Nate Silver's Blog, page 93

Emergency Politics Podcast: Doug Jones Wins In Alabama

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On Tuesday night, Doug Jones became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Alabama in a quarter-century. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses the factors that converged to make that possible.

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.

What The Hell Is Happening With These Alabama Polls?

Somebody’s going to be wrong in Alabama.

We’ve already urged caution when interpreting polls of Alabama’s special election to the U.S. Senate, which will be held on Tuesday. Some of that is because of the media’s usual tendency to demand certainty from the polls when the polls can’t provide it. And some of it is because of the circumstances of this particular race: a special election in mid-December in a state where Republicans almost never lose but where the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, has been accused of sexual misconduct toward multiple underaged women.

What we’re seeing in Alabama goes beyond the usual warnings about minding the margin of error, however. There’s a massive spread in results from poll to poll — with surveys on Monday morning showing everything from a 9-point lead for Moore to a 10-point advantage for Democrat Doug Jones — and they reflect two highly different approaches to polling.

Most polls of the state have been made using automated scripts (these are sometimes also called IVR or “robopolls”). These polls have generally shown Moore ahead and closing strongly toward the end of the campaign, such as the Emerson College poll on Monday that showed Moore leading by 9 points. Recent automated polls from Trafalgar Group, JMC Analytics and Polling, Gravis Marketing and Strategy Research have also shown Moore with the lead.

But when traditional, live-caller polls have weighed in — although these polls have been few and far between — they’ve shown a much different result. A Monmouth University survey released on Monday showed a tied race. Fox News’s final poll of the race, also released on Monday, showed Jones ahead by 10 percentage points. An earlier Fox News survey also had Jones comfortably ahead, while a Washington Post poll from late November had Jones up 3 points at a time when most other polls showed the race swinging back to Moore. And a poll conducted for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in mid-November — possibly released to the public in an effort to get Moore to withdraw from the race — also showed Jones well ahead.1

What accounts for the differences between live-caller and automated polls? There are several factors, all of which are potentially relevant to the race in Alabama:

Automated polls are prohibited by law from calling voters on cellphones.
Automated polls get lower response rates and therefore may have less representative samples.
Automated polls may have fewer problems with “shy” voters who are reluctant to disclose their true voting intentions.
Automated pollsters (in part to compensate for issues No. 1 and 2 above) generally make more assumptions when modeling turnout, whereas traditional pollsters prefer to let the voters “speak for themselves” and take the results they obtain more at face value.

Issue No. 1, not calling cellphones, is potentially a major problem: The Fox News poll found Jones leading by 30 points among people who were interviewed by cellphone. Slightly more than half of American adults don’t have access to a landline, according to recent estimates by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also found a higher share of mobile-only households in the South than in other parts of the country. Moreover, voters with landline service are older than the voting population as a whole and are more likely to be white — characteristics that correlate strongly with voting Republican, especially in states such as Alabama.

Pollsters are aware of these problems, so they use demographic weighting to try to compensate. Even if you can’t get enough black voters on a (landline) phone, for instance, you may have some reasonable way to estimate how many black voters there “should” be in the electorate, based on Census Bureau data or turnout in previous elections — so you can weight the black voters you do get on the phone more heavily until you get the “right” demographic mix.

This sounds dubious — and there are better and worse ways to conduct demographic weighting — but it’s a well-accepted practice. (Almost all pollsters use demographic weighting in some form.) And sometimes everything turns out just fine — automated polls don’t have a great track record, but firms such as Trafalgar Group that do automated polling generally performed pretty well in 2016, for example. Some automated firms have also begun to supplement their landline samples with online panels in an effort to get a more representative sample. Still, cell-only and landline voters may be differentiated from one another in ways that are relevant for voting behavior but which don’t fall into traditional demographic categories — cell-only voters may have different media consumption habits, for instance. If nothing else, failing to call cellphones adds an additional layer of unpredictability to the results.

Apart from their failure to call mobile phones, automated polls have lower response rates (issue No. 2) — often in the low single digits. This is because voters are more likely to hang up when there isn’t a human on the other end of the line nudging them to complete a survey. Also, many automated polls call each household only once, whereas pollsters conducting traditional surveys often make several attempts to reach the same household. Calling a household only once could bias the sample in various ways — for instance, toward whichever party’s voters are more enthusiastic (probably Democrats in the Alabama race) or toward whoever tends to pick up the phone in a particular household (often older voters, rather than younger ones).

As for issue No. 3, proponents of automated polls — and online polls — sometimes claim that they yield more honest responses from voters than traditional polls do. Respondents may be less concerned about social desirability bias when pushing numbers on their phone or clicking on an online menu as opposed to talking to another human being. That could be particularly relevant in the case of Alabama if some voters are ashamed to admit that they plan to vote for Moore, a man accused of molesting teenagers.

