Nate Silver's Blog, page 87

Politics Podcast: Partisanship Is A Hell Of A Drug

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The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses the role that partisanship will play in the midterms. It’s the first installment in a new series that we’re calling “Priors,” a look at the fundamental forces that shape and shift U.S. elections. The team also looks ahead to Tuesday’s primaries and assesses Americans’ views of President Trump’s foreign policy.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button 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 occasional special 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: NYT’s Amy Chozick On How The Media Covered Hillary Clinton

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FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has had a lot to say about how the media covered the 2016 election. In a special installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Nate and Clare sit down with New York Times writer-at-large Amy Chozick to discuss covering the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign for the paper of record. Chozick shared her experience and reflections in her new book, “Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling.”

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button 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 occasional special 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.

Will Impeachment Talk Affect The Midterms?

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

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Greetings, all. I hope you got some sleep last night after the elections extravaganza!

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It was such an exciting night that I couldn’t sleep. The most exciting election night of the month so far, I think.

micah:

President Trump’s Approval Rating Has Been Steady. Richard Nixon’s Once Was Too.

Our social media editor, Meena Ganesan, dutifully sends out a tweet each morning from the @FiveThirtyEight account detailing President Trump’s approval rating according to our constantly updating average of polls. The tweet isn’t automated, but it probably could be, since the number is always pretty much the same. For the past 66 days, Trump’s approval rating has been somewhere between 40.0 percent and 42.1 percent, according to our tracker. It’s been toward the higher end of that range recently — but that isn’t much of range.

Indeed, over the whole course of his presidency, the range Trump’s approval ratings travel in has been remarkably narrow. Upon his inauguration in 2017, Trump did not enjoy much of the “honeymoon effect” that new presidents typically do; instead, on Feb. 1, 2017, his approval rating was only 44.8 percent, according to our tracker. It’s never been higher than that since.1 But it’s also never been lower than 36.4 percent, a nadir that Trump hit in mid-December. While a few news events early in Trump’s term did seem to move his numbers — in particular, his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey and the various stops and starts in the Republican health care debate — those now seem more like the exceptions than the rule. Good or bad news for the president, almost nothing seems to change Americans’ views of Trump.

I was pretty skeptical last month, therefore, when, after the raid on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s office, The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson wrote an article claiming that we were “now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.” In a critique of Davidson’s article on Twitter, I pointed out that a potential end to Trump’s presidency was heavily contingent on public opinion. A Republican-led Congress isn’t likely to impeach Trump and remove him from office so long as his approval rating among Republican voters is 85 to 90 percent. A Democratic-led Congress might try, especially if Democrats had comfortable majorities — but that would require a big Democratic wave in this year’s November midterms, which is hardly guaranteed. In short, Trump wouldn’t seem to be at that much political risk unless his popularity deteriorates even further. But since the hit he took after firing Comey, Trump’s approval ratings have mostly been unaffected by news stemming from the Russia investigation or other potential scandals, and in fact have increased slightly over the past few months.

But Davidson’s column was partly intended as a warning against what he sees as a complacent assumption that the center will hold for Trump, just because it (sort of) has so far. He compared Trump’s presidency to the Iraq War and the financial crisis, two matters on which the situation on the ground was much worse than the conventional wisdom generally acknowledged — until it was too late. Trump’s approval ratings could be a lagging indicator; “polls seem capable of entering a stable place for some time but not [staying] there forever,” he wrote in a follow-up tweet.

This is a complicated subject — but let’s ask a relatively simple, empirical question: If a president’s approval ratings are stable early in his term, does that tend to imply that they’ll also be stable later on? In other words, is it safe to assume that Trump’s approval ratings will continue to vary only within a narrow range from the high 30s through the low 40s, given that that’s what’s happened so far?

The short answer is no, that is not a safe assumption. There are several presidents whose approval ratings were steady early in their terms — not quite as steady as Trump’s, but steady — but then became volatile later on.

For each president, I’ve compiled Gallup approval ratings data (I’m using only Gallup data because it allows for apples-to-apples comparisons2) at three stages of his presidency: in the first 500 days of his first term (Trump will hit the 500-day mark on June 3), in the remainder of his first term, and (if applicable) in his second term. Then I looked at the 95th and 5th percentile of Gallup approval ratings that each president achieved during each period. The area between those two percentiles is the range that the president’s approval rating traveled within except for short-lived outliers. For instance, Trump’s 95th percentile in Gallup so far is a 43 percent approval rating, while his 5th percentile is a 35 percent approval rating — a difference of only 8 percentage points.3 Trump has occasionally been higher or lower than that4 but not on a sustained basis. (Note: When I use the term “range” throughout the remainder of this article, I’ll be referring to the difference between the president’s 5th and 95th percentile approval ratings, and not the absolute minimum and maximum.)

