD.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
I'm going with what I think is a pretty obvious pick at this point: Massachusetts. And for my not-so-obvious pick, I'm adding to my list of states where Nate has lived in, with Michigan.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
BTW, I don't think you're putting enough weight on the chances that Dems will lose some of these states.
I'm going MN and … TX!!!!
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Partly that. And partly just so Nate couldn't pick it.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
GA and OH.
Bam!
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Connecticut and Arizona.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Nate's pick might be delayed slightly… we're boarding and … well, first class people are better than the rest of us.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Ugh those were my picks. Hawaii and Rhode Island.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Maine gets you however many electoral votes Democrats get from Maine, including the Congressional Districts.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
Maine and Iowa
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Sheesh. Ok I’m making the turn … Indiana and South Carolina.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Louisiana and Kansas.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Mississippi and Tennessee
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
The "Mitt Romney runs as an independent spoiler" pick!
— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) May 9, 2019
So what’s left? I pick the two with the most EC votes
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
The Dakotas!
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Nah, I went with the Dakotas.
— Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) May 9, 2019
Hashtag content. Also, my team is better than yours.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 9, 2019
OK, I think you guys did about the same! By my probabilistic reckoning, Micah comes out with 3 more EVs than Nate, but that could easily change if you just tweak some of the odds I've assigned some swing states.
— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) May 9, 2019
I think there were times when Micah could have created more distance over Nate, like FL over WA or MA over MD. But it wouldn't have made a huge difference.
— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) May 9, 2019
Silver Bulletpoints: The 4 Meta-Messages Of The 2020 Campaign
Greetings from Houston, where in barely 24 hours on the ground, I’ve already experienced four flash flood warnings and a Vietnamese-Cajun crawfish restaurant.
Sometimes I have bad ideas, and we’re going to talk about one of them in this edition of Silver Bulletpoints, in which we cover three topics related to the 2020 primary, each in 300 words or less.
Bulletpoint No. 1: Here are the four major meta-messages for 2020
With so many presidential candidates — now 20, by FiveThirtyEight’s count — you could almost sort the Democrats into an NCAA Tournament bracket, with the various candidates seeded into our different “regions.” So I thought about asking Emily, FiveThirtyEight’s designer, to draw up a 2020 candidate bracket. We really love brackets here at FiveThirtyEight, after all.
But I decided this was a bad idea. How come? Putting the candidates in a bracket would imply they’re facing off against one another in a series of one-on-one matchups: Live on ESPN2, it’s Pete Buttigieg vs. Beto O’Rourke in the Outsiders Bracket Regional Semifinal. But that’s not really how the primary works. Instead, the primary is more like if the NCAA Tournament committee had invited all 68 teams to the same gym, tossed a few basketballs onto the court, and said, “Play ball, fellas!”
The bracket idea did get me thinking about how you’d sort the Democratic candidates into four groups, however. Indeed, I think there are four major meta-messages that the 2020 hopefuls are taking. By meta-message, I mean an overall rationale for why the candidate is running and why you should choose him or her:
Meta-Message No. 1: Liberal Policy Wonk. “I want to move the country to the left, and I have a lot of ideas for how to do it.”
Meta-Message No. 2: Coalition-Builder. “I can unite the different factions of the Democratic Party and reflect the diverse identities of its voters.”
Meta-Message No. 3: Outsider. “I may not be a traditional candidate, but I have a different perspective and some fresh ideas for how to shake things up.”
Meta-Message No. 4: Electability & Experience. “I have a track record, and I know how to get stuff done — and I can beat Trump.”
Bulletpoint No. 2: It’s probably better to pick a lane and stick to it
So which candidates are taking which approaches? Let’s start with the easy ones:
Joe Biden: Electability & Experience.
Elizabeth Warren: Liberal Policy Wonk.
Kamala Harris: Coalition-Builder. (This strategy is becoming more explicit after she initially ran a bit further to her left.)
Buttigieg: Outsider.
O’Rourke: Outsider. (Since Buttigieg and O’Rourke have similar meta-messages, it’s not surprising that Buttigieg is giving Beto some problems.)
Amy Klobuchar: Electability & Experience.
Cory Booker: Coalition-Builder.
