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      Reader Mailbag: Answering Questions About Not Answering Phones

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      A lot of you had ideas on how we might do a little better in reaching people for our surveys.Ryan CarlWe’re already in the field with our penultimate wave of New York Times/Siena polls — this time focused on four or five key House races — so let’s go to the mail and answer readers’ questions about our surveys.This week, our inbox was full of replies to our recent note on the grim reality of telephone polling: Less than 1 percent of dials yield a response. A lot of you had ideas on how we might do a little better.Maybe the most frequent suggestion was some version of this:I think some of us who no longer answer calls from unknown phone numbers might answer if the call identified itself as from a polling firm. — Deb MMy mom also suggested this last weekend. It would certainly make the poll cheaper. But as I told her, I think this might be a mistake. We want a representative sample. I don’t think the way we want to increase our response rates is by further attracting the kinds of politically engaged folks who would be excited to take a political poll. We already have many highly engaged voters as is.Another question came from someone who is no stranger to survey research:Why doesn’t The Times move to an online probability sample? — Cliff Zukin, a former president of the American Association for Public Opinion ResearchBefore I answer, I just want to flag a key word in this question: probability. A “probability sample” is one in which every person has a known probability of being selected for the survey. To take an example: If we randomly dial telephone numbers, everyone with a telephone number (basically everyone) has a chance of participating; thus, it’s a probability sample.Many online polls, however, are not probability samples — think Morning Consult or YouGov. These polls survey only people who previously signed up to participate in an online panel. It is very challenging to craft a representative survey with the idiosyncratic folks who decide to join an online panel after clicking on a random banner ad.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.An online probability sample, on the other hand, would have the rigor of a telephone poll. The most common way to pull it off is to mail people an invitation to participate in a poll online. In many cases, the respondents are recruited to join a longer-term panel, where the pollster can contact them over and over. A lot of firms now use these kinds of online probability samples: Pew Research, Associated Press/NORC, Ipsos/KnowledgePanel and now CNN with SSRS, to name just a few.If we stipulate for a moment that this would be cheaper — and it may not be, by the way — there’s an argument this could work for The Times in certain cases. But there’s one big limitation for us: It’s hard to conduct an online probability sample by state or district, and most of our polls are state or district polls.We couldn’t build a large enough panel in all the states (let alone districts) where we might want to conduct a survey. Without a panel that we can recontact on-demand, we’re stuck with a one-off mail-to-web poll in which we mail people letters inviting them to participate in an online poll. It can take a long time.The last CNN/SSRS mail-to-web poll, for instance, was fielded over the course of 32 days — from Sept. 3 to Oct. 5 — and released on Oct. 13. They probably wrapped up the questionnaire well before Sept. 3, given the need to print and mail questionnaires. I’m glad CNN is trying this, but personally the result felt stale to me.That said, I do think there’s room for something like this to be part of our portfolio. It might be useful far from an election. Or if the data is of especially high quality, perhaps it can be used to calibrate cheaper surveys.To that point, here’s an idea: cold, hard cash:By your own account you have to pay a substantial amount of money for one completed phone interview. Two hours of salary and miscellaneous expenses. Why not pay the interviewee for his or her time and trouble? For $20 or so, a reasonable number of people would talk to you. — Tom HillThat’s a good thought. In fact, it’s such a good thought that we’re trying this in a large mail-based study of a key battleground state, right now! More on this in a few weeks. More

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      Why Republicans Are Surging