Early stability in approval ratings doesn’t always last





First 500 days
Rest of first term
Second term


President
Low
High
Range
Low
High
Range
Low
High
Range




Trump
35
43
8
—
—

—
—



Kennedy
72
82
10
57
75
18
—
—



Johnson
69
80
11
—
—

38
69
31


Nixon
54
66
12
49
62
13
24
65
41


Eisenhower
60
74
14
62
78
16
52
67
15


GHW Bush
56
74
18
36
83
47
—
—



Obama
47
65
18
41
51
10
40
53
13


Clinton
39
58
19
41
58
17
56
67
11


Reagan
44
67
23
37
61
24
47
65
18


Ford
37
66
29
45
53
8
—
—



Carter
41
72
31
29
55
26
—
—



GW Bush
53
88
35
48
73
25
28
50
22


Truman
43
87
44
33
69
36
23
55
32

Low and high represent the 5th and 95th percentile, respectively. Johnson’s first term lasted fewer than 500 days, so his entire first term is covered within the “first 500 days” column and his entire second term is covered in the second term column. Trump’s numbers cover his first 473 days in office.

Source: GALLUP

Trump’s 8-point approval-rating range is the narrowest of any president to this point in his term. The previous record-holder was John F. Kennedy, whose range spanned between 72 percent and 82 percent, a 10-point spread. Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower also had narrow approval-ratings ranges in their first 500 days; to a lesser extent, so did George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

But three of these presidents experienced significant volatility in their ratings later on in their terms — and in all cases, they wound up worse off for it:

Nixon’s approval ratings remained steady throughout the rest of his first term, presaging his landslide re-election over George McGovern in 1972. But they began to crash at the beginning of his second term as Watergate went from a slow-burning background scandal to an acute political crisis.
Johnson won in a landslide in 1964, having had extremely steady (and high) approval ratings while filling out the remainder of Kennedy’s term. But he began to encounter problems very early in his second term as a result of a backlash against his handling of the Vietnam War and, in parts of the country, against his civil rights agenda.
George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings weren’t quite as steady as Nixon’s or Johnson’s or Trump’s, but they trended within a relatively stable range between 56 percent and 74 percent in his first 500 days. They became highly volatile thereafter, however, first spiking as a result of favorable public reaction to Operation Desert Storm and then falling all the way into the 30s by the middle of his failed re-election bid in 1992.

By contrast, there are four presidents — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Obama and Clinton — whose numbers started out fairly steady and then mostly remained that way (or became even steadier) throughout the balance of their terms. And there are other presidents — Truman, Carter and arguably George W. Bush5 — whose approval ratings were volatile throughout their terms. Still, the correlations between one period and the next are pretty low6; a steady approval rating can sometimes become volatile or vice versa.

These charts show FiveThirtyEight’s approval rating algorithm as applied to past presidents (they include all polls rather than just Gallup polls):7

Nonetheless, be careful if you think Trump’s demise is right around the corner. Even if there were a big shift in Trump’s approval ratings eventually, it could take a long time for it to come, perhaps only after he was successfully re-elected — as was the case for Nixon. Or, the surprise could be that Trump’s ratings shift way upward instead of way downward. (Since Trump’s approval ratings are low to begin with, he might have more room to go up than down.)

Also, it probably isn’t a coincidence that both Trump and Obama had narrow approval-rating ranges given how intense partisanship is these days. For Trump’s approval rating to get much higher than 50 percent, he would need significant crossover support from Democrats; for it to get much lower than 35 percent, he would need a significant number of Republican voters to turn on him.8 The theory that Trump’s popularity is bounded within a narrow range has a lot going for it, including that it has described the actual behavior of his approval rating well so far. Still, history tells us that presidential approval ratings behave in a relatively unpredictable fashion.

Politics Podcast: Primary Season Gets Into Full Swing

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Tuesday marks the first big primary election day of the 2018 midterms, with contests in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team breaks down which primaries are the most important to watch and what they could mean for the midterms this fall.

The crew also debates whether President Trump deserves more credit from the media for things that are going well, such as the economy and a pledge of denuclearization from North Korea.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button 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 occasional special 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: The Rudy Giuliani Rampage

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It’s been an interesting couple of days for President Trump and his new lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani contradicted the president about payments to Stormy Daniels in a Wednesday interview and spent the rest of the week adding details and clarifications to the original contradiction.

In this episode, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team talks to New York University constitutional law professor Rick Pildes about whether the new comments create legal complications for Trump. The team also discusses where the investigation of Michael Cohen could be headed.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button 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 occasional special 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.

Should Trump Answer Mueller’s Questions?

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

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For your consideration today: Should President Trump agree to be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller?

Obviously, we’re not lawyers or legal analysts, so we mostly want to focus on the politics of that question. But let’s set the stage first: This question is in the news because The New York Times’ Michael Schmidt broke a story this week that included dozens of questions Mueller reportedly has for Trump. What did you all make of those questions? And where did those come from exactly?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Here’s what the story said about where the questions came from: the questions were “read by the special counsel investigators to the president’s lawyers, who compiled them into a list. That document was provided to The Times by a person outside Mr. Trump’s legal team.”

