FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis - hard numbers - to tell compelling stories about elections, politics and American society.

David Wasserman is the U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report.

Eight Republican candidates participated in the party’s first primary debate in August. But the stage could feature fewer contenders when the GOP holds its next debate later this month. Table only ...

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to settle the debate over race, redistricting and representation. Instead, it started new ones. Since the act prohibits states from reducing a minority group ...

America’s cities are some of its most solidly Democratic areas — but that doesn’t mean they are solidly liberal. Over the past two years, the mayoral elections in our two biggest cities have boiled ...

Includes polls of special elections and runoffs. Excludes polls from pollsters that are banned by FiveThirtyEight, New Hampshire primary polls taken before the Iowa caucuses and other states’ primary ...

Longtime readers of FiveThirtyEight are probably familiar with our pollster ratings: letter grades that we assign to pollsters based on their historical accuracy and transparency. Since 2008, we have ...

Looking for a last-minute Valentine’s Day reservation? It might be easier to get one this year than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic — and not just because some people are still avoiding dining ...

Let’s get this out of the way up front: There was a wide gap between the perception of how well polls and data-driven forecasts did in 2022 and the reality of how they did … and the reality is that ...

In the first few years after former President Donald Trump assumed office, he essentially became a one-man litmus test for the Republican Party. Conservatives’ bona fides hinged less on their voting ...

Partisan lean is the average margin difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall. This version of partisan lean, meant to be used for congressional and ...

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, might not have any credibility as a pollster in FiveThirtyEight’s rating system, but he’s a pollster nonetheless.