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      Democrats had a golden summer. The Dobbs decision led to a surge of voter registrations. Voters handed Democrats a string of sweet victories in unlikely places — Alaska and Kansas, and good news in upstate New York.The momentum didn’t survive the fall.Over the past month or so, there’s been a rumbling across the land, and the news is not good for Team Blue. In the latest New York Times/Siena College poll 49 percent of likely voters said they planned to vote for a Republican for Congress, and 45 percent said they planned to vote for a Democrat. Democrats held a one-point lead last month.The poll contained some eye-popping numbers. Democrats were counting on abortion rights to be a big issue, gaining them broad support among female voters. It doesn’t seem to be working. Over the past month, the gender gap, which used to favor Democrats, has evaporated. In September, women who identified as independent voters favored Democrats by 14 points. Now they favor Republicans by 18 percentage points.Republicans lead among independents overall by 10 points.To understand how the parties think the campaign is going, look at where they are spending their money. As Henry Olsen noted in The Washington Post last week, Democrats are pouring money into House districts that should be safe — places that Joe Biden won by double digits in 2020. Politico’s election forecast, for example, now rates the races in California’s 13th District and Oregon’s Sixth District as tossups. Two years ago, according to Politico, he won those areas by 11 and 14 points.If Republicans are competitive in places like that, we’re probably looking at a red wave election that will enable them to easily take back the House and maybe the Senate.So how should Democrats interpret these trends? There’s a minimalist interpretation: Midterms are usually hard for the president’s party, and this one was bound to be doubly hard because of global inflation.I take a more medium to maximalist view. I’d say recent events have exposed some serious weaknesses in the party’s political approach:It’s hard to win consistently if voters don’t trust you on the top issue. In a recent AP-NORC poll, voters trust Republicans to do a better job handling the economy, by 39 percent to 29 percent. Over the past two years, Democrats have tried to build a compelling economic platform by making massive federal investments in technology, infrastructure and child welfare. But those policies do not seem to be moving voters. As The Times’s Jim Tankersley has reported, Democratic candidates in competitive Senate races are barely talking about the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which included direct payments to citizens.I thought the child tax credit expansion would be massively popular and could help create a Democratic governing majority. It turned out to be less popular than many anticipated, and there was little hue and cry when it expired. Maybe voters have a built-in uneasiness about income redistribution and federal spending.Democrats have a crime problem. More than three-quarters of voters say that violent crime is a major problem in the United States, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden worked hard to give the Democrats credibility on this issue. Many Democrats have walked away from policies the party embraced then, often for good reasons. But they need to find another set of policies that will make the streets safer.Democrats have not won back Hispanics. In 2016, Donald Trump won 28 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2020, it was up to 38 percent. This year, as William A. Galston noted in The Wall Street Journal, recent surveys suggest that Republicans will once again win about 34 to 38 percent of the Hispanic vote. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is leading the Democrat Charlie Crist by 16 points among Hispanics likely to vote.The Jan. 6 committee and the warnings about MAGA fascism didn’t change minds. That committee’s work has been morally and legally important. But Trump’s favorability rating is pretty much where it was at the committee’s first public hearing. In the Times poll, Trump is roughly tied with Biden in a theoretical 2024 rematch. According to Politico, less than 2 percent of broadcast TV spending in House races has been devoted to Jan. 6 ads.It could be that voters are overwhelmed by immediate concerns, like food prices. It could be that voters have become so cynical and polarized that scandal and corruption just don’t move people much anymore. This year Herschel Walker set some kind of record for the most scandals in one political season. He is still in a competitive race with Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia.The Republicans may just have a clearer narrative. The Trumpified G.O.P. deserves to be a marginalized and disgraced force in American life. But I’ve been watching the campaign speeches by people like Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona. G.O.P. candidates are telling a very clear class/culture/status war narrative in which common-sense Americans are being assaulted by elite progressives who let the homeless take over the streets, teach sex ed to 5-year-olds, manufacture fake news, run woke corporations, open the border and refuse to do anything about fentanyl deaths and the sorts of things that affect regular people.In other words, candidates like Lake wrap a dozen different issues into one coherent class war story. And it seems to be working. In late July she was trailing her opponent by seven points. Now she’s up by about half a point.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What Happened With Liz Truss in Britain? A Guide to the Basics.