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): It seems like someone from Trump’s universe — maybe formerly on his legal team? — made those questions available.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I thought the questions were … about what you’d expect the questions to be. There was one question that implied that Manafort was a backchannel to Russia, which went a step or two beyond what was known about the investigation publicly. But in general, the questions didn’t move my priors all that much, which is not to say it wasn’t an awesome scoop for The New York Times.

clare.malone: It was interesting that Mueller had questions about the potential firing of … Mueller.

perry: I feel like the leak of the questions is as interesting as the actual questions, which, as you said, were generally not that surprising.

micah: So, yeah, what was interesting about the leak?

perry: For one, it was odd to see Trump attacking the leak, which, as the Times story implies, seemed to come from someone on his side, not Mueller’s.

natesilver: What if someone on Trump’s side leaked to make it look like Mueller leaked?

The Times was more explicit about its sourcing than it usually is, which I thought was interesting and maybe kind of a tell.

clare.malone: That was my read. It’s a bit of a ham-handed media strategy, though — leak something so you can point to Mueller and say he leaked it.

Maybe it helps the White House shore up the Fox News base.

perry: Right. Fox is already attacking Mueller for leaking it.

micah: Though, Fox obtained the questions too (after the Times) — which is a bit weird.

clare.malone: And that kind of leak talk has danced around the edges of Trump’s bigger argument that the special counsel is B.S., the investigation is tainted and should end.

perry: Another point: If Trump’s main lawyers just leaked it, I think the Washington Post/AP/CNN and other outlets would have matched the story by now. But few have. That makes me think this was not a typical leak — it was more strategic.

micah: Also, I was struck by how much the questions mirrored public reporting — so either the media has done a really good job figuring out Mueller’s lines of inquiry, or Mueller’s team gave Trump’s people only the questions they would already assume he was going to get (which would seem like a smart strategy).

clare.malone: Yeah, I would save some questions if I were Mueller! The juicier questions, probably.

I’m no lawyer, but I did think it was odd that the special counsel’s team was negotiating terms like that with the White House.

perry: Agreed. I’m somewhat skeptical that this is Mueller’s actual list of questions, since these questions are somewhat obvious.

natesilver: I was also a bit surprised by how open-ended the questions were. It was a lot more “Talk about this …,” “Talk about that …,” and less, “Where were you on the night of June 15?”

clare.malone: Right. Well, I’m sure they were just giving general topic areas, right?

Lawyers often ask pretty precise questions and follow-ups.

micah: To use a poll analogy, we just don’t know what kind of sample this list of questions is. If we have a national poll of likely voters, we know a lot about the sample of people that the pollsters talked to, but we also know a lot about the full population that we’re trying to to take a cross-section of. In this case, we don’t know what the larger population is (the full list of questions Mueller wants to ask), so we have no way of guessing how representative this sample is.

natesilver: I mean, as Clare said, there’s also a thing where (as a journalist, I can’t speak to this as a prosecutor) you’re preparing for a potentially hostile interview and you agree to go over the subject areas with the interviewee ahead of time … but not the specific questions.

So maybe this was that? It’s not totally clear.

perry: I know we ducked the media discussion around the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, but I feel like there is a media discussion that is relevant here too. If someone close to Trump leaks questions, that then Trump attacks Mueller for that leak … it’s kind of an odd thing. The questions are news. But in some ways, this is part of the public battle between Mueller/Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Team Trump/House Republicans about whether the investigation is fair and should continue.

micah: Perry, yeah, that battle seems like the right larger frame here.

Also, Nate … no shoehorning WHCD takes in!

Don’t even try it!

natesilver: Can we think through something? What purpose, other than maybe trying to make it looked like Mueller leaked, would the leak have served for the leaker? (Not a rhetorical question.)

micah: Trying to convince the party (Congressional Republicans, fundraisers, etc.) that there isn’t some new shoe waiting to drop? As in, an unknown unknown?

I’m reaching maybe.

perry: First, to clue in other potential witnesses (on the Trump side) to what Mueller might be asking Trump. And second, to show congressional Republicans how direct and dangerous Mueller’s questions are, so they can keep trying to block/impede the probe.

I’m just guessing, but those seem like the obvious ones.

micah: Also, trying to make it look like a Mueller leak is probably a good enough goal by itself from the White House’s POV, right? Especially considering that there wasn’t much new in the questions?

clare.malone: It’s interesting that Mueller brings in a couple of questions about Trump’s talking to media figures — it sounds like he wants Trump to account for his behavior in public that might allude to or affect events that were happening behind the scenes.

For example, from the Times story:

“What was the purpose of your April 11, 2017, statement to Maria Bartiromo?”

“What did you mean in your interview with Lester Holt about Mr. Comey and Russia?”

micah: Yeah, those are weird questions, Clare.

natesilver: One could certainly argue that the fact that there wasn’t a lot of news in the questions (above and beyond what’s been revealed already) is a good sign for Trump.

micah: Maybe, but we don’t know because we don’t know whether these are all the questions or some of the questions or if they’re more topics than questions.

perry: I think the fact that so many of these questions on this list came from things that were in the public domain suggest that these are not the real questions.

micah: Yeah, that was my thinking, Perry.

natesilver: Well … maybe. Or maybe there isn’t any “there” there.

clare.malone: God, where is a lawyer when you need one.

micah: OK, let’s go to our main question now: If you were Trump, would you agree to the interview?

natesilver: No.

clare.malone: I feel like that’s Nate Silver talking

Trump definitely wants to talk!

natesilver: Slytherin.

clare.malone: But, like, NO. Follow your lawyers’ advice.