With that said, while there’s a rich theoretical literature on social desirability bias, the empirical evidence for it affecting election polls is somewhat flimsy. The Bradley Effect (the supposed tendency for polls to overestimate support for minority candidates) has pretty much gone away, for instance. There’s been no tendency for nationalist parties to outperform their polls in Europe. And so-called “shy Trump” voters do not appear to have been the reason that Trump outperformed his polls last year.2

Finally (No. 4), automated and traditional pollsters often take different philosophies toward working with their data. Although they probably wouldn’t put it this way themselves, automated pollsters know that their raw data is somewhat crappy — so they rely more heavily on complicated types of turnout and demographic weighting to make up for it. Automated pollsters are more likely to weight their results by party identification, for instance — by how many Republicans, Democrats and independents are in their sample — whereas traditional pollsters usually don’t do this because partisan identification is a fluid, rather than a fixed, characteristic.

Although I don’t conduct polls myself, I generally side with the traditional pollsters on this philosophical question. I don’t like polls that impose too many assumptions on their data; instead, I prefer an Ann Selzer-ish approach of trusting one’s data, even when it shows an “unusual” turnout pattern or produces a result that initially appears to be an outlier. Sometimes what initially appears to be an outlier turns out to have been right all along.

Related:

With that said, automated pollsters can make a few good counterarguments. Traditional polls also have fairly low response rates — generally around 10 percent — and potentially introduce their own demographic biases, such as winding up with electorates that are more educated than the actual electorate. Partisan non-response bias may also be a problem — if the supporters of one candidate see him or her get a string of bad news (such as Moore in the Alabama race), they may be less likely to respond to surveys … but they may still turn up to vote.

Essentially, the automated pollsters would argue that nobody’s raw data approximates a truly random sample anymore — and that even though it can be dangerous to impose too many assumptions on one’s data, the classical assumptions made by traditional pollsters aren’t working very well, either. (Traditional pollsters have had a better track record over the long run, but they also overestimated Democrats’ performance in 2014 and 2016.)

So, who’s right? There’s a potential tiebreaker of sorts, which is online polls. Online polls potentially have better raw data than automated polls — they get higher response rates, and there are more households without landline access than without internet access. However, because there’s no way to randomly “ping” people online in the same way that you’d randomly call their phone, online surveys have no way to ensure a truly random probability sample.

To generalize a bit, online polls therefore tend to do a lot of turnout weighting and modeling instead of letting their data stand “as is.” But their raw data is usually more comprehensive and representative than automated polls, so they have better material to work with.

The online polls also come out somewhat in Moore’s favor. Recent polls from YouGov and Change Research show him ahead by 6 points and 7 points, respectively; in the case of the Change Research poll, this reflects a reversal from a mid-November poll that had Jones ahead.

But perhaps the most interesting poll of all is from the online firm SurveyMonkey. It released 10 different versions (!) of its recent survey, showing everything from a 9-point Jones lead to a 10-point Moore lead, depending on various assumptions — all with the same underlying data.

Although releasing 10 different versions of the same poll may be overkill, it illustrates the extent to which polling can be an assumption-driven exercise, especially in an unusual race such as Alabama’s Senate contest. Perhaps the most interesting thing SurveyMonkey found is that there may be substantial partisan non-response bias in the polling — that Democrats were more likely to take the survey than Republicans. “The Alabama registered voters who reported voting in 2016 favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 50 to 39 percentage point margin,” SurveyMonkey’s Mark Blumenthal wrote. “Trump’s actual margin was significantly larger (62 to 34 percent).”

In other words, SurveyMonkey’s raw data was showing a much more purple electorate than the solid-red one that you usually get in Alabama. If that manifests in actual turnout patterns — if Democrats are more likely to respond to surveys and are more likely to vote because of their greater enthusiasm — Jones will probably win. If there are some “shy Moore” voters, however, then Moore will probably win. To make another generalization, traditional pollsters usually assume that their polls don’t have partisan non-response bias, while automated polls (and some online polls such as YouGov) generally assume that they do have it, which is part of why they’re showing such different results.

Because you’ve read so much detail about the polls, I don’t want to leave you without some characterization of the race. I still think Moore is favored, although not by much; Jones’s chances are probably somewhere in the same ballpark as Trump’s were of winning the Electoral College last November (about 30 percent).

The reason I say that is because in a state as red as Alabama, Jones needs two things to go right for him: He needs a lopsided turnout in his favor, and he needs pretty much all of the swing voters in Alabama (and there aren’t all that many of them) to vote for him. Neither of these are all that implausible. But if either one goes wrong for Jones, Moore will probably win narrowly (and if both go wrong, Moore could still win in a landslide). The stakes couldn’t be much higher for the candidates — or for the pollsters who surveyed the race.

Why Democrats Are Finally Pushing Franken To Resign

Three weeks ago, after Leeann Tweeden accused Minnesota Sen. Al Franken of groping her and kissing her without her consent, we argued that Democrats ought to have pushed for Franken to resign. Doing so would have allowed them to claim the moral high ground at a time when allegations of sexual misconduct had implicated both Democratic and Republican politicians — including President Trump and Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama. It would also have come at a relatively small political price, since Franken’s replacement would be named by a Democratic governor and Democrats would be favored to keep the seat in a special election in 2018.

