The Aporia · September polling has been very good for Democrats

Nate Silver

33 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction

🔮 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

🔮 We think it’s an important story, providing historical context on midterm elections that helps to explain FLIPR’s increasingly optimistic forecast for Democrats.

2026-10-01 · assertive framing · Why did Ohio stop being a swing state?

🔮 The 2026-27 NBA season begins on Oct. 20, when the New York Knicks will lift the championship banner to celebrate their first NBA title in 53 seasons.

2026-09-28 · assertive framing · NBA Future of the Franchise Rankings 4.0

🔮 Our Silver Bulletin polling average forecasts a much closer race — with Turek ahead by 1.9 points — though that would still be an impressive result in a state that Donald Trump won by 13 points in 2024.

2026-09-22 · assertive framing · Diesel prices could crush Republicans in the heartland

Also by Nate Silver

Let’s talk shop about every Senate race

2026-10-25 · Silver Bulletin

Fake polls are a real problem

2026-10-22 · Silver Bulletin

The good, bad and ugly outcomes in the Senate

2026-10-17 · Silver Bulletin

FLIPR 2026 Senate forecast

2026-10-15 · Silver Bulletin

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

All 33 articles by Nate Silver →

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Democrats FLIPR FiveThirtyEight.com Lite Senate

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Democrats NORP · 3× FLIPR ORG · 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)