But it’s Trump so, if I’m Trump, I agree to do the interview anyhow, thinking that it makes me look more open and cooperative.

micah: Nate’s a no. Clare, you’re a no too?

clare.malone: Yeah.

perry: I assume the strategy should be go to the interview and invoke executive privilege and other stuff constantly. Don’t actually say anything controversial or interesting and claim legal reasons why you don’t answer the questions. Declining the interview suggests you have something to hide, but I assume giving direct answers has its own problems.

natesilver: It’s like — if there isn’t any “there” there, then Trump (who is definitely vulnerable on obstruction charges even if there isn’t any “collusion”) can probably only get himself into trouble by talking. Any if there is a “there” there, he can also only get himself into trouble by talking.

clare.malone: So Perry’s a yes!

perry: Try to limit the questions, etc.

natesilver: But Trump’s not good at that.

clare.malone: Right, if this were another person under questioning, you might have more confidence that they would stick to the script of demurring to speak on certain topics. But it’s Trump, and if you’re his lawyers, you think he might well take the prosecutorial bait.

natesilver: Also, he’s already publicly picked a battle with Mueller — so it’s not like it’s inconsistent with his previous strategy. It’d be another thing if Trump’s public stance had been, “We’re cooperating with the investigation as much as possible.”

perry: Do we actually know whether Trump is bad in depositions? We only think he says crazy stuff because he says crazy stuff in situations where he is not under any legal jeopardy. He had done lots of sketchy stuff for years without being indicted, so I assume he is more careful in actual legal matters than he seems when he talks at say, press conferences that have no real consequences.

micah: Don’t we have tape of his past depositions?

clare.malone: Yeah.

He’s more low-key, but I think he’s still Trump.

micah: In the depositions, doesn’t he seem a bit more beholden to the truth? In that he admits to lying, exaggerating, etc.?

clare.malone: Does he?

micah: From the Atlantic:

“The Donald Trump who emerges from these depositions is the same but different from the one familiar to Americans today. He is just as apt to bluster and braggadocio, and sometimes peevish. But within the confines of conference rooms and offices, he is calmer, more restrained, and more deliberate than his public persona, and with the tether of his oath holding him back, often acknowledges when he is wrong or has misrepresented things in the past.”

perry: Interesting. I wonder if Trump can find a way to do this interview that blocks certain questions. I assume his attorney(s) will be in the room.

And the depositions that The Atlantic is describing happened before he had the power of being the president, which I think would limit even a person like Mueller in how he takes on Trump.

micah: Let me ask this: What would the political fallout be (if any) from Trump refusing to be interviewed?

natesilver: I don’t think it would change a lot of minds. Again, Trump is already saying that the Mueller investigation is a WITCH HUNT. It’s not like he’s trying to be cooperative with it.

micah: Here’s CNN polling from March:

“Three-quarters overall (75%) say the President should agree to testify under oath for the probe, if he is asked to do so, similar to the 78% who felt that way in January. … The partisan gap is a bit smaller on this question, with majorities across party lines saying they think Trump ought to agree to testify if asked (92% of Democrats, 76% of independents and 54% of Republicans say he should).”

micah: Just 19 percent said he shouldn’t testify.

That’s a lot of people who think Trump should testify.

perry: Once Trump announced that he wasn’t testifying and gave his rationale for why, I think that 19 percent would get closer to 40.

Democrats on the Hill would condemn him for not testifying, Republicans on the Hill would say “the investigation has gone on too long,” “who would submit themselves to such a wide range of questions,” etc. All of the attacking the investigation stuff from Devin Nunes, Chuck Grassley, the House Freedom Caucus and others has set Trump up to duck this interview and claim it is not because he has something to hide.

micah: Yeah, that seems right, Perry.

IDK, though, I feel like there’d be some cost!

natesilver: I continue to think (even though it will seem self-serving as an elections-focused site) that the midterms are pretty important context here.

The extent of the public backlash against Trump isn’t totally clear right now, and it won’t be until people vote in November.

If Trump looks like he’s having a catastrophic effect on Republican electoral prospects, a lot of things will change.

micah: Doesn’t it already look like that?

natesilver: From the special elections, it does. But his approval ratings aren’t that bad. A lot of people have been in the low 40s at this point in their term and been re-elected.

perry: I guess I don’t know if the “will he testify” question, in terms of the legal process, extends till November. I assume some parts of the investigation have to end before then.

clare.malone: Hm.

I guess we haven’t talked in a long time about where we stand on the Mueller timeline.

Is he nearing the end? Is he in the middle?