Democrats didn’t see it the same way; instead, the party line was that Franken’s case should be referred to the Senate ethics committee. But the party has since shifted gears: On Wednesday, a cavalcade of Democratic senators — first several female members, such as New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, but eventually including party leaders such as New York’s Chuck Schumer — called on Franken to resign. Franken’s office has said he’ll make an announcement about his future on Thursday, which many reporters expect to be a resignation.

So what changed? Most obviously, several other women came forward with accusations that Franken had groped them or made unwanted advances toward them, including two new accusations on Thursday alone.

Unfortunately, this was fairly predictable: Sexual predation is often serial. (Consider, for instance, that, on Jezebel’s fairly exhaustive list of prominent men accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault, all but a handful have multiple accusers.) The lesson is that even if party leaders think that an initial allegation against one of their members may be politically survivable or morally tolerable, it will often be followed by other accusations.

But something else changed too: Democratic leaders got a lot of feedback from voters in the form of polls, and it wasn’t positive.

Voters care about sexual harassment allegations — and thought both parties were mishandling them

Polling suggests that voters care a lot about sexual harassment allegations — a Quinnipiac poll this week, for instance, found that 66 percent of voters thought that politicians should resign when “accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault by multiple people.” And the poll also found that only 28 percent of voters approve of the Democrats’ handling of sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, as compared with 50 percent who disapprove. That’s better than the numbers for Republicans (21 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove), but not by much. Meanwhile, a Huffington Post/YouGov poll last month found equally poor numbers for Democrats and Republicans when voters were asked whether the parties had a sexual harassment “problem.”

Voters are also not necessarily interested in making overly fine distinctions among different types of sexual misconduct. A YouGov poll this week, for instance, found that roughly the same proportion of voters wanted Franken (43 percent resign, 23 percent not resign, 35 percent not sure) and Moore (47/22/31) to step down.1 All of this goes to show that voters face a number of complexities when considering these allegations, such as the number of accusers; the severity of the alleged misconduct; the age of the victims and their ability to consent; the amount of time passed since the alleged misconduct; the credibility of the accusers; whether the politicians apologize for the conduct or how persuasive they were in denying the allegations; and whether the allegations involved an abuse of public office. As a human being, I have my own intuitive and moral sense for how to weigh these factors — but as someone who tries to diagnose their political impact, I don’t necessarily expect everyone else to sort them out in quite the same way.

The moral high ground could also be the political high ground for Democrats

It’s reasonable to be a little bit suspicious of polls showing voters to be highly worried about sexual harassment because sometimes partisanship can outweigh voters’ self-professed concerns.

There’s also some partisan asymmetry in how voters interpret these claims. As The Huffington Post’s Ariel Edwards-Levy points out, voters in both parties largely believe sexual harassment claims made against the other party — but Democrats also tend to believe claims made against fellow Democrats, while Republicans are more skeptical about claims made against GOP lawmakers. Note, of course, that Trump won the Electoral College last year and received 88 percent of the Republican vote despite more than a dozen accusations of sexual misconduct against him.

All of this can be frustrating to Democratic and liberal commentators, who complain about “unilateral disarmament,” i.e. the notion that Democratic legislators such as Franken and Rep. John Conyers will be forced to resign because of sexual misconduct allegations while Republicans such as Moore, Trump and Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold will survive theirs because their bases will rally behind them.

This may be more of a curse than a blessing for Republicans, however. Somewhat contrary to the conventional wisdom, the allegations against Moore have had a meaningful impact in Alabama. Moore has put Republicans in an unenviable position: He’ll either lose a race to a Democrat in one of America’s reddest states, trigger a nasty intraparty fight over expulsion, or stay in office but potentially damage the Republican brand for years to come. Voter concern over Republican mishandling of the accusations against GOP Rep. Mark Foley, who sent sexually explicit messages to underaged teenage pages, was a contributing factor in the landslide losses Republicans suffered in 2006. And while it isn’t a perfect analogy because they weren’t accused of sexual misconduct themselves, Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock lost highly winnable Senate races for Republicans in 2012 after making controversial comments about women who had been raped.

So it may well be that Democratic politicians usually resign from office when faced with accusations of sexual harassment while Republicans usually don’t. If so, that could work to Democrats’ benefit. If the Democrat is in a safe seat, he’ll be replaced with another Democrat anyway. And if he’s in a swing seat, the party would often be better off with a new candidate rather than one who’s damaged goods.2 In Minnesota, for instance, Franken’s approval rating has plunged to 36 percent, according to a SurveyUSA poll, down from 53 percent last year. Whichever Democrat replaces him would have to win the special election in 2018 but would then probably have an easier time than Franken holding the seat for the full six-year term that comes up in 2020.

Moreover, a tougher stance toward accused harassers such as Franken makes Democrats look less hypocritical when party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi talk about having “zero tolerance” on sexual harassment.