Jay Inslee: Liberal Policy Wonk, given his singular emphasis on climate change.
Tulsi Gabbard: Liberal Policy Wonk, given her singular emphasis on opposing U.S.-led regime changes abroad.
Now for some trickier cases:
Bernie Sanders: The obvious answer is Liberal Policy Wonk. But he’s not as policy-focused as Warren, and his campaign incorporates a lot of Outsider messaging and even some electability messaging.
Andrew Yang: A blend of Liberal Policy Wonk — although not all his policies are super liberal — and Outsider.
Kirsten Gillibrand: Not clear. She’s probably closest to a Coalition-Builder, but she hasn’t had much success at uniting the various factions of the party.
Julian Castro: Probably a blend of Coalition-Builder and Outsider — but as we discussed on the podcast this week, I’m not sure any of it is really working.
John Hickenlooper: Not clear. Electability & Experience? Outsider? His announcement video featured a variety pack of messages.
Michael Bennet: Another Coloradoan with muddled messaging, although probably veering toward Electability & Experience.
If there’s a lesson, it’s that in a divided field, you want a clear meta-message. Sanders is a good enough politician to run on several messages at once — although even he’s slipped in the polls recently. And maybe Yang is sui generis enough to belong in his own category. I doubt someone like Hickenlooper can pull that off, though.
Bulletpoint No. 3: Biden looks slightly weaker in Iowa and New Hampshire than nationally
If you’ve been reading FiveThirtyEight, you’ll know that we were bullish on Biden’s chances before it was cool. And even we didn’t expect him to surge in the polls as much as he has.
But one reason for caution is that neither Iowa nor New Hampshire figures to be a great state for Biden. Neither has a lot of black voters, his greatest strength in polls so far. Their electorates are quite liberal. And both emphasize retail campaigning, where Biden will probably cede ground to Sanders, Buttigieg and other candidates who are sharper on the stump.
There haven’t been a ton of early-state polls since Biden’s announcement, but they do show him lagging his national polls slightly. Biden is at 35 percent in the only recent Iowa poll, for example — lower than his 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national surveys (he’d also slightly underperformed his national numbers in Iowa before his announcement). In New Hampshire, Biden’s averaged just 27 percent in three post-announcement surveys. One piece of good news for Biden: South Carolina looks like a potential firewall for him, as it was for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Early-state polls show a slightly tighter race
Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina polls since Biden launched his presidential bid
National
Iowa
N.H.
S.C.
Candidate
RCP Average
0ptimus
Change Research
0ptimus
Suffolk
0ptimus
Biden
41%
35%
26%
34%
20%
48%
Sanders
15
14
30
16
12
12
Warren
8
10
9
9
8
5
Harris
7
5
8
7
6
4
Buttigieg
7
11
12
10
12
5
O’Rourke
4
3
3
3
3
1
Booker
3
2
2
1
3
4
Klobuchar
1
4
1
1
1
1
Only candidates included in all polls are listed.
Source: polls
Sanders’s early-state numbers are OK, but unspectacular. New Hampshire should be a strong state for him, but his polls have been weird there all campaign long, with recent polls showing him as low as 12 percent or as high as 30 percent. He’s generally polled a point or two worse in Iowa than nationally, and his South Carolina numbers have been poor.
One candidate who’s consistently polled better in both Iowa and New Hampshire than nationally is Buttigieg — a bullish indicator for him. But even though he recently campaigned in South Carolina, his lack of support from black voters could make that state a problem for him.
Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.
May 7, 2019
Live From Austin: Will Texas Be A Battleground State In 2020?
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In a live taping of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast in Austin, Texas, the crew debates whether Texas will be a battleground state in 2020. Special guest Ashley Lopez, senior politics reporter at KUT, joins in the debate. The team also faces off with the audience in a round of political trivia and asks why Texas’s presidential contenders aren’t faring better in the Democratic primary so far.
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.
May 2, 2019
The Warriors And Raptors Are Finals Favorites. But Should They Be?
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): The NBA is now two games in to every second-round series, and each matchup is currently tied at 1-1 … except Warriors-Rockets, which was the series most people had circled as the most competitive (and compelling) of Round 2.