Given that he has questions for the president, it seems the former, but who knows?

natesilver: Doesn’t everyone sort of have an incentive to slow-walk this until after the midterms?

micah: Oh man … I think we just don’t know?

perry: Not Trump. Every part of this investigation gets more out of his control if the House is controlled by Democrats.

clare.malone: Yeah, Nate, what’s Trump’s incentive to slow-walk?

Just delay even a bad outcome till later?

micah: Doesn’t he want it over now?

natesilver: Well, maybe not Trump. But Mueller and Congressional Democrats and Congressional Republicans all probably do.

perry: If the Democrats win the House, Michael Avenatti (Stormy Daniels’s lawyer) will still be on CNN constantly, but they will be airing his comments via various Democratic-led hearings from the Hill.

We’ve been having this “Will he testify?” discussion for months now. Isn’t the actual result of this already known? (He is not testifying.)

natesilver: Maybe that’s Trump’s incentive, by the way? Democrats will overplay their hand?

If they win the House, for instance, they’d face a potentially difficult decision about whether to begin impeachment proceedings.

clare.malone: They’re going to do that. Someone is going to do that.

natesilver: Mueller’s investigation could seem like more of a “witch hunt” if Trump confuses it in the public’s mind with Democratic-led investigations in the House.

Some of which will probably go overboard.

perry: This is a story from Jan. 8 on whether Trump will speak to Mueller.

micah: I guess there’s a difference between not speaking to Mueller and refusing to speak to Mueller — passive vs. active. Trump is still in the passive category.

perry: I actually think, and this is a political issue, that the dynamics of impeachment are shifting. Trump is saying directly that 2018 is about impeachment, which is forcing Nancy Pelosi and Democrats to say even more, “No, it’s not.”

clare.malone: Yeah, but Perry, I think that idea will be raised by Republicans, sure, but if the Democrats win the House, they’re going to feel a lot of pressure from their base. They might play it down during the midterms, but I think they’ll still do it if they win.

Can Trump legally refuse to speak to Mueller, Micah?

micah: I think he can, Clare? At least, it’s an open question legally.

clare.malone: From Talking Points Memo:

” … constitutional law experts told TPM that if the White House does choose defiance and Mueller responds with a subpoena, it would likely set up a high-stakes legal showdown—one in which the special counsel might have the upper hand.”

natesilver: Maybe there’s a sweet spot for Trump where Democrats win the House, but not by much, and they don’t win the Senate. So Trump avoids a massive Democratic wave, which has all sorts of negative implications for him, but Pelosi (or her successor) nonetheless has to wrestle with some of the challenges that come with being in the majority.

perry: My understanding is Mueller right now is asking Trump to speak voluntarily. Mueller could get a subpoena, although getting a subpoena for the sitting president is not simple. Then, Trump can invoke the Fifth Amendment (against self-incrimination) and not talk. Or he could make some claim of presidential privilege.

There are lots of routes for Trump to not talk to Mueller.

micah: If you had to bet, do you think he talks or no?

natesilver: I would bet “no.”

clare.malone: His legal instinct, historically, is to fight things. Which would fit with the “just say no” strategy.

perry: I would be stunned if he talked to Mueller. Not quite John-McCain-votes-down-the-health-care-bill stunned, but fairly stunned.

natesilver: It also seems like we’ve seen a shift in Trumpworld to a strategy of arguing “Obstruction doesn’t matter, so long as there’s no (proof of) collusion.”

It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

So Trump’s attitude might be — there’s no point in talking to the guy if he doesn’t have the goods.

micah: I guess I just think it’s remarkable that we all think there would be very little cost — if any — to Trump not talking.

If that’s true, something is deeply broken about something.

clare.malone: Such is a highly partisan media environment!

micah:

Politics Podcast: How Much Trouble Is Joe Manchin In?

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Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is one of 10 Democrats defending a Senate seat in a state President Trump won in 2016. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team sizes up the Republicans hoping to challenge him this fall and debates how worried he should be. The crew also engages some hypotheticals in a new round of political “Would You Rather … ?”

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button 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 .

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Another Special Election, Another Really Bad Sign For The GOP

One might describe Arizona’s 8th Congressional District as … nondescript. Covering portions of Phoenix’s northern and western suburbs, including the Arizona Cardinals’ home stadium, the district isn’t all that geographically or demographically distinct, containing a largely older, largely white population of professionals and retirees. The area has traditionally been extremely Republican, having voted for John McCain by 22 points in 2008, Mitt Romney by 25 points in 2012, and President Trump by 21 points in 2016. It has a growing number of Hispanics, but Hispanics make up a considerably smaller share of the voting population than of its population overall.

Nor was there anything especially unusual about the candidates who competed in the special election there on Tuesday — Republican Debbie Lesko, a state senator, and Democrat Hiral Tipirneni, a doctor. Each won their respective primaries by solid-but-not-overwhelming margins, and each raised about the same amount of money for their general election campaigns. They’re competent, uncontroversial candidates who are representative of the sorts of people who will be nominated throughout the country in the midterms this November.