Maintaining the moral high ground isn’t always easy. It means you have to hold your party to a higher standard than the other party. It means you sometimes have to make real trade-offs. But it can also pay political dividends and mitigate political risks. Democrats just lost an election in 2016 against a historically unpopular candidate because their candidate was disliked nearly as much. The political environment is favorable for Democrats in 2018, but perhaps the easiest way that Democrats could blow their opportunity is if voters conclude that as bad as Republicans are, Democrats are no better. With Democrats coming around to a tougher stance on Franken and Conyers while Republicans equivocate on Moore and restore funding to his campaign, they’ll be able to draw a clearer distinction for voters.

Was Trump’s Endorsement Of Roy Moore A Mistake?

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

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome, all! Our topic for today: President Trump’s endorsement of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. (And the Republican National Committee decision to support him again.) My question is … what gives? Is this a political mistake?

First,

Politics Podcast: Will Taxes Be A Pyrrhic Victory For The GOP?

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The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses the policy and political implications of the GOP’s tax policy overhaul, aimed at dramatically cutting corporate taxes. The team also follows up on the fallout from former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s decision to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia.

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.

Lots Of Alabama Voters Care About Roy Moore’s Scandals

Roy Moore, who has been accused by two women of initiating unwanted sexual contact with them when they were underaged, is back in the lead in the most recent polls of Alabama’s Senate race. Although it’s still anyone’s election — turnout is hard to model in special elections and Moore’s lead is narrow — he has to be considered at least a modest favorite.

If Moore wins, you’re liable to see a lot of commentary along the lines of what the notoriously corrupt Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards said when seeking to regain Louisiana’s governorship in 1983: “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” (Edwards won by 26 percentage points.) Or, if you prefer a more recent example, what President Trump said about his political base in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” That is to say, a Moore win would be taken as a canonical example of how politicians can get away with almost anything — even allegedly molesting two teenage girls — and still win elections so long as their base remains loyal to them.

The truth is a little more complicated than that. Moore — even if he wins by a few points — will have vastly underperformed a typical Republican in Alabama. He’ll have benefitted from running in a highly partisan epoch in a deeply red state and from drawing an opponent in Democrat Doug Jones who has fairly liberal policy views, including on abortion. If Alabama were just slightly less red — say, if it were South Carolina or Texas instead — Jones would be on track to win, perhaps by a comfortable margin. In Alabama, he’s an underdog. Nonetheless, the marginal effect of the allegations and of Moore’s other controversies may be fairly large.

It’s really hard for a Democrat to win in Alabama

Alabama has been an extremely red state since the demise of the Solid South. Moreover, it’s been consistently red; unlike states such as West Virginia, where Democrats are sometimes viable in races for local office and for Congress, Alabama has been voting Republican for pretty much everything. There are currently no Democrats who hold statewide office in Alabama. With one exception, all members of the state’s Congressional delegation are Republicans. And in recent elections for president, Congress and governor, the Republican candidate has won by an average of about 30 percentage points.

