Americans wish it weren't

Enough of diagnoses without treatments

Most forecasters will lock their models at midnight tonight. God willing, the Times Needle will remain entombed.

When does "Harris is unknown" turn into "Harris is unknowable" Last night VP Kamala Harris did a live-streamed event with Oprah for hundreds of thousands of viewers. In my opinion, it was good, but it wasn’t great.  One complaint I have is so very nitpicky,

"Embrace uncertainty" versus the decimal place Great advice for readers from Lakshya Jain from SplitTicket, whom I interviewed Friday for a forthcoming episode of Cross Tabs:  “Embrace uncertainty.” I think that’s right, but it’s funny coming from folks who aren’t, in fact, embracing uncertainty1 — they’

Let's talk about the changing shape of the electorate, what a favorability score is anyway and how that effects the Democratic veepstakes... plus links Three things today: 1. How things have changed (so far) since June. 2. What are favorability numbers, anyway, and what do they have to

📧The newsletter has moved to Substack, and we have moved your email address with it. Nothing for you to do! Just wanted to let you know you'll get these kinds of posts and updates about episodes from crosstabspod.substack.com from now on. I’ve now read just

🗞️I've created a substack version of this newsletter, which is available at https://crosstabspod.substack.com/. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll import you into that list. Nothing will change except the host — you'll still get the newsletter. Posts and episode descriptions will

Opinion Today is one of my favorite substacks (recommended to me by our guest Mike Podhorzer). It's a great round-up of headlines about polls, commentary on the polls, and occasionally includes podcasts about polling (Cross Tabs has been mentioned twice, which is very nice). As I looked through

Notes on a new poll from ABC News; thoughts on that Joe Kahn interview in Semafor I’ll release an episode this week that’s more of a quick(ish) history of polling told through two important figures. I won’t spoil it for you but one of the things

Asymmetric partisanship in poll responses This week, future guest of the pod (kidding, but I am working on it) Philip Bump of The Washington Post reported on some recent Pew Research polling on people's attitudes towards the two leading Presidential candidates. Once again, the research showed that >

Members of the Biden campaign, including Biden himself, have told the press they believe that "polling is broken." It's hard to say which part of polling they have issues with, or whether they simply don't like it. It's not unusual for Presidents

In which I look at the WSJ seven-swing-states poll that came out this week and talk about why you should take any margin of error you see and double it.

Correction to the previous edition - wrong headline, but ... the substance of the post is still good.

Welcome to March 5, 2024. It is the first Tuesday in March in a quadrennial year, which makes it Super Tuesday. Voters in 16 states and one US territory will have their first opportunity to vote for their preferred presidential candidate. About a third of each party's delegates

Thank you to the two of you who have subscribed so far to this newsletter! Welcome, guys. The Iowa Poll was well within its margin of error last week, and illustrated why top line numbers don't always tell the full story. Examining voters' enthusiasm for a candidate

I'm launching the first episode of Cross Tabs today, January 15. It's the day Iowa's Republican voters will be the first to officially express their preferences about who the GOP's nominee should be in 2024. As I write this, it is -14ºF

This is Cross Tabs, the newsletter for the podcast that will try to explain how polls are designed and conducted, how to understand what they say, how to discern what they don't say, so that you can navigate yet another "single most important election in our lifetimes.