The Aporia · September polling has been very good for Democrats

Nate Silver

36 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction

🔮 I think you’d agree that it would be pretty weird for a fox to be friends with a dolphin?

2026-10-31 · assertive framing · SBSQ #32: SuperMegaJumboDeluxe Edition

🔮 We’ll try to space things out, but it’s possible that dishes will pile up and there will be some dry spells, or that you’ll get more than one newsletter or more than one FLIPR update in a day.

2026-10-30 · assertive framing · The cognitive dissonance election

🔮 For example, if Democrats have a good night next Tuesday and Peggy Flanagan easily wins in Minnesota, our newsletter from earlier this month that seriously contemplated Michele Tafoya’s chances might be one of those.

2026-10-29 · mixed framing · Some thoughts on South Carolina’s surprisingly close Senate race

🔮 But I’m feeling a little meta-d out this weekend — maybe it was seeing You Can See Everything on Friday.1

2026-10-25 · assertive framing · Let’s talk shop about every Senate race

🔮 Strategic Vision “polls” exhibited statistical patterns — namely, being far more likely to contain some trailing digits (such as 5, 7, 8 and 9) than others, including on obscure questions they probably thought would never be scrutinized — that were canonical signs of forged election results in authoritarian regimes.

2026-10-22 · assertive framing · Fake polls are a real problem

🔮 But leave that philosophical question aside for now — because after a long week of travel,1 I could use a simpler Model Talk.

2026-10-17 · assertive framing · The good, bad and ugly outcomes in the Senate

🔮 Below, you’ll find our forecast for each 2026 Senate race, along with how our numbers have changed over time and which states are likeliest to decide control of the chamber.

2026-10-15 · assertive framing · FLIPR 2026 Senate forecast

🔮 Although our critics might disagree, we seek to avoid false equivocation at Silver Bulletin.

2026-10-09 · assertive framing · Could Minnesota spoil the blue wave?

🔮 It’s not unreasonable to approach election polls from a position of mild — maybe even more-than-mild — skepticism.

2026-10-03 · assertive framing · What if the polls are wrong again?

🔮 That definitely will not happen before the midterms.

2026-10-01 · assertive framing · SBSQ reboot thread

Also by Nate Silver

SBSQ #32: SuperMegaJumboDeluxe Edition

2026-10-31 · Silver Bulletin

The cognitive dissonance election

2026-10-30 · Silver Bulletin

Some thoughts on South Carolina’s surprisingly close Senate race

2026-10-29 · Silver Bulletin

Let’s talk shop about every Senate race

2026-10-25 · Silver Bulletin

Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.

All 36 articles by Nate Silver →

Topics

Democrats FLIPR FiveThirtyEight.com Lite Senate

Subjects

Democrats NORP · 3× FLIPR PERSON · 2× Senate ORG · 2× FiveThirtyEight.com ORG · 1×

Narrative

It was pretty simple: basically a table of every poll that had entered our database in the past 24 hours, with brief commentary on the most noteworthy polls and how they’d affected our forecast.

framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-09-13

🔮 It was pretty simple: basically a table of every poll that had entered our database in the past 24 hours, with brief commentary on the most noteworthy polls and how they’d affected our forecast.

2026-09-13 · Silver Bulletin

September polling has been very good for Democrats · assertive framing

Claims (14 extracted, 0 hedged)

Back at the OG version of FiveThirtyEight.com in 2008, we ran a daily feature called “Today’s Polls”. asserted

we → run → feature

It was pretty simple: basically a table of every poll that had entered our database in the past 24 hours, with brief commentary on the most noteworthy polls and how they’d affected our forecast. asserted

they → enter → forecast

“Today’s Polls” was quite popular, but I don’t think that quite works for us now. asserted

that → think → us

We think that updating FLIPR daily, with 2-ish Model Talks or other election-related articles a week1, strikes a better balance in serving our subscribers. asserted

updating → think → subscribers

To some extent, there was an inherent tension between commenting on individual polls and the usually fairly measured reaction that our model had to them. asserted

model → be → them

Still, keeping tabs on the “information flow” — the new data entering the model — can be helpful. asserted

keeping → keep → model

Some information is important to FLIPR from a technical standpoint but doesn’t change the fundamentals of the race as such. asserted

information → change → race

The slight decline in Democrats’ win probability in the Senate that I discussed on the podcast this week was kind of in the technical category. asserted

I → discuss → category

It mostly reflected updates to the model’s likely voter adjustment2 and changes in expert ratings, rather than any sudden shift in the polling. asserted

It → reflect → polling

Over the past few days, however, Democrats gained that ground back — and then some, depending on which version of our forecast you’re looking at. asserted

you → gain → forecast

In our Deluxe forecast, they’re back up to a 56.5 percent chance of winning the Senate, basically where they were when we launched the model. asserted

we → ’re → model

We’d aggressively caution that 56.5 percent is still in the zone that our model classifies as a “toss-up” and is consistent with a really close race. asserted

model → caution → race

But, hey, it never hurts to be on the 56/44 side of a slightly weighted coin flip. asserted

it → hurt → flip

But in our Lite forecast, which relies as much as possible on polling of individual races, the change has been more pronounced: asserted

change → rely → races

September polling has been very good for Democrats

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Claims (14 extracted, 0 hedged)