Alabama is really, really red

Republican margin of victory or defeat in recent elections

STATE
GOVERNOR
HOUSE
PRESIDENT
SENATE
AVERAGE





Wyoming
+37.4
+40.9
+43.6
+54.4
+44.1



Utah
+37.0
+31.3
+32.9
+38.2
+34.8



Oklahoma
+17.8
+41.9
+35.0
+40.5
+33.8



North Dakota
+43.0
+25.2
+27.7
+30.3
+31.5



Tennessee
+39.7
+24.8
+23.2
+32.2
+30.0


➔
Alabama
+21.5
+27.9
+25.0
+44.0
+29.6



Idaho
+20.6
+30.9
+31.7
+34.5
+29.4



South Dakota
+34.0
+25.4
+23.9
+32.3
+28.9



Nebraska
+32.9
+30.2
+23.4
+24.2
+27.7



Kansas
+17.4
+33.9
+21.0
+29.9
+25.6



Louisiana
+17.8
+34.8
+18.4
+16.6
+21.9



Mississippi
+28.1
+18.7
+14.6
+19.3
+20.2



Arkansas
-8.4
+35.6
+25.3
+20.3
+18.2



Kentucky
-5.9
+27.8
+26.3
+15.0
+15.8



South Carolina
+9.5
+20.1
+12.4
+21.0
+15.7



Texas
+16.5
+12.5
+12.4
+21.5
+15.7



Alaska
+21.4
+19.9
+14.4
+2.1
+14.4



West Virginia
-4.7
+21.8
+34.2
+1.8
+13.3



Georgia
+9.0
+15.3
+6.4
+10.7
+10.4



Iowa
+15.7
+4.7
+1.8
+16.4
+9.6



Ohio
+16.3
+11.2
+2.5
+7.4
+9.4



Indiana
+4.5
+14.2
+14.6
+2.0
+8.8



Montana
-2.7
+13.7
+16.9
+7.0
+8.7



Arizona
+11.8
+5.6
+6.3
+8.0
+7.9



Maine
+11.9
-12.8
-9.1
+37.0
+6.7



Nevada
+29.2
+1.5
-4.5
-0.6
+6.4



Missouri
-3.3
+18.1
+13.9
-6.5
+5.6



North Carolina
+5.6
+4.8
+2.8
+3.6
+4.2



Florida
+1.1
+6.3
+0.2
-2.7
+1.2



Wisconsin
+5.7
+0.2
-3.1
-1.1
+0.4



Pennsylvania
-0.4
+4.8
-2.3
-3.8
-0.5



Colorado
-3.3
+2.9
-5.1
-1.9
-1.9



Virginia
-5.7
+5.1
-4.6
-3.4
-2.1



New Hampshire
-5.6
-3.5
-3.0
-1.7
-3.4



Michigan
+11.1
-3.3
-4.6
-17.0
-3.4



New Mexico
+10.6
-7.5
-9.2
-8.4
-3.6



Minnesota
-3.0
-7.0
-4.6
-22.5
-9.3



Illinois
+1.5
-10.1
-16.9
-13.0
-9.6



New Jersey
+4.0
-12.5
-15.9
-16.5
-10.2



Washington
-5.9
-5.8
-15.2
-19.4
-11.6



Oregon
-4.8
-13.7
-11.5
-21.1
-12.8



Connecticut
-1.6
-25.9
-15.5
-20.2
-15.8



Rhode Island
+3.0
-22.2
-21.5
-35.6
-19.1



Maryland
-5.3
-24.5
-26.2
-27.4
-20.9



Massachusetts
-2.3
-45.3
-25.2
-15.7
-22.1



Delaware
-30.0
-22.7
-15.0
-25.5
-23.3



California
-16.4
-21.6
-26.5
-42.5
-26.8



Vermont
-3.6
-47.4
-31.0
-28.2
-27.6



New York
-21.6
-26.7
-25.3
-44.6
-29.6



Hawaii
-14.7
-41.0
-37.4
-39.5
-33.2

Based on an average of gubernatorial elections since 2010, and Senate, House and presidential elections since 2012. Races that were uncontested by one of the major parties are treated as 60-point victories. Races that were contested but where a third-party candidate finished first or second are not included in the average.

Source: Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas, David Wasserman

And in some ways this understates the GOP advantage, because as The Upshot’s Nate Cohn points out, Alabama is not only a red state but also a highly inelastic state. What that means is there aren’t very many swing voters there: Around 50 percent of the state’s electorate are white evangelicals, the most reliable Republican voting bloc, while another 25 percent or so consists of black voters, the most reliable Democratic voting bloc. In elastic states, the identity of the candidates can matter a lot; for instance, while North Dakota (a relatively elastic state) is about as Republican as Alabama on average, its results vary a lot from election to election — so Democrat Heidi Heitkamp won the state’s U.S. Senate race by 1 percentage point in 2012, while Republican John Hoeven won its 2016 Senate race by 62 points. Alabama isn’t like that; the results are usually about the same regardless of the candidates.

So the fact that Jones is running within a couple percentage points of Moore is itself pretty remarkable: Moore is performing around 25 points worse than Republicans ordinarily do in Alabama despite there being few swing voters in the state.

Not all of that can be attributed to the recent allegations against Moore, however. He was leading by an average of “only” about 10 points in polls conducted before the allegations surfaced, although there was a lot of variation from survey to survey. (And Moore won by just 4 points the last time he was on a general election ballot in Alabama, in a race to become the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012.) Plus, the national political environment is good for Democrats and poor for Republicans. The allegations have had a fairly clear effect on the polls — even if some of it is fading now. But they might have had a larger effect if so many Alabamians who usually vote Republican weren’t already set against Moore for other reasons, such as his having been removed twice from the state’s supreme court.

Overall, the effects of the scandal seem to be of roughly the same magnitude as those identified in a 2011 paper by Nicholas Chad Long, who found that scandals involving “immoral behavior” hurt incumbent U.S. senators by a net of about 13 percentage points,1 controlling for their past margin of victory and other factors.

But shouldn’t the effects be larger than that, given that the conduct Moore is accused of is so egregious? Well, maybe, but the problem is that a lot of voters don’t believe the allegations. A poll this week from Change Research found that only a 42 percent plurality of Alabamians believed Moore’s accusers, compared with 38 percent who disbelieved them. And Trump voters disbelieved them by a 63-9 margin.

One needs to be careful here, because the line between “don’t believe the allegations” and “wouldn’t vote for a Democrat under any circumstances” can be blurry — voters may say they disbelieve the allegations as a way of rationalizing their vote for Moore. Nonetheless, if you’re someone who worries about what sort of precedent Moore’s election would set, the better reason for concern is that Moore seems to have successfully persuaded some Alabamians that the allegations against him are a conspiracy put together by liberals, gay people and the news media. In an era where trust in the news media is extremely low among Republicans, that’s a strategy that other scandal-plagued Republicans are liable to emulate — and, of course, it’s one borrowed from President Trump’s playbook.

In many other respects, though, this isn’t anything new. Long’s paper found that while scandals can have reasonably large effects at the margin, two-thirds of scandal-plagued incumbents nonetheless won re-election to the U.S. Senate between 1974 and 2008.