So what better place to start our chat than that matchup, which the Warriors lead 2-0 heading back to Houston for Game 3 on Saturday. The Rockets have done a lot of Rockets-like things in the first two games: They’re making almost 16 threes and 22 free throws per game. Yet they were unable to steal away home court in the series late in either Game 1 or Game 2. Do the Rockets still have a realistic chance at knocking off Golden State, or were we all just foolishly trying to convince ourselves that we might see a different outcome this year?
chris.herring (Chris Herring, senior sportswriter): I think it goes without saying that 2-0 against a team of that caliber is a tough place to be. We talked about it before, but the fact that Houston is Houston might have been enough to get the Warriors playing their hardest and most focused early on.
Draymond Green has been a beast, in particular.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I mean, they lost two games by 4 points and 6 points. And they have some excuses: the officiating in Game 1, and they were without James Harden for parts of the first half in Game 2, and then he was not entirely himself.
I don’t think Game 2 felt quite as close as the final score, but Game 1 was pretty even.
I guess all I’m saying is that we have had nine high-stakes playoff games between these two teams, and it feels like the Warriors are the better team, but hardly a dominant team.
tchow (Tony Chow, video producer): I feel like what’s going to happen at the end of all this, if the Warriors do end up winning it all (which is very likely — our predictions still give them a 49 percent chance), fans and basketball critics alike are going to come out and say, “See? Why even watch basketball? We all knew the Warriors were gonna win.” And they will all forget how unlikely it did seem at times. It is far from a sure thing still.
neil: And that was definitely the case last year as well. The Warriors were far from assured winners, even though in the end they won, as expected.
chris.herring: I think the challenge is that so much of what Houston does is tied to Harden, who hasn’t played poorly at all, despite the eye issue in Game 2.
I thought it was really noteworthy that, after he got none of those calls in Game 1, he simply didn’t kick his legs out in Game 2.
But the real story is that Golden State is forcing him into more floaters, a bit higher up, than he normally likes to take his shots.
tchow: I’m gonna be honest. I only watched the first quarter of Game 2 and maybe five minutes of the second quarter because the game started at 10:30 p.m.!! I have a 1-year-old. I can’t do this sh*t anymore.
natesilver: The competition from the East should be a lot stiffer this year. But, again, we’re getting a liiiiiittttle ahead of ourselves. Our algorithm says the Warriors have a 77 percent chance of reaching the NBA Finals, which is high but also sort of in the Hillary Clinton zone of not a done deal. I do think Kevin Durant flipping the switch into looking like an MVP++ player is a big deal, though.
chris.herring: I am kind of shocked Steph Curry continues to have the foul issues this far into the playoffs. It’s been bad for a hot minute now.
But you’re right, Nate: It’s given Durant a chance to showcase what he’s capable of. (Honestly, my favorite versions of the Warriors are when KD gets to play without Steph and when Steph plays without KD — those guys are unbelievable scorers, but we rarely get to see them at their best because they play so many of their minutes together.)
neil: Well, I want to talk officiating in general. As you guys alluded to, it’s been a huge theme in the series so far, whether over Draymond Green’s arguable contact with James Harden at the end of Game 1, the Rockets’ “audit” of missed calls in last year’s Western Conference finals, or Green’s comments that the officiating talk itself was embarrassing for the NBA. Does Houston have a case? Or is that just a natural consequence of how the Rockets play? Is there something inherently limiting about relying on drawing fouls in the playoffs, when it’s tougher to get a whistle?
natesilver: A “natural consequence” doesn’t seem like quite the right phrase because I’d imagine that a lot of this is fairly deliberate — exploring the boundaries of the rules, especially in terms of Harden’s shooting form.
chris.herring: Like I was saying a minute ago, I thought it was pretty interesting that Houston fell to the ground so much in Game 1 but, from what I remember, essentially didn’t do that at all in Game 2. I’d have to go back and watch the close-outs, but to me that signals that the Rockets might have known they were waging a losing battle.
natesilver: I do think, if the game is called by the book, they got screwed out of a couple of three-shot shooting fouls in Game 1.
chris.herring: Oh, absolutely.