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      A little over six weeks into her leadership, the British prime minister said she would resign.LONDON — The rapid political collapse of Liz Truss ended as she announced her resignation on Thursday, a little more than six weeks after she became Britain’s leader. Her agenda had floundered, her own party had turned on her and commentators widely speculated on whether she could outlast a head of lettuce. She couldn’t.She had pledged to shoulder through the turmoil despite widespread calls for her resignation. But minute by minute the heat on her grew until there was no path out.If you need to get caught up, here is a guide to the basics.Who is Liz Truss and how did she become prime minister?Ms. Truss was anointed on Sept. 6 to replace Boris Johnson, who was elected by voters in 2019 but who flamed out in spectacular fashion after a series of scandals, forcing him to step down in July.The general public did not elect Ms. Truss — instead, she won a leadership contest among members of her Conservative Party. To replace Mr. Johnson, the party’s members of Parliament narrowed a field of candidates to two, who were then put up to a vote by about 160,000 dues-paying party members. (They’re an unrepresentative group of the nation’s 67 million residents, far more likely to be male, older, middle-class and white.)Ms. Truss, 47, had been Mr. Johnson’s hawkish foreign secretary, a free-market champion and eventual supporter of Brexit (after she changed her mind), winning over the right flank of the party despite her more moderate past. (Before joining the Conservative Party, she was a member of the centrist Liberal Democrats when she was a student at Oxford University.)How did it start to come undone?She was never going to have it easy. As Ms. Truss entered office, the nation was staring down a calamitous economic picture, highlighted by energy bills that were predicted to jump 80 percent in October and jump again in January. It threatened to send millions of Britons, already reeling from inflation and other challenges, spiraling into destitution, unable to heat or power their homes.So it was unwelcome news when her signature economic plans immediately made things worse.Her announced plans for tax cuts, deregulation and borrowing so alarmed global investors that the value of the British pound sank to a record low against the U.S. dollar. The Bank of England stepped in to prop up government bonds, an extraordinary intervention to calm the markets.The response left no doubt that her free-market ambitions were untenable. In a humiliating reversal, she was forced to reverse virtually all of the tax cuts this week, including a much-criticized one on high earners. She fired Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor of the Exchequer who was the architect of the plan and a close ally, and adopted economic policies favored by the opposition Labour party.“You cannot engage in the sort of U-turn that she has engaged in and retain your political credibility,” said Jon Tonge, a professor of politics at the University of Liverpool.How did her tenure come under threat?Her concessions did little to mollify a growing rebellion from within her own party, which had the power to topple her in much the same way it toppled Mr. Johnson.The Conservatives — also known as Tories — had seen their popularity decline in public opinion polls after Mr. Johnson’s scandals, and their numbers cratered to staggering new lows as Ms. Truss stumbled. A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll this week revealed the lowest approval rating it had ever recorded for a prime minister, with 70 percent disapproving of Ms. Truss, including 67 percent of Conservatives.If a general election were held today, 56 percent would vote for Labour while 20 percent would vote Conservative, the poll found.The Conservative Party’s discontent with Ms. Truss crescendoed in turn, and she was enveloped with a palpable sense of crisis. On Wednesday, it boiled into a frantic fight for her survival — “I’m a fighter and not a quitter,” she said while being grilled by members of Parliament.Then even more chaos broke out. Suella Braverman, Britain’s interior minister, stepped down after an email breach, but took a swipe at Ms. Truss in her resignation letter, saying she had “concerns about the direction of this government.” A vote on fracking in Parliament turned into a reported scene of bullying, shouting, physical manhandling and tears. More Conservative members of Parliament openly called for Ms. Truss to step down. Rumors swirled of high-profile resignations. It was difficult to keep up.“In short, it is total, absolute, abject chaos,” a news announcer said on iTV. Charles Walker, a Conservative lawmaker, did not hold back in an interview on BBC.On Thursday, she said she had handed her resignation to the king, with a new leadership election planned within a week.What comes next?Ms. Truss will remain prime minister until her successor is chosen. (Here are the likely front-runners.) In her resignation remarks, Ms. Truss said a leadership election would be completed in the next week, bringing Britain its second unelected leader in a row.The next general election — when the entire public can participate, and the next opportunity for Labour to take control — is not scheduled until January 2025 at the latest. A Conservative leader could call for one earlier, but they would have little reason to do so imminently since polls indicate the party would be wiped out by Labour.Mr. Tonge said one advantage Conservatives have is time — the party could theoretically regain credibility if the economy recovers in the following years, he said.“I don’t think that changing the leader will necessarily save the Conservatives,” he said. “But you can engage in damage limitation by doing so.” More

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      Why Republicans Are Winning Swing Voters

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      Rachelle Bonja and Patricia Willens and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherAfter a summer of news that favored Democrats and with just two weeks until the midterms, a major new poll from The Times has found that swing voters are suddenly turning to the Republicans.The Times’s Nate Cohn explains what is behind the trend and what it could mean for Election Day.On today’s episodeNate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.Mail-in ballots in Phoenix. Polling suggests that Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinct advantage.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesBackground readingAccording to the Times/Siena College poll, American voters see democracy in peril, but saving it isn’t a priority.Despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights, disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Nate Cohn contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      Democrats’ Feared Red October Arrives Before the Midterms

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      Many Democrats hoped it would be a “weird election.” But with Election Day just three weeks away, the midterms aren’t shaping up that way.Here’s the thing about elections: When they break, they usually break in one direction. And right now, all the indicators on my political dashboard are blinking red — as in, toward Republicans.First, there’s inflation. It hasn’t gone away as the Biden administration had hoped, and the Federal Reserve likewise seems to be hamstrung in dealing with it. Americans are being squeezed between exorbitant prices for consumer goods — inflation is still at 40-year highs — and interest rates that the Fed has ratcheted up as it seeks to rein in those prices. Anyone trying to buy a home now faces 30-year mortgage rates that have soared past 6 percent.The latest New York Times/Siena poll, my colleague Nate Cohn wrote this week, suggests that “the conditions that helped Democrats gain over the summer no longer seem to be in place,” with voters’ sour view of the economy driving the downturn in the party’s prospects.As John Halpin, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote recently in his newsletter, “inflation is a political wrecking ball for incumbent governments” around the world. Why should the United States be different?Then there’s crime, which has rapidly moved up the ladder of issues that matter to voters. In a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, 64 percent of voters said crime would play a “major role” in how they voted, versus 59 percent who said the same of abortion access.Democrats have bet heavily that widespread anger over the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade would drive voters away from the Republican Party — especially college-educated women in the suburbs. President Biden pledged on Tuesday to protect abortion rights in a clear attempt to bring the issue back to the forefront of public discussion.Democrats’ strategy might have been a smart move in an otherwise brutal year for the party. But it has also come at a cost: All those abortion ads have taken resources away from whacking Republicans for opposing the policies Democrats passed in Congress this year.Some of those policies are broadly popular, like the way that the Inflation Reduction Act allows the federal government to negotiate prices for certain prescription drugs.But a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 36 percent of voters were aware of this development. That’s a huge communication failure — or a reflection that Democrats don’t think promoting their accomplishments would move or mobilize many votes.And finally, there’s the historical pattern of midterm elections, which tend to be referendums on the party in power. Older voters, who broadly lean Republican, also usually turn out more reliably in nonpresidential years, while younger, more transient Democratic voters are more fickle.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.G.O.P. Gains Edge: Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with an advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, a Times/Siena poll found.Codifying Roe: President Biden pledged that the first bill he would send to Capitol Hill next year if Democrats expand their control of Congress in the midterm elections would be legislation to enshrine abortion rights into law.Florida Senate Race: In the only debate of the contest, exchanges between Senator Marco Rubio and his Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, got fiery at times. Here are four takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.So, as the polls move the G.O.P.’s way, this election is looking a lot more “normal” than it might have seemed over the summer. Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary under President Barack Obama, wrote in his newsletter today: “We’re still in a very weird election, but it looks like it’s going to be more normal as we get into these final 21 days.”For Democrats hoping that this midterm election might be different from most others, normalcy is bad news.The Republican nominee in one of Rhode Island’s two congressional districts, Allan Fung, left, is leading Seth Magaziner, the state treasurer and a Democrat, in public polls.Corey Welch/WPRI, via Associated PressRepublicans go on offenseAs the playing field tilts toward Republicans, conservative groups are pouring money into newly competitive races, especially on the more volatile House side.This week’s Times/Siena poll showed Republicans leading Democrats by four percentage points in the generic congressional ballot, a widely monitored gauge of voter sentiment that asks respondents which party’s candidate they are most likely to vote for. It’s an especially meaningful indicator in