And candidates are more likely to survive scandals in extremely red or extremely blue states. Just ask Gov. Edwards, whose resilience in the face of scandal was partly a matter of his political talent — but perhaps had more to do with the fact that Louisiana had just one Republican governor in the 118-year period between 1877 and 1995. In the current political climate, a Democrat getting elected in Alabama may similarly be a once-a-century type of event.

Lots of Alabama Voters Care About Roy Moore’s Scandalous Past

Roy Moore, who has been accused by two women of initiating unwanted sexual contact with them when they were underaged, is back in the lead in the most recent polls of Alabama’s Senate race. Although it’s still anyone’s election — turnout is hard to model in special elections and Moore’s lead is narrow — he has to be considered at least a modest favorite.

If Moore wins, you’re liable to see a lot of commentary along the lines of what the notoriously corrupt Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards said when seeking to regain Louisiana’s governorship in 1983: “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” (Edwards won by 26 percentage points.) Or, if you prefer a more recent example, what President Trump said about his political base in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” That is to say, a Moore win would be taken as a canonical example of how politicians can get away with almost anything — even allegedly molesting two teenage girls — and still win elections so long as their base remains loyal to them.

The truth is a little more complicated that that. Moore — even if he wins by a few points — will have vastly underperformed a typical Republican in Alabama. He’ll have benefitted from running in a highly partisan epoch in a deeply red state and from drawing an opponent in Democrat Doug Jones who has fairly liberal policy views, including on abortion. If Alabama were just slightly less red — say, if it were South Carolina or Texas instead — Jones would be on track to win, perhaps by a comfortable margin. In Alabama, he’s an underdog. Nonetheless, the marginal effect of the allegations and of Moore’s other controversies may be fairly large.

It’s really hard for a Democrat to win in Alabama

Alabama has been an extremely red state since the demise of the Solid South. Moreover, it’s been consistently red; unlike states such as West Virginia, where Democrats are sometimes viable in races for local office and for Congress, Alabama has been voting Republican for pretty much everything. There are currently no Democrats who hold statewide office in Alabama. With one exception, all members of the state’s Congressional delegation are Republicans. And in recent elections for president, Congress and governor, the Republican candidate has won by an average of about 30 percentage points.

