Media apperiances and quotes

Trump’s low point in net job approval is the product of a slow and somewhat erratic deterioration over time compounded by a very recent downward lurch. It’s been underwater since March, and over 5 percent-net-negative since June. There’s no single issue driving his lower approvals, so far as we can tell, though again, according to Silver Bulletin, he has net-negative job-approval averages on immigration (minus-6.5 percent), trade (minus-17.6 percent), the economy (minus-19.9 percent), and inflation (minus-27.5 percent). Bad as that last number is, it was quite a bit worse on October 1 (minus-32.8 percent).

Zohranirvana (2025 Election Night recap) by Ross Barkan

A recording from Ross Barkan and Nate Silver's live video

Five Hours Of GD Election Night Coverage by Galen Druke

We live-streamed election night 2025 with some of the most fun election nerds on the Internet.

Interviewed by Matt Chorley about air conditioning in the UK, and my article on the subject for Silver Bulletin.

Overall, there are reasonable rejoinders to our reasoning for making Maine’s Senate race a Toss-up. But we do think there is enough question about this race to make it a Toss-up, even as this is still a somewhat vexing race to assess: Eli McKown-Dawson of Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin had an excellent assessment of the contradictory indicators in the race last month.

Veteran polling analyst Nate Silver, writing with colleague Eli McKown-Dawson in his newsletter, Silver Bulletin, explained: “Inevitably, there’s a lot of disagreement from survey to survey, not just because of statistical variation but because pollsters have long had trouble pegging down Trump’s popularity — and often underestimated it.”

Nate Silver and Silver Bulletin analyst Eli McKown-Dawson: “This has been a bad week for Trump when it comes to the polls.”

Where I differ from my pessimistic friends is that I think all the professional politicians who bowed out of this race are correct and the odds of beating Collins are actually just objectively quite low (Eli McKown-Dawson has a good overview of both sides of this argument).

Of the five new Republican-leaning congressional districts that the Texas GOP has pushed through the state legislature, two are majority-Latino districts in southern Texas. It’s these two districts that the elections analyst Eli McKown-Dawson has noted are not necessarily guaranteed Republican pick-ups.

That really changes how to think about districts with large numbers of Latinos. As Eli McKown-Dawson’s numbers show, if Texas Democrats win Hispanic voters 53-47 next year—Kamala Harris lost those voters to Trump 55-45—they would hold onto TX-28 and TX-34 and be a coin toss in TX-35.

Pollsters Nate Silver and Eli McKown: “On immigration—by far his best issue—Trump’s net approval rating is down to -3.8. That’s the lowest it’s been since the start of his second term: Trump’s net immigration approval was +4.0 just two weeks ago. His approval on handling inflation and the cost of living has also fallen by nearly 6 points in the same period.”

“Musk is still popular among Republicans, but he’s less popular than he used to be and less popular than other Republican figures,” elections analyst Eli McKown-Dawson wrote.

Silver Bulletin’s Eli McKown-Dawson wrote: “This could just be noise driven by a dearth of new polls, or it could be a reversal of the downward trend we’ve seen since the start of Trump’s term. We’ll have to wait for more data to find out.”

But the most recent polls showed another downward lurch, as Nate Silver’s “Silver Bulletin observed on April 25: “After a string of bad polls — most recently from NYT/Siena — Donald Trump’s net approval rating in the Silver Bulletin average dropped from -5.1 at the start of the week to -7.8 today. He’s still doing better than he was at this point during his first term —Trump sat at a net approval rating of -9.2 back then. But that might not be true for much longer.”

The initial signs are not good, as Silver Bulletin reported earlier this week: “We’ve had three entirely post-Liberation Day polls. None of them are good for Donald Trump. In today’s new Navigator Research poll, 44 percent of registered voters approve of Trump and 53 percent disapprove. And the latest Morning Consult poll showed Trump with a net approval of -6. Even Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll — where Trump has gotten some of the most positive approval numbers of his second term — has him 4 points underwater.”

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: A detailed piece from Eli McKown-Dawson on the famous Nate Silver blog about how U.S. pollsters are dealing with being wrong again about the recent election results. It’s useful reading for Westminster too — not that we’ll ever learn.

If you don’t believe Nate Cohn, I have another Nate for you: Nate Silver. Eli McKown-Dawson, who writes for Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, ran a similar experiment. He found: “As of Tuesday, Harris led by 2.8 points in our national polling average. If we only include pollsters rated at least B- by VoteHub (they use pollster ratings from Race to the White House) and remove all partisan polls, her lead drops to 2.6 points. Her lead falls by only 0.1 point in Pennsylvania when we use only high-quality surveys, and Trump actually gains 0.2 points in Wisconsin when we make the switch. So not only are the changes small, they aren’t even all favorable for Harris.”

According to the Silver Bullet’s Eli McKown-Dawson on Wednesday, “the presidential race is really close.” “As of Tuesday, our forecast gives Kamala Harris a 50 percent chance of winning the Electoral College … and Donald Trump has a 50 percent chance too. That’s obviously about as close to a pure tossup as you can get,” McKown-Dawson wrote.

One of polling guru Nate Silver’s lieutenants, Eli McKown-Dawson, argues that’s potentially the case, saying their “model thinks Florida is the 7th-likeliest tipping point state — ahead of states like Nevada where the race is much more even but the number of electoral votes up for grabs is smaller.”