In other words, Arizona 8 doesn’t make for a lot of headlines. There was no Roy Moore equivalent in the district — and not even a Greg Gianforte. The district moved ever so slightly toward Democrats between 2012 and 2016, but it wasn’t a place where the political trends were changing all that rapidly or where Democrats actually expected to be within striking distance (as they did in Georgia’s highly educated, suburban 6th Congressional District, where Democrat Jon Ossoff lost to Republican opponent Karen Handel in a special election last year). Arizona 8 is essentially a “generic,” but very red, congressional district.

But that very lack of distinctiveness probably makes Arizona 8 a more reliable data point. There are no particular contingencies related to the candidates or the campaigns or the demographics of the district that complicate the outcome or give many excuses for it.

And although the Republican, Lesko, is the apparent winner, the election represents another really bad data point for the GOP. Lesko’s margin of victory was only 5 percentage points in a district that typically votes Republican by much, much more than that. The outcome represented a 20-point swing toward Democrats relative to the district’s FiveThirtyEight partisan lean, which is derived from how it voted for president in 2016 and 2012 relative to the country.

Democratic overperformance in federal special elections




Year
Date
Seat
Partisan Lean
Vote Margin
Dem. Swing




2017
April 4
California 34th*
D+69
D+87
18



April 11
Kansas 4th
R+29
R+6
23



May 25
Montana At-Large
R+21
R+6
16



June 20
Georgia 6th
R+9
R+4
6



June 20
South Carolina 5th
R+19
R+3
16



Nov. 7
Utah 3rd
R+35
R+32
3



Dec. 12
Alabama U.S. Senate
R+29
D+2
31


2018
March 13
Pennsylvania 18th
R+21
D+0.3
22



April 24
Arizona 8th
R+25
R+5
20

Partisan lean is the average difference between how the constituency voted and how the country voted overall in the last two presidential elections, with 2016 weighted 75 percent and 2012 weighted 25 percent.

* Results are from the all-party primary, which included multiple Democratic candidates; results reflect the total vote share for all Democratic candidates combined.

Sources: Daily Kos Elections, secretaries of state

The silver lining for Republicans isn’t that Lesko won. If Republicans are winning by only 5 points in this sort of extremely red district in November, dozens of more competitive seats will flop to Democrats — more than enough for them to take the House. Rather, the “good” news is that Republicans have endured lots of this sort of bad news already. Before Tuesday night, Democrats had outperformed their partisan baseline by an average of 17 points in congressional special elections so far this cycle. So the Arizona result was only slightly worse for Republicans than previous ones.

The bigger question is what to make of the disparity between the overwhelming swing toward Democrats so far in special election results — which would imply a Democratic wave on par with the historic Republican years of 1994 and 2010 — and the considerably more modest one suggested by the generic congressional ballot, which shows Democrats ahead by only 7 points and implies that the battle for House control is roughly a toss-up.1 One plausible answer is that the generic ballot will shift further toward Democrats once voters become more engaged with the campaign in their respective districts and pollsters switch over to likely voter models. Still, both the generic ballot and special election results (when taken in the aggregate) are fairly reliable indicators. Rather than choosing between them, it’s best to consider both. That means entertaining a wide range of scenarios that run between Republicans narrowly holding onto the House and an epic Democratic wave.

Could A Blue Wave Really Make Its Way To Texas?

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

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): OK, we have a special politics chat team gathered today to talk about this: When do states flip? From red to blue, or blue to red, or whatever.

The impetus for this question is a Quinnipiac poll published last week that showed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in real danger of losing his re-election bid to Democrat Beto O’Rourke. But I also want to use Texas as a way to talk about flipping states more broadly.

Our special guest today: Meghan Ashford-Grooms, FiveThirtyEight editor and former Texan.

Meghan, give us your Texas bona fides.

meghan (Meghan Ashford-Grooms, copy chief): I worked at PolitiFact Texas, which is housed at the Austin American-Statesman, in the late 2000s. So I was an Austin resident for eight years! (All other Texans will now groan, considering that Austin is such an oddball space in terms of state politics. But that’s what I have.)

micah: So, Meghan, you’re playing the role of blue-Texas skeptic.

Nate, you’re playing the role of blue-Texas believer.

meghan: I can’t believe that the blue-Texas skeptic is now the conventional wisdom peddler.

micah: Let’s start with Texas and then we’ll broaden it out … can O’Rourke turn Texas blue in 2018?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Wait, I didn’t know the chat had started!

I don’t think Beto can turn Texas blue. But I think Texas might already be maroon (somewhere between purple and red), and a Democrat can maybe win in a maroon state in this sort of political environment.

meghan: I think that makes sense, but let me channel our dear friend Harry in exclaiming that all of this ruckus that’s been created is based on one poll.

ONE POLL

That seems like a lot of talk, right, Nate? Or should I care about this one?

micah: Also, is maroon really between purple and red?

natesilver: I was going to call it a “burgundy state,” but then you’d all laugh at me for being a snob.

meghan: Very true.

I’m googling it now.

