Election content with two weeks to go 📊 October 18, 2020
A few external posts on the election
Thanks as ever for reading my weekly data-driven newsletter on politics, polling and the news. As always, I invite you to drop me a line (or just respond to this email). Please click/tap the ❤️ under the headline if you like what you’re reading; it’s our little trick to sway Substack’s curation algorithm in our favor. If you want more content, I publish subscriber-only posts 1-2x a week.
Dear reader,
I won’t have a weekly post today. I have too many other things to do: there are slide decks to prepare, Economist articles to write, book pages to outline and code to review. On top of that, there is also a batch of cookies in the oven that I need to keep an eye on. Maybe I should brew a pot of coffee?
I am not leaving you completely high and dry, however. As always, you can find below a list of all the things I wrote or recorded this week. You are bound to find something in there. The time spent tackling work tasks also means that I’ll be able to spend a while drafting a long blog post about elections and data journalism that I’ve been dreaming about for a few months now. And, of course, there are elections piece to write!
In the meantime, I hope you are all doing well. This election is almost over. One one hand, that is sad because I’ve spent so much time covering it. But on the other, I will finally be able to get some sleep and work on other projects.
—Elliott
Posts for subscribers
October 17: How election models factor in high turnout. Pollsters' likely voter screens can be flexible enough to pick up changing turnout patterns
October 14: Are state polls underestimating Joe Biden? National polls have recently swung toward the president, but state polls haven't. Which have been better historically?
What I'm Reading and Working On
I wrote three articles for The Economist this week. The first is about national polls seemingly overestimating Joe Biden’s support (though, to be sure, his support in state polling is definitely nothing to scoff at). The second is about public support for Amy Coney Barrett being historically low. And finally, I wrote an article about undecided voters leaning toward Biden.
I also did a Q&A with The Economist’s films team on what the data say about the election.
Then, here are four blog posts at Andrew Gelman’s blog about our election forecast. To be clear, I did not write them all, but we did work on some text and the charts together.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back in your inbox next Sunday. In the meantime, follow me online or reach out via email if you’d like to engage. I’d love to hear from you.
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Photo contest
I received several pet pictures last week, which is great (though I could always use more!) My favorite was from Joseph of his min Golden Doodle named Holly, who is apparently “a very good girl who loves people and getting belly rubs.” I love her.
For next week’s contest, send me a photo of your pet(s) to elliott[AT]gelliottmorris[DOT]com!