races with no Democratic incumbent, because it takes time and money for little-known candidates to build up their personal brands. And the Democrats’ national brand is faring poorly right now.A super PAC aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader, just bought $4 million in television ads targeting Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, whose new Hudson Valley district Biden won by five points in 2020. Maloney is the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and his defeat would be deeply embarrassing to House Democrats.Republicans are also crowing about their chances of winning three open seats in Oregon that were previously held by Democrats, as well as a long-shot bid to unseat Representative Jahana Hayes in northwestern Connecticut. And even in wicked-blue Rhode Island, the Republican nominee in one of the state’s two congressional districts, Allan Fung, is leading Seth Magaziner, the state treasurer and a Democrat, in public polls.The Senate, where Democrats have huge cash advantages in races that are driven much more by personality, still looks like a tossup.But even there, Democrats are feeling some new heartburn. In Washington State, Senator Patty Murray’s lead over Tiffany Smiley, the Republican, has narrowed slightly since the summer. And as the polls have tightened, Smiley has outraised her Democratic opponent for the first time — by nearly a two-to-one margin.A loss for Murray would be a major upset. And if Democrats now need to worry about a state like Washington, that’s a dire sign for their chances in November.What to readFewer debates, little retail politicking, scarce town halls: This year’s campaigns look far different from those in the past as traditional norms erode, Lisa Lerer and Jazmine Ulloa write.Senator Bernie Sanders is planning an eight-state blitz over the final two weekends before the midterm elections, looking to rally young voters and progressives.Newly released body camera footage shows how Gov. Ron DeSantis’s much-publicized crackdown on voter fraud caused confusion among those arrested.In a 2021 video, Donald Trump inquired about whether a documentary filmmaker recording an interview with him was a “good Jewish character,” described Persians as “very good salesmen” and complained that Israeli Jews favored him more than Jews in the United States, Maggie Haberman reports.Capitol Hill notepadRepresentative Kevin McCarthy, left, and Senator Mitch McConnell with President Donald Trump in 2020.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMcCarthy zigs while McConnell zagsMitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader at the time of the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, warned President Donald Trump that his infamous call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was “not perfect” — even as McConnell downplayed its importance in public.At the same time, Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was scoffing behind closed doors about the nature of the offense, while leaning on wavering Republicans to reject Democrats’ calls for an impeachment inquiry.The dueling anecdotes are revealed in a book out this week, “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian. They encapsulate an important difference between the two Republican leaders as they seek a return to power.Both men went along with many of Trump’s excesses. But while McCarthy usually told Trump what he wanted to hear, McConnell sometimes pushed back. It’s why Trump has railed against McConnell, calling him an “old crow,” and recently accused him of harboring a “death wish” — but has helped set McCarthy on a glide path to becoming speaker if Republicans retake the House next month.“If this is the ‘launching point’ for House Democrats’ impeachment process, they’ve already overplayed their hand,” McConnell said after Trump released a transcript of the call, according to the book. “It’s clear there is no quid pro quo that the Democrats were desperately praying for.”But earlier, McConnell’s chief counsel, Andrew Ferguson, zeroed in one remark: Trump’s request to “do us a favor, though,” which Ferguson told his boss was “the dynamite line.” Agreeing, McConnell told Trump privately that the call with Zelensky was a problem.“This call is not perfect,” McConnell told Trump. “And you are going to get in deep trouble for it.”McConnell also cautioned his fellow Republican senators not to take a side. “Don’t box yourself in until you know all the facts,” he told them.McCarthy handled the Ukraine imbroglio rather differently. At a meeting with Trump’s aides to go over the transcript, he was unmoved by what he read, asking, “Is this everything?”Then he dialed up Representative Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican who had expressed some support for an impeachment inquiry — and pressured him to walk back his remarks ASAP.“Using government agencies to, if it’s proven, to put your finger on the scale of an election, I don’t think that’s right,” Amodei had said. The comments set off a media frenzy, leading some to conclude that impeachment might gain Republican support.Bade and Demirjian write that McCarthy was worried Trump would “flip” when he saw the comments.“Oh, man, I screwed up,” Amodei said when the two men spoke. McCarthy instructed him to put out a statement to repair any potential damage with Trump. He quickly did, clarifying, “In no way, shape, or form, did I indicate support for impeachment.”David Frum, a conservative writer for The Atlantic and one of Trump’s leading critics, recently opined that McCarthy “thinks the job to be the speaker of the House is a little bit like being a concierge at some rock-star hotel, where people come downstairs at all hours and they make crazy demands, and you say, ‘Yes, sir, right away, sir. We’ll have the dim sum and cocaine to your room in 15 minutes, sir.’”Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Has Polling Broken Politics?