At least two or three, which, in a game that close … I’d be upset, too. You have to call the fouls the same way you would have during the regular season. I didn’t even think some of those were debatable in the first half.
The crazy thing: In watching Game 2, it makes me wonder whether the Rockets are better off just trying to stand up straight as opposed to drawing fouls.
It might have merely been a Game 2 improvement, with no reason for it, but they were great from the perimeter, and it happened on a night where they weren’t flailing or kicking their legs out, which I imagine changes the shot’s rhythm some.
natesilver: Part of it is that awarding three free throws is such a high-stakes decision. It’s not quite like awarding a penalty in soccer, but you know what I mean.
If all shooting fouls were two free throws instead, save maybe for the last two minutes when a team might try to maul a guy to prevent him from taking a 3-point shot, that might help.
Or if referees were allowed to call nonshooting fouls in the event of incidental contact. Sort of the difference in a roughing the kicker penalty vs. running into the kicker.
chris.herring: I’ve never seen something be such an enormous story for one game, then just not be a factor at all in the following one
I’m sure the league loves that it died down during Game 2. But it almost felt like the Rockets realized they weren’t going to get anywhere with that hope that they’d get more calls.
neil: And yet, most of the fan reaction I was reading online was that the Rockets basically need to be quiet. That Harden has cried wolf too many times, etc. And remember, these are people siding with the Warriors, a team that has become hated over the years as it’s won so much. That kind of speaks volumes about the distaste for Houston’s foul-drawing strategy.
natesilver: Yeah, I thought the “Rockets-are-sore-losers” narrative, while understandable, maybe made people less objective in evaluating the situation.
chris.herring: I felt like I was seeing a lot of that the last few days, too.
tchow: Yeah, Nate, on the latest Hot Takedown podcast, we had Kirk Goldsberry on as a guest, and he made the point that from an economical standpoint, drawing three free throws percentage-wise is worth more than a wide-open Steph or KD 3-pointer. In that sense, it would make sense to try to draw those so often.
chris.herring: But here’s my thing:
If the Rockets pour over the missed-calls report and find that the refs missed a bunch of those last year — which suggests it’s either not easy to catch, or that refs don’t like to call it — why make it such a big part of the strategy as you start another series with Golden State now?
tchow: To prove themselves right?
chris.herring: Idk. Part of me feels like the basketball world is too worked up about this series, when in reality, it’s the only one that’s not tied up at 1-1.
It’s been a good second round so far.
natesilver: I dunno, one thing about basketball is that there’s not usually a lot of luck.
In a seven-game series, the better team wins a large majority of the time.
But I wonder if Daryl Morey feels a little tilted (in the poker sense of that term) how his series have gone against the Warriors.
They’ve had some bad luck with injuries, some bad luck on 3-point field-goal percentage — and whether you want to call it “luck” or something else, some frustrating games with the officials.
And it’s also, like, if the league designs a bad set of rules and incentives, you shouldn’t get blamed for taking advantage of those incentives.
There should be better incentives instead. The rules should be changed.
chris.herring: That’s been the story of James Harden’s career: Fantastic player who’s always been fantastic at taking advantage of what’s there, whether fans like it or not.
I really love watching that dude ball. It’s not his fault the loopholes are there.
neil: As Kirk writes in his book, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
Either way, right now we give the Warriors an 84 percent chance of moving on to the conference finals.
tchow: The good news is that Game 3 is at 8:30 p.m.!
neil: On behalf of all of us East Coasters, thank goodness.
In the other series out West, the Trail Blazers evened things up with the Nuggets with a 97-90 win Wednesday night. Portland stole-home court advantage, but our model still gives Denver a 61 percent chance of advancing. Are the numbers still too low on the Blazers?
chris.herring: Probably. I have no idea, honestly.
The Nuggets might be the most inconsistent team left in the playoffs. Last night was extremely rough for them — one of their worst shooting nights of the season. Their offensive rebounding was unreal, and so it left them with an outside chance to win late.
I feel like they may have the better team, but their inconsistency scares me a bit. The 61 percent probability sounds about right to me for now.
Quietly feel like the Moe Harkless ankle injury could be a tough one for the Blazers depending on how hurt he actually is going forward.
