The Roberts Court vs. The Trump Court

Everyone keeps waiting for the Supreme Court’s big right turn — especially this year. The justices have now begun their first full term with a 6-3 conservative majority, and the docket is full of culture-war issues, such as abortion, gun rights and religious liberty. But in many ways, the Supreme Court’s conservative revolution is already here:...

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The Polls Consistently Show A Close Governor’s Race In Virginia

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew talks about why President Biden’s approval rating is underwater, what the consequences are for Democrats and what they can do about it. They also check in on the upcoming Virginia governor’s race and discuss a FiveThirtyEight report about how Congress may have inadvertently legalized...

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Why Democratic Gains In Texas’s Big Metro Areas Could Outweigh Republican Success In South Texas

In his first public appearance after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, then-President Donald Trump sought respite in South Texas. His visit was billed as a way to promote the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, but it also gave him a welcome escape from the turmoil in Washington. That’s because, just months prior, voters in Texas’s border...

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Politics Podcast: What Makes A Party Or Politician Popular?

FiveThirtyEight   More: Apple Podcasts | ESPN App | RSS President Biden’s standing with the public has deteriorated in the nine months since he has taken office. Now...

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Do You Buy That … Limiting Abortion Access Will Mobilize Democrats At The Polls?

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver breaks down public opinion on abortion legislation and what it will mean for the midterms on ABC’s “This Week.”

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How Mitch McConnell Accidentally Created An Unregulated THC Market

Sen. Mitch McConnell didn’t know what he was doing when he passed the 2018 Farm Bill. The bill included his provision that legalized industrial hemp, a form of cannabis that can be made into a wide variety of products including cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating cannabis compound commonly called CBD. That part was intentional — the law quickly launched...

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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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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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