“Maroon is a dark brownish red color which takes its name from the French word marron, or chestnut.” — according to Wikipedia.

natesilver: The thing about the one poll is that … it’s not like there are a whole bunch of other polls that contradict it. There haven’t really been a lot of reliable polls of Texas, period.

I mean, here’s what the Always Reliable (TM) Wikipedia lists as the polls in the race:

The U.S. Senate race in Texas: Ted Cruz vs. Beto O’Rourke




Poll
Dates
Cruz
O’Rourke
Other
Undecided




Quinnipiac University
April 12-17, 2018
47%
44%
1%
8%


Public Policy Polling*
Jan. 17-18, 2018
45
37
—
18


WPA Intelligence*
Dec. 12-14, 2017
52
34
1
13


Texas Lyceum
April 3-9, 2017
30
30
3
37

*Partisan poll

meghan: The difference in the number of undecided voters from last year to this year is interesting.

natesilver: So, you’ve got two partisan polls that are several months old, both of which showed a bigger Cruz lead than Quinnipiac did. Then a nonpartisan poll from like a year ago that showed a tie, but with a huge number of undecideds. It’s all sort of a mess.

meghan: Texas is the second-largest state in the country, and knowing what’s going on down there seems like it should be a bigger deal among the polling community.

micah: Yes!

natesilver: Well, to its credit, Quinnipiac added Texas to its list of states!

And they kinda got crap for it from polling know-it-alls. The fact is that Texas isn’t one of those states with a highly reputed local pollster, so getting Q-Pac down there is a pretty good get.

meghan: Does that mean Quinnipiac will keep doing polls of Texas through November? I’d be more willing to reconsider my blue-Texas skeptic position with more data.

micah: I think so, yeah.

meghan: Progress!

micah: That Quinnipiac poll also found that a majority of Texans still don’t know much about O’Rourke: “O’Rourke gets a 30-16 percent favorability rating, but 53 percent of Texas voters don’t know enough about him to form an opinion of him.”

So I feel like the race is still super fluid.

natesilver: Yeah, I think O’Rourke is the least interesting part of the story here.

He’s a competent candidate who will raise plenty of money … but the question is less about Beto and more about whether a “generic Democrat” can beat Ted Cruz.

micah: OK, so let’s forget about the poll and O’Rourke for a second …

Without the poll, and given President Trump’s poor approval rating, Democrats’ advantage on the generic ballot, special election results and the candidates (experience, fundraising, etc.), how competitive would you expect this race to be?

natesilver: I mean … it depends on whether you’re using 2016 or 2012 as a baseline.

meghan: I’m deeply biased by my ties to the state, so I’m not sure my answer would actually be based on the parameters you laid out there, Micah. I expect the national media to tell me it’s going to be close and then Cruz to win by way more than we expected.

micah: Wait, both of you need to say more on what you just said.

natesilver: Texas is about 12 percentage points more Republican than the country overall. If the national environment favors Democrats by, like, 7 points (where the generic ballot has been lately), that might make Texas have a 5-point Republican lean in this political environment.

If the national environment is more favorable to Democrats than that — say a 12-point lead, which is what you might infer if you’re looking at a blend of the generic ballot and special elections — then Texas is pretty purple in this climate.

However, that all describes an open-seat election, and Cruz is an incumbent.

micah: And, Meghan, you seem to be making the case that Texas is somewhat immune from national factors?

meghan: Maybe everyone thinks this about the states that they come to know well, but Texas is different from many other places. Although I definitely agree with Nate and others who have said that the national environment will have some effect … I just don’t think it’ll be what some of the media narratives will predict.

micah: Texas is special at thinking it’s special.

meghan: Dammit.

natesilver: Haha.

meghan: Also true. (Please don’t send me emails reminding me that I’m not a native Texan, dear readers.)

natesilver: Texas exceptionalism

micah: Nate, how big an effect does Cruz’s incumbency have?

[Editor’s note: Nate’s has owed me an article about that incumbency question for like three months.]

natesilver: Well, it mostly helps to be an incumbent. Even though it doesn’t help as much as it once did. But you might expect an incumbent to have an advantage of, say, 7 points above and beyond an open-seat candidate.

On the other hand, Cruz’s approval ratings are pretty middling.

meghan: I should have set up the Wendy Davis bot for my answer above.

natesilver: So the way I see it is something like this: Texas has a 12-point Republican lean, but the national environment favors Democrats by, say, 9 points, but then Cruz has like a 5-point incumbency advantage (slightly less than normal). So that would put Cruz ahead by mid-to-high single digits. That’s my prior, anyway.

micah: You on board with that, Meghan?

meghan: So … yes.

micah: But maybe with a 3-point GOP special Texas BBQ sauce?

meghan: Micah, you cannot make BBQ jokes.

micah: Jeez.

meghan: Do y’all think the media’s coverage of that Quinnipiac poll reflected Nate’s view of the race and the landscape — or was it more like, “WAIT CRUZ COULD LOSE?!?!?”

micah: OK, so yeah, I’m not sure how I would characterize media coverage of the Q poll.

HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE THE MEDIA COVERAGE!?!

natesilver: I’d characterize it as a little overheated on both sides, which is of course how media coverage always is about everything.

micah: So people yelling “Texas will never flip!” and people yelling “Texas is blue!”?

meghan: I thought the local Texas coverage was super interesting. You could definitely tell that reporters there have been spending more time thinking about what polling is — they seemed to be avoiding just reporting the topline numbers.

So there was more context than there would have been even in the 2016 cycle, I think.

natesilver: I agree with that. Also, though, there was a little bit too much effort spent trying to pick apart the poll’s demographics.

micah: A Dallas Morning News piece cited our soon-to-be-updated Pollster Ratings! (Great paper with a great editor at the helm.)

meghan: I like that there’s more debate about the question of whether Texas will go blue in the national coverage now. When I was working in Texas, the national media reporting seemed to be very monolithic.

natesilver: We’re still 200 days out from the election, or something. No one poll should be getting all that much attention. The flip side of that is that people also shouldn’t be trying to “debunk” a poll they don’t like. I just don’t think it’s at all crazy to think that a Democrat is within single digits of a Republican there right now. The question is whether Beto can get 50 percent 1, or whether he might stall out at, say, 47 or 48 percent, which is what sometimes happens to Democrats in states like Georgia and Arizona.

micah: OK, so let’s broaden this …

There’s always this question in the run-up to every election of what the battleground is. Pollsters, for example, literally have to decide which states to poll. In the past, has that battleground been defined too narrowly — are analysts and reporters too unwilling to imagine “safe” states flipping? Or has it been defined too broadly?

And how do we define it?

natesilver: I mean, the Clinton campaign fucked up in 2016 by playing in too narrow a range of states.

People reduce the problem to Michigan and Wisconsin, which reflects a certain amount of hindsight bias. But what was foreseeable in advance is that the Clinton campaign was treating it as an eight-state election, and the Trump campaign was seeing it as a 15-state election. And the Trump campaign got it right.

To me, Texas is definitely worth watching because there aren’t that many Democratic targets. Tennessee is another state like that. Democrats could very well need one of those states, whether because something goes wrong in their attempt to take over Arizona or Nevada, or because they lose one or more of their own incumbents in Missouri, North Dakota, etc.

meghan: Guys, you are talking about both of my states today. I’m from Nashville. (btw, my sister had a baby this week in Nashville. Shoutout to the Volunteer State!)

I don’t watch polling in general the way that Nate does, so I don’t have a great sense of whether those battleground definitions have historically been too tight, but there were states in the 2016 election that voted differently than the media and others expected.

micah: I remember the Obama campaign had a really broad map. Which turned out to be kinda half right?

natesilver: Yes, the Obama campaign did play a broader map, especially in 2008.

They flipped a lot of states that had traditionally been Republican, some of which (e.g., Virginia) were harbingers of things to come, and some of which (Indiana) were one-off flukes.

meghan: I wonder if there’s any reason to think Texas and Tennessee won’t be flipping again any time soon because they only pretty recently went full Republican. (Tennessee had a Democratic governor as recently as 2011, and Texas’s Legislature didn’t become fully GOP-controlled until 2003.)

natesilver:I mean, I’d just say all of this is tied together. If Democrats are losing ground among non-college whites but gaining ground among college whites and minorities, you’d expect them to make gains in Texas.

Whereas Tennessee would be more of a one-off.

meghan: So the timing of this potential switch doesn’t matter? There are people in Texas who were Democrats and then became Republicans. Do we think they’d potentially switch back, by virtue of the fact that they have college educations? In that category, you would have to include Energy Secretary (and former Texas Gov.) Rick Perry! He used to be a Democrat, and he went to Texas A&M. (Which I admit is barely a college. Sorry, Aggies.)

natesilver: I mean, Texas has a pretty darn robust economy. So maybe people there increasingly see themselves as the “haves” and not the “have-nots,” and the “haves” are increasingly associating themselves with Democrats. Hillary Clinton did make some pretty big gains in Texas in 2016 relative to Obama in 2012. But I’ll defer to Meghan on that.

A lot of this, though, is that Texas’s population is changing. There’s a lot of domestic migration into Texas. And the younger population, which is now reaching voting age, is quite diverse.

meghan: Well, I have a perspective on the 2016 margins that is maybe a little out there. Here’s the “statement” I gave to Micah for the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast that published on Monday:

It seems like the Democrats do have something going for them this cycle — a lot of unusually good candidates (including Beto). BUT I have a hard time not being skeptical of the frequently resurrected coastal media narrative that we’re in for a big change in Texas voting. Harry did an article about that, kinda, before he left, and it’s a good reminder that the electorate in Texas is way more Republican-leaning than the state’s population at large.

Also, and this is totally my hot take: I think that the media types have gotten fired up by how badly Trump did in Texas in 2016 (relatively of course) but that that could be a misinterpretation of the data. I think it’s possible that Texans, who are very defensive and protective of their people, were upset at how Trump treated Ted Cruz in the Republican primary. But I think that effect (of punishing Trump for that particular sin) will wear off — eventually. Not sure what that means for the midterms though.

micah: