Local News Is Vanishing. What Does That Mean For American Politics?

Elaine Godfrey, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast to discuss her recent article about what happened when a local paper disappeared from a small Iowa town. And Danny Hayes, a political science professor at George Washington University, also joins to talk about his research on the role local news plays in society...

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Can You Hit These Riddles Out Of The Park?

Welcome to The Riddler. Every week, I offer up problems related to the things we hold dear around here: math, logic and probability. Two puzzles are presented each week: the Riddler Express for those of you who want something bite-size and the Riddler Classic for those of you in the slow-puzzle movement. Submit a correct answer for either, win , I need...

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Justin Herbert And Lamar Jackson Are Crushing It … On Different Downs

Football fans are in for an early treat this weekend. The Los Angeles Chargers and Baltimore Ravens face off during the early slate of games on Sunday, and the matchup looks to be a great one. According to our quality and game importance metrics, this is the game of the week by a wide margin, scoring a 94 in quality and an 86 in importance. With an...

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Why The Virginia Governor’s Race Is So Close

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Election Day 2021 is only about two weeks away, and the big race to watch is undoubtedly Virginia’s gubernatorial contest. A still-somewhat purple state with a Democratic lean in recent presidential elections, Virginia will be viewed by many as a bellwether for the 2022 midterms,...

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Politics Podcast: What Happens When Local News Disappears

FiveThirtyEight   More: Apple Podcasts | ESPN App | RSS Local news is disappearing in towns across the country. From 2008 to 2019, the percentage of people who said...

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The Fight Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Is Coming To Kids Next

It took a small town chiropractor named Charles Brown to help vaccinate millions of kids for decades to come — all because he didn’t want to vaccinate his own. It was 1979 in Houston, Mississippi, and Brown needed to enroll his 6-year-old son in school. But state law required the boy to be vaccinated against certain diseases, and Brown didn’t...

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Giants Or Dodgers? Game 5’s Winner Will Be In The World Series Driver’s Seat.

This year’s San Francisco Giants-Los Angeles Dodgers division series was billed as a historic clash of dominant regular-season teams, with the two clubs combining to win a record 213 games over the preceding six months. By and large, it has lived up to that expectation: Every win by the perhaps-still-underrated Giants has been followed by a series-tying...

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Will The Bucks Run It Back? Can LeBron Win His Fifth Ring? How Our Model Sees This NBA Season.

Welcome to the 2021-22 NBA season, folks! And welcome back to FiveThirtyEight’s NBA forecast, which is based on our RAPTOR player ratings. Before we get into the results of this year’s model and how our forecast sees the battle to dethrone the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks playing out, let’s quickly address a few of the changes made...

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Is There Anything Candace Parker Can’t Do?

The Chicago Sky are two wins from a title entering Wednesday night’s WNBA Finals game against the Phoenix Mercury. And while Candace Parker is a huge reason for that, it’s notable that her contributions have shifted some over the course of the season. This is by design. It’s also the way Parker’s career as a whole has gone, even when she...

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The Cowboys Are Putting It All Together. Is This Their Year?

The 2021 NFL season marks the 26th since the Dallas Cowboys last made a Super Bowl, improbably giving a franchise known as “America’s Team” the league’s 11th-longest active drought. Through 1995, a Cowboys Super Bowl appearance happened once every 3.75 years on average … and sometimes even more frequently. (In its heyday, Dallas had two separate stretches...

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