I have it going seven games, and I won’t be surprised at all if and when it actually goes the distance.
natesilver: I’m going to reiterate that this part of the bracket feels like the NIT to me. Unless whoever emerges from GSW-HOU does so with an injury, I don’t expect the Western Conference finals to be super competitive.
neil: Yeah, conditional on making the conference finals, the Warriors have a 92 percent chance at the NBA Finals in our model; Houston has an 81 percent chance.
natesilver: I almost feel like, narrative-wise, Portland has become a little bit underrated just because they’re facing off against two other very flawed teams. That Portland team with Jusuf Nurkic is pretty interesting, but they have a pretty low ceiling IMO without him.
neil: I have been surprised at how well Enes Kanter continues to play. He’s averaging 21 points and eight rebounds in this series. (As someone who hated on him as an empty stat-padder early in his career…)
natesilver: The knock in him (I almost typed “the Knick on him”) has always been his defense, though.
What’s his +/- in the series?
neil: It’s minus-4. But the team as a whole is in the red anyway.
chris.herring: He’s useful for them, without a doubt
I think he actually might be even more useful in a playoff series, depending on the opponent.
Against OKC, for instance: Leaving him in the paint, without an easy way for Westbrook to get around him, was great for Portland. Westbrook wasn’t good or comfortable shooting his jumper in that series.
So it mitigated the concerns about Kanter’s pick-and-roll defense.
And in this series, you’re dealing with Jamal Murray, who’s a hot-and-cold shooter in the pick and roll, too.
Kanter’s offensive rebounding is massive a lot of the time.
natesilver: I guess mayyyyybe you could say that Kanter has never been in a position before to have teams take advantage of his skill set. OKC has never really been expert at maximizing its role players. And the Knicks, well, are the Knicks.
tchow: For what it’s worth, in Game 2, Nikola Jokic went 1 for 8 when guarded by Kanter.
chris.herring: I’m interested to see what happens as they shift to Portland.
neil: Your point about defense is well-taken, Nate. Portland’s key might be to continue to play so uncharacteristically well at that end.
Right now, they’re holding the Nuggets to 41.9 percent shooting from the field, including 31 percent from three.
chris.herring: I feel like I’m so in and then so out on Denver. They have had some really rough performances.
But the fact that they were still in it last night despite how poorly they shot was encouraging. Jokic has been playing out of his mind.
neil: OK, since this is the NIT series of the playoffs, let’s leave Denver and Portland and move over to the East.
tchow: In our playoff preview chat, I think we all agreed that the Eastern Conference playoff bracket looked a lot more interesting than the West, and I think that’s still pretty much true. I have no idea who will make it out of the East of the remaining four teams and could easily see both series going seven games.
neil: Yeah, things have not really gotten clearer since either series opened. Let’s talk first about the semifinal series between the Raptors and Sixers, which resumes tonight with Game 3. Philly gritted out the win Monday night to even up the series, despite Kawhi Leonard going off again for 35 points. What has stood out about each team so far that might swing the series going forward?
chris.herring: In the chat last week, we talked about the question of who Tobias Harris could realistically guard.
The answer in Game 1 was nobody, which was problematic, as the Raptors’ two best scorers did serious damage.
The difference in Game 2 was Philly’s adjustment to play Harris on Marc Gasol, and to have Joel Embiid and the other centers guard Pascal Siakam. It paid really, really nice dividends for them, and that’s the thing I’m really curious to watch in Game 3.
natesilver: I guess those defensive matchups sort of make sense but also the sort of thing that you could counteradjust to, especially with an extra day off to scout and strategize.
chris.herring: Exactly.
neil: That shows up in the stats, too: Harris was a game-low minus-23 in Game 1 but was plus-6 in Game 2.
chris.herring: In both series, I think, it’s going to be a question of whose adjustments are better.
