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

Sometimes statistical analysis is tricky, and sometimes a finding just jumps off the page. Here’s one example of the latter.

“The Party Decides,” the 2008 book by the political scientists Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel and John Zaller, has probably been both the most-cited and the most-maligned book of this election ...

Since Donald Trump effectively wrapped up the Republican nomination this month, I’ve seen a lot of critical self-assessments from empirically minded journalists — FiveThirtyEight included, twice over ...

All market ratings are adjusted for projected population growth through 2040. Popularity measured by Google Trends. Sources: Zach Miller, Google Trends, The New York Times, CollegeRaptor.com, ...

When the new Congress comes into session in January, there will be more Black Republicans serving together on Capitol Hill than at any point since 1877. The number? Five. 1 For years, Republicans have ...

With the 2018 midterm elections approaching, we’ve updated FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings for the first time since the 2016 presidential primaries. Based on how the media portrayed the polls after ...

An old “PBS NewsHour” clip, in all its dull, steady glory, pretty much pinpoints the moment that famed Iowa pollster Ann Selzer got hot. Shot on New Year’s Day 2008, the video features her sitting ...

But trying to distinguish the effects of only one type of restriction, like voter ID requirements, is challenging because a new election law rarely changes only one voting provision. “The actual ...

From that vantage point, the story of how polls did in 2020 is complicated — more complicated in some ways than in 2016, which was also complicated. And since the election was called for Joe Biden on ...

On Oct. 30, 1988, in the midst of a season in which the San Francisco 49ers would win the first of back-to-back Super Bowls, an injured Joe Montana was riding the bench against the 5-3 Minnesota ...

The police response to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which at least 39 law enforcement officers participated, has renewed conversation about racial bias and links to white supremacist ...