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      Election Day is just three weeks away — and that means it’s peak polling season. For political hobbyists, polling is the new sports betting: gamifying elections to predict outcomes that haven’t always proven accurate. If the 2016 election revealed anything, it’s that polls are sometimes off — very off. So as America faces another high-stakes election, how much faith should we put in them?[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]On today’s episode, Jane Coaston brings together two experts to diagnose what we’re getting wrong in both how we conduct polls, and how we interpret the data they give us. Margie Omero is a principal at the Democratic polling firm GBAO. Nate Silver, who prefers to call himself a “forecaster” rather than a pollster, is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. Together, the two tackle how polling both reflects and affects the national political mood, and whether our appetite for election predictions is doing democracy more harm than good.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Getty ImagesThoughts? Email us at argument@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Vishakha Darbha and Derek Arthur. Edited by Alison Bruzek and Anabel Bacon. With original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker; mixing by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. More

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      ‘El voto latino’: 10 votantes hispanos conversan

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      En septiembre, reunimos a un grupo de 10 votantes latinos de Texas, Florida y Arizona, una combinación de demócratas, republicanos y electores independientes que planeaban votar o estaban dispuestos a votar por candidatos republicanos en las elecciones de mitad de mandato de Estados Unidos de este año.

      “¿Creen que el Partido Republicano hace algo que desanima a los votantes latinos?”, preguntó la moderadora. “¿Hay algo en la forma en que los demócratas se dirigen a la comunidad latina o hablan de ella que desanime a los votantes latinos?”.

      “Cuando Trump dijo que los mexicanos eran violadores —aunque tal vez no se refería a todos— me dejó un mal sabor de boca. Digo, mucha gente le aplaudió eso. Y yo pensaba: ‘Ah, así son las cosas’”, dijo uno de los participantes.

      “Cuando la primera dama dijo que nosotros éramos tan singulares como los tacos del desayuno, eso se me quedó grabado”, dijo otra participante, refiriéndose a los comentarios de Jill Biden en una conferencia de este año para UnidosUS, un grupo latino de derechos civiles.

      Varias de las personas que conversaron en este debate dijeron que ninguno de los partidos realmente les habló de manera personal e informada. Una parte del problema es que no hay una sola forma de hablar con los votantes latinos porque, como nos recordaron los participantes, no hay un votante latino típico. “Hay todo un espectro de hispanos”, dijo un participante. Y tal vez no se debería hacer la distinción entre votantes latinos y otros votantes: “Primero somos estadounidenses”, dijo otro participante.

      Lo que está claro es que ambos partidos tienen la oportunidad de vincularse con electores como los que hablamos, tanto para fortalecer su apoyo como para aclarar conceptos erróneos. Nuestros participantes pensaron que los republicanos eran más sólidos en una variedad de temas, como el crimen y la seguridad, el control de armas, la seguridad nacional, la inmigración y la economía. Pero sobre el tema del aborto, la mayoría favoreció a los demócratas. Un participante pensó que los demócratas en general apoyaban la desfinanciación de la policía, y otra participante se refirió a los comentarios de Donald Trump sobre los mexicanos como: “Siento que solo dijo lo que otros piensan”.

      En este punto es un cliché decir que los votantes latinos son poderosos políticamente, que a menudo tienen posturas políticas complejas, que no es un hecho que votarán por los demócratas. Lo que sigue después de estos clichés solo se aclarará en las próximas semanas, meses y años, a medida que los políticos, los medios de comunicación y el país presten más atención a votantes como quienes participaron en esta discusión.