Because each set of changes and adjustments have pretty clear counters.
tchow: Btw, I don’t know if Neil is doing this on purpose but we have NBATV on at the office right now, and Neil is moving the chat along at the same exact pace as Grant Hill and company are moving along their playoff coverage. They just wrapped up DEN-POR and moved on to PHI-TOR before cutting to commercial break. Uncanny.
neil: LOL, Tony. Definitely a coincidence… 
Silver Bulletpoints: The Union Vote Could Swing The Election
Today is Thursday, May 2, and this is Silver Bulletpoints, the column where we tackle three topics related to the 2020 primary in 300 words or less. Today’s edition is sponsored by EATT, the Endowment for the Advancement of Taco Trucks, an organization I just made up that advocates for the placement of taco trucks on every American street corner.
Bulletpoint No. 1: The union vote could be key in both the primary and the general election
In 2016, unionized workers were essential in helping Hillary Clinton maintain her lead over Bernie Sanders. Although a handful of major unions endorsed Sanders, most of the biggest ones — including the NEA, the SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW and the UAW — endorsed Clinton. And while some of those unions’ members defected to Sanders, Clinton mostly held the support of their rank and file, with Clinton winning union voters 62-36 over Sanders, per the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
So it’s not surprising that Joe Biden kicked off his campaign on Monday by touting his endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters. It’s also not surprising that President Trump, perhaps sensing that Biden was encroaching on his turf, spent much of Wednesday morning retweeting accounts from firefighters who said they were planning to vote for Trump. Most union members voted Democratic in 2016 — but Trump did much better with them than Mitt Romney had four years earlier.
Nor was Trump’s union support merely a matter of white men shifting en masse to Trump. While white women and nonwhite men in unions mostly voted for Clinton, her margins with those groups were considerably narrower than Barack Obama’s in 2012.
Union voters shifted toward Trump in 2016
Presidential vote share among union members in 2012 and 2016, by race and gender
All labor union members
Year
Margin
2012
Obama
64.8%
Romney
30.4%
34.4
2016
Clinton
55.2
Trump
38.4
16.7
White men in labor unions
Year
Margin
2012
Obama
52.3%
Romney
41.9%
10.5
2016
Clinton
40.7
Trump
52.5
-11.9
Nonwhite men in labor unions
Year
Margin
2012
Obama
81.4%
Romney
13.9%
67.5
2016
Clinton
73.2
Trump
18.6
54.7
White women in labor unions
Year
Margin
2012
Obama
64.5%
Romney
31.0%
33.5
2016
Clinton
55.7
Trump
38.6
17.2
Nonwhite women in labor unions
Year
Margin
2012
Obama
88.5%
Romney
8.9%
79.7
2016
Clinton
83.0
Trump
12.9
70.2
2012 election results reflect voters who were union members as of 2016 and participated in the 2016 CCES
Source: COOPERATIVE CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION STUDY
In fact, the shift among union voters was enough to swing the election to Trump. According to the CCES, Obama won union voters by 34.4 percentage points in 2012, but Clinton did so by only 16.7 points in 2016. That roughly 18-point swing was worth a net of 1.2 percentage points for Trump in Pennsylvania, 1.1 points in Wisconsin and 1.7 points in Michigan based on their rates of union membership1 — and those totals were larger than his margins of victory in those states.
Bulletpoint No. 2: Is Elizabeth Warren’s outspokenness on impeachment driving her mini polling surge?
If it wasn’t for Biden’s big polling surge, everyone might be talking about Elizabeth Warren’s improving numbers instead. In the four national polls out this week, Warren gained an average of 3 percentage points, even surpassing Sanders for second place in one of them — although that result remains an outlier for now.
The timing of Warren’s gains in the polls lines up reasonably well with the release of the Mueller report, after which she became one of the most outspoken Democrats in calling for Trump’s impeachment. Although impeachment proceedings are unpopular with the general electorate — 56 percent of Americans are opposed to impeachment hearings and 37 are in favor, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll — a 62-29 majority of Democrats are in favor, including 53 percent strongly in favor.
Counterargument: It’s not clear that impeachment is the highest priority for Democrats. In CNN’s poll this week, only 43 percent of Democrats said it was “very important” for a presidential candidate to support impeaching Trump — much less than the number who said the same about climate change (82 percent), providing health insurance for all (75 percent) or passing stricter gun laws (65 percent).