Alabama is really, really red

Republican margin of victory or defeat in recent elections

STATE
GOVERNOR
HOUSE
PRESIDENT
SENATE
AVERAGE





Wyoming
+37.4
+40.9
+43.6
+54.4
+44.1



Utah
+37.0
+31.3
+32.9
+38.2
+34.8



Oklahoma
+17.8
+41.9
+35.0
+40.5
+33.8



North Dakota
+43.0
+25.2
+27.7
+30.3
+31.5



Tennessee
+39.7
+24.8
+23.2
+32.2
+30.0


➔
Alabama
+21.5
+27.9
+25.0
+44.0
+29.6



Idaho
+20.6
+30.9
+31.7
+34.5
+29.4



South Dakota
+34.0
+25.4
+23.9
+32.3
+28.9



Nebraska
+32.9
+30.2
+23.4
+24.2
+27.7



Kansas
+17.4
+33.9
+21.0
+29.9
+25.6



Louisiana
+17.8
+34.8
+18.4
+16.6
+21.9



Mississippi
+28.1
+18.7
+14.6
+19.3
+20.2



Arkansas
-8.4
+35.6
+25.3
+20.3
+18.2



Kentucky
-5.9
+27.8
+26.3
+15.0
+15.8



South Carolina
+9.5
+20.1
+12.4
+21.0
+15.7



Texas
+16.5
+12.5
+12.4
+21.5
+15.7



Alaska
+21.4
+19.9
+14.4
+2.1
+14.4



West Virginia
-4.7
+21.8
+34.2
+1.8
+13.3



Georgia
+9.0
+15.3
+6.4
+10.7
+10.4



Iowa
+15.7
+4.7
+1.8
+16.4
+9.6



Ohio
+16.3
+11.2
+2.5
+7.4
+9.4



Indiana
+4.5
+14.2
+14.6
+2.0
+8.8



Montana
-2.7
+13.7
+16.9
+7.0
+8.7



Arizona
+11.8
+5.6
+6.3
+8.0
+7.9



Maine
+11.9
-12.8
-9.1
+37.0
+6.7



Nevada
+29.2
+1.5
-4.5
-0.6
+6.4



Missouri
-3.3
+18.1
+13.9
-6.5
+5.6



North Carolina
+5.6
+4.8
+2.8
+3.6
+4.2



Florida
+1.1
+6.3
+0.2
-2.7
+1.2



Wisconsin
+5.7
+0.2
-3.1
-1.1
+0.4



Pennsylvania
-0.4
+4.8
-2.3
-3.8
-0.5



Colorado
-3.3
+2.9
-5.1
-1.9
-1.9



Virginia
-5.7
+5.1
-4.6
-3.4
-2.1



New Hampshire
-5.6
-3.5
-3.0
-1.7
-3.4



Michigan
+11.1
-3.3
-4.6
-17.0
-3.4



New Mexico
+10.6
-7.5
-9.2
-8.4
-3.6



Minnesota
-3.0
-7.0
-4.6
-22.5
-9.3



Illinois
+1.5
-10.1
-16.9
-13.0
-9.6



New Jersey
+4.0
-12.5
-15.9
-16.5
-10.2



Washington
-5.9
-5.8
-15.2
-19.4
-11.6



Oregon
-4.8
-13.7
-11.5
-21.1
-12.8



Connecticut
-1.6
-25.9
-15.5
-20.2
-15.8



Rhode Island
+3.0
-22.2
-21.5
-35.6
-19.1



Maryland
-5.3
-24.5
-26.2
-27.4
-20.9



Massachusetts
-2.3
-45.3
-25.2
-15.7
-22.1



Delaware
-30.0
-22.7
-15.0
-25.5
-23.3



California
-16.4
-21.6
-26.5
-42.5
-26.8



Vermont
-3.6
-47.4
-31.0
-28.2
-27.6



New York
-21.6
-26.7
-25.3
-44.6
-29.6



Hawaii
-14.7
-41.0
-37.4
-39.5
-33.2

Based on an average of gubernatorial elections since 2010, and Senate, House and presidential elections since 2012. Races that were uncontested by one of the major parties are treated as 60-point victories. Races that were contested but where a third-party candidate finished first or second are not included in the average.

Source: Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas, David Wasserman

And in some ways this understates the GOP advantage, because as The Upshot’s Nate Cohn points out, Alabama is not only a red state but also a highly inelastic state. What that means is there aren’t very many swing voters there: Around 50 percent of the state’s electorate are white evangelicals, the most reliable Republican voting bloc, while another 25 percent or so consists of black voters, the most reliable Democratic voting bloc. In elastic states, the identity of the candidates can matter a lot; for instance, while North Dakota (a relatively elastic state) is about as Republican as Alabama on average, its results vary a lot from election to election — so Democrat Heidi Heitkamp won the state’s U.S. Senate race by 1 percentage point in 2012, while Democrat John Hoeven won its 2016 Senate race by 62 points. Alabama isn’t like that; the results are usually about the same regardless of the candidates.

So the fact that Jones is running within a couple percentage points of Moore is itself pretty remarkable: Moore is performing around 25 points worse than Republicans ordinarily do in Alabama despite there being few swing voters in the state.

Not all of that can be attributed to the recent allegations against Moore, however. He was leading by an average of “only” about 10 points in polls conducted before the allegations surfaced, although there was a lot of variation from survey to survey. (And Moore won by just 4 points the last time he was on a general election ballot in Alabama, in a race to become the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012.) Plus, the national political environment is good for Democrats and poor for Republicans. The allegations have had a fairly clear effect on the polls — even if some of it is fading now. But they might have had a larger effect if so many Alabamians who usually vote Republican weren’t already set against Moore for other reasons, such as his having been removed twice from the state’s supreme court.

Overall, the effects of the scandal seem to be of roughly the same magnitude as those identified in a 2011 paper by Nicholas Chad Long, who found that scandals involving “immoral behavior” hurt incumbent U.S. senators by a net of about 13 percentage points,1 controlling for their past margin of victory and other factors.

But shouldn’t the effects be larger than that, given that the conduct Moore is accused of is so egregious? Well, maybe, but the problem is that a lot of voters don’t believe the allegations. A poll this week from Change Research found that only a 42 percent plurality of Alabamians believed Moore’s accusers, compared with 38 percent who disbelieved them. And Trump voters disbelieved them by a 63-9 margin.

One needs to be careful here, because the line between “don’t believe the allegations” and “wouldn’t vote for a Democrat under any circumstances” can be blurry — voters may say they disbelieve the allegations as a way of rationalizing their vote for Moore. Nonetheless, if you’re someone who worries about what sort of precedent Moore’s election would set, the better reason for concern is that Moore seems to have successfully persuaded some Alabamians that the allegations against him are a conspiracy put together by liberals, gay people and the news media. In an era where trust in the news media is extremely low among Republicans, that’s a strategy that other scandal-plagued Republicans are liable to emulate — and, of course, it’s one borrowed from President Trump’s playbook.

In many other respects, though, this isn’t anything new. Long’s paper found that while scandals can have reasonably large effects at the margin, two-thirds of scandal-plagued incumbents nonetheless won re-election to the U.S. Senate between 1974 and 2008.

And candidates are more likely to survive scandals in extremely red or extremely blue states. Just ask Gov. Edwards, whose resilience in the face of scandal was partly a matter of his political talent — but perhaps had more to do with the fact that Louisiana had just one Republican governor in the 118-year period between 1877 and 1995. In the current political climate, a Democrat getting elected in Alabama may similarly be a once-a-century type of event.

Emergency Politics Podcast: Flynn Flips

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The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses the news that President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn is pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, and that Flynn is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller and his team. Where does this leave Mueller’s investigation? And is Trump now in its crosshairs? The crew dives in.