      Lenin

      33 años, Texas, independiente, vendedor de seguros

      Orlando

      53 años, Florida, independiente, dibujante de diseño asistido por computadora

      Lourdes

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      Siena Poll Shows Zeldin Gaining on Hochul in NY Governor’s Race

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      Representative Lee Zeldin has cut into Gov. Kathy Hochul’s lead in the race for governor of New York, narrowing the margin to 11 percentage points, down from 17 points last month, according to a Siena College poll released on Tuesday.The survey suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, still possesses a healthy lead over Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, in a liberal-leaning state where no Republican has won a statewide race since 2002.But with Election Day just three weeks away, the diminished gap between the two suggested that New York voters were growing more concerned about the state’s direction — much as recent polling nationwide has indicated that the flailing economy and stubborn inflation remain top-of-mind concerns, as Republicans have expanded their edge over Democrats ahead of November’s midterm elections.While 61 percent of Democrats said that New York was on the right track, 87 percent of Republicans and a majority of independent voters said the state was headed in the wrong direction, according to the poll.In particular, Ms. Hochul lost support among white voters, who appear to be evenly divided between the candidates after favoring Ms. Hochul by 10 percentage points in September, the poll found.The results from the Siena poll tracked closely with a separate survey from Marist College last week that showed Ms. Hochul leading Mr. Zeldin by 10 percentage points among registered voters and eight percentage points among likely voters. Ms. Hochul appears to have a roughly 12-point lead, according to an average of nearly a dozen polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight, an opinion poll analysis website that takes into account a poll’s quality and partisan lean.Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin have both sharpened their attacks in the final stretch, casting each other as members of their party’s most extreme wings and doubling down on the overarching themes that have defined the race. Ms. Hochul has continued to portray Mr. Zeldin as a threat to the state’s strict abortion protections, while Mr. Zeldin has blamed the governor’s policies for contributing to crime and rising costs in New York.The contest received a jolt over the weekend when former President Donald J. Trump formally endorsed Mr. Zeldin, who was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress. Mr. Trump, who previously raised money for Mr. Zeldin, praised the candidate as “great and brilliant” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.Democrats in New York, where Mr. Trump remains deeply unpopular, quickly moved to capitalize on the endorsement, releasing an ad trumpeting Mr. Zeldin’s close ties to the former president, including his vote against certifying the 2020 election.But the congressman, who is vying to make inroads among moderate voters and disaffected Democrats, played down Mr. Trump’s formal backing, saying on Monday that it “shouldn’t have been news.”The Siena poll, which surveyed over 700 likely voters last week and has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points, showed Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin with a tight hold over voters from their respective parties. Mr. Zeldin, however, increased his lead among independent voters by six percentage points (49 percent to 40 percent over Ms. Hochul).The governor continues to have a commanding lead in New York City, where she is beating Mr. Zeldin 70 percent to 23 percent, and among women as well as Black and Latino voters, according to the poll.Mr. Zeldin, for his part, gained the lead in the city’s suburbs, where he is now beating Ms. Hochul 49 percent to 45 percent, after trailing her by one percentage point last month. He also increased his margin in upstate New York to four percentage points, up from one percentage point in the last poll. He has improved his name recognition, even if most voters continue to have an unfavorable view of him.Despite the modest gains, Mr. Zeldin would have to make much larger inroads across the map to cobble together a winning coalition. The state’s electoral landscape is stacked against him: Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one in New York.And though Mr. Zeldin is receiving significant support from Republican-backed super PACs pumping money into the race, he appears unlikely to surpass Ms. Hochul’s sizable fund-raising advantage.The governor has maintained an aggressive fund-raising schedule to help bankroll the multimillion-dollar barrage of television ads she has deployed to attack Mr. Zeldin.But Ms. Hochul, until very recently, has mostly avoided overtly political events such as rallies and other retail politics in which she personally engages with voters. Mr. Zeldin, in contrast, has deployed an ambitious ground game, touring the state in a truck festooned with his name and a “Save our State” slogan. More