Nonetheless, in a crowded field, any issue that allows candidates to differentiate themselves probably helps. And in what’s liable to be a relatively dull stretch of the campaign until the first debates on June 26-27, the ongoing arguments about Mueller and impeachment will provide candidates an opportunity to make news. That includes Warren and the candidates on the Senate Judiciary Committee, such as Kamala Harris, who was effective in her questioning of Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday.
Bulletpoint No. 3: Stop complaining about small sample sizes
Surveys showing bad numbers for candidates who are popular on the internet tend to produce lots of specious criticism about the polls. This week, for instance, some Sanders backers complained about the small sample size in CNN’s poll of Democrats, which surveyed 411 people, and they erroneously claimed that it hadn’t surveyed voters under the age of 50 when it had.
While 411 voters isn’t a huge sample, it’s fairly typical as primary polls go, especially for high-quality polls like CNN’s that make an effort to contact a representative sample of voters. The Democratic electorate contains lots of voters in hard-to-reach groups, such as college students and Latinos. Moreover, turnout in the primaries is relatively low. All of that plus ever-declining survey response rates make primary polling expensive; you have to place a lot of phone calls to find enough actual Democratic voters.
But complaining about sample size doesn’t make sense when there are several polls and they all show the same thing. CNN’s wasn’t the only poll to show Sanders declining; so did every other national survey since Biden’s announcement, including Morning Consult’s poll, which surveyed more than 15,000(!) voters in its online panel.
Nor are small-sample polls quite as error-prone as you might think. The margin of error in polls depends not only on the sample size but also on how many people choose a particular option. The further away a candidate is from 50 percent, the less the margin of error — so you can get away with a smaller sample when lots of candidates are polling in the single digits or low double digits. For instance, for a candidate at 15 percent (about where Sanders is), the MOE is a comparatively modest plus or minus 3.5 points even if the poll surveys only 400 people.
How big is the margin of error?
Margin of error with a 95 percent confidence interval by sample size and vote share of candidate
Sample size
Candidate vote share
200
400
600
1,000
2,000
10,000
90%
±4.2
±2.9
±2.4
±1.9
±1.3
±0.6
75
6.0
4.2
3.5
2.7
1.9
0.8
50
6.9
4.9
4.0
3.1
2.2
1.0
40
6.8
4.8
3.9
3.0
2.1
1.0
30
6.4
4.5
3.7
2.8
2.0
0.9
20
5.5
3.9
3.2
2.5
1.8
0.8
15
4.9
3.5
2.9
2.2
1.6
0.7
10
4.2
2.9
2.4
1.9
1.3
0.6
5
3.0
2.1
1.7
1.4
1.0
0.4
2
1.9
1.4
1.1
0.9
0.6
0.3
From ABC News:
CORRECTION (May 2, 2019, 2:11 p.m.): A previous version of the second table in this article incorrectly labeled the top row. That row showed the margin of error for a candidate with 90 percent vote share, not 95 percent.
Check out our 2020 polls tracker .
May 1, 2019
Politics Podcast: Mueller’s Letter Puts Barr In The Hot Seat
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In late March, Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote Attorney General William Barr a letter expressing concern that Barr had mischaracterized the special counsel’s conclusions to Congress earlier that month. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses the political repercussions of Mueller’s letter, which was made public Wednesday.
Also, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recording a live podcast in Houston on May 8. For more information and to get tickets, go here.
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.
Which 2020 Candidates Could Still Have A Breakout Moment?
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Today we’re back with a 2020 snake draft!!! But with a twist — no discussion of the “Big 6,” which we’re defining as the early polling front-runners: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke.
The idea is that we’ll discuss which candidates still have breakout star potential even though they’re not leading in the polls. For example, Buttigieg is now part of the “Big 6,” but he certainly wasn’t when he announced in late January — some pollsters weren’t even including him! So it’s entirely possible that someone else might capture the lead and oust one of the six. Or someone else could still announce?!
The rules are as follows: Three rounds, so between the four of us, we’ll pick 12 potential 2020 Democratic breakout stars (not necessarily who we think will win the nomination). Let’s determine the order. (I’m going to write our names on scraps of paper and then pester someone in the office to draw them out of a bag.)
The order:
Nathaniel
Nate
Sarah
Perry
And remember, it’s a 
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