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: Congress’s Broken Culture

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On Monday, lawmakers returned to Washington and immediately confronted questions about how they’ve handled sexual harassment in their own ranks. Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux joins the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast to talk about why the workplace culture in Congress is conducive to misconduct and underreporting.

The team also discusses the latest polling and the unknowns in Alabama’s upcoming Senate election.

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.

Democrats Missed A Chance To Draw A Line In The Sand On Sexual Misconduct

At about 11:15 this morning, an hour or so after Leeann Tweeden published an allegation that Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota had groped and kissed her without her consent in 2006, I assumed that Franken was headed toward resignation. I didn’t necessarily expect Franken to resign immediately or without putting up a fight. But barring some highly exculpatory evidence, I expected Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other prominent Democrats to be pushing Franken out the door.

Here’s why I thought that. First, the timing. The accusations against Franken came in the midst of a major scandal involving Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for Senate in Alabama, who has been accused of sexual misconduct toward multiple girls and young women. And it comes on the heels of scandals involving sexual assault or sexual harassment by some of the biggest names in Hollywood and the media business: Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K., to name some of many examples. It also comes about a year after Donald Trump was elected president even though he was accused of sexual misconduct by many women and was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by their genitals. The conduct Franken is accused of is just the sort of behavior that he has condemned, potentially making he and other Democrats look hypocritical.

Second, there was the photograph that Tweeden published with her article. It appeared to show Franken groping Tweeden’s breasts while she was sleeping — not providing a lot of room for “if true” statements about Franken’s conduct.

I’ve decided it’s time to tell my story. #MeToohttps://t.co/TqTgfvzkZg

— Leeann Tweeden (@LeeannTweeden) November 16, 2017

And third, there was political expediency. If Franken were to resign, it probably wouldn’t cost Democrats a Senate seat. Instead, an interim replacement would be named by Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton — a Democrat who would almost certainly appoint another Democrat. Then, a special election would be held next year to elect someone to serve the final two years of Franken’s term, which expires after the 2020 election. Next year’s midterms are likely to be blue-leaning (perhaps even a Democratic wave election), and Democrats are likely to hold Senate seats in states as blue as Minnesota under those circumstances. And Democrats have a deep and relatively diverse bench in Minnesota, with plausible candidates including State Auditor Rebecca Otto, Attorney General Lori Swanson, Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison, Tim Walz and Collin Peterson, former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and others.1

In other words, I thought the Democrats had an opportunity to maintain the moral high ground without having to pay a political price for it. They could keep the pressure up on Moore, who has put Republicans in a no-win situation in Alabama. And they could help to establish a precedent wherein severe instances of sexual harassment warrant resignation. In the long run, that might create more of a problem for Republicans than for Democrats, because the overwhelming majority of sexual harassment is conducted by men, and there are 265 Republican men in Congress compared with 164 Democratic ones.2

Instead, Democrats basically punted on the question. Here’s what Schumer said, which echoes the statements made by many other Democrats:

Sexual harassment is never acceptable and must not be tolerated.

I hope and expect that the Ethics Committee will fully investigate this troubling incident, as they should with any credible allegation of sexual harassment.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 16, 2017

Almost all of these comments said that sexual harassment must be taken very, very seriously. But the remedy they propose for Franken — referring the allegations to the Senate ethics committee, a step that Republican leader Mitch McConnell, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Franken himself have also called for — isn’t particularly serious. Unless, that is, the committee process led to Franken’s expulsion. But there have been many ethics investigations and very few expulsions — none since 1862 — and none of the statements made by Schumer or the other leaders raised the possibility of expulsion.

Moreover, it’s not quite clear what behavior the ethics committee would actually be investigating: Franken hasn’t really denied Tweeden’s claim that he kissed her without her consent, and there’s already photographic evidence that appears to show he groped her. It’s possible the investigation could turn up evidence of similar incidents involving Franken and other women. But if Franken is a repeat offender — as so many sexual harassers are — that’s all the more reason for Democrats to want him out of office now instead of dragging the party through the mud.

Of course, what might be politically expedient for Democrats isn’t necessarily expedient for Schumer — or for McConnell, or for the White House, all of whom may be acting out of a sense of institutional self-preservation. If there’s a precedent that sexual harassment is grounds for removal or resignation from office, then a lot of members of Congress — including some of Schumer’s colleagues and friends — could have to resign once more allegations come to light, as they almost certainly will. President Trump’s conduct could also come under renewed scrutiny, as could the conduct of former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. Politics is a male-dominated institution, and a conservative3 institution, and conservative, male-dominated institutions have pretty much no interest in flipping over the sexual harassment rock and seeing what comes crawling out from underneath it.

When we were thinking through the Franken story in FiveThrityEight’s internal Slack channel today, most of the men in our office thought that Franken was in deep trouble (“I think he’s toast,” I wrote at 11:07 this morning). Most of the women thought he’d hang in and survive. We’re less than a day into the story, but no surprise — it looks like the women will be right.