Poll Me Twice, Shame On Me
Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and Galen Druke — the hosts of Crooked Media's new show Still Counting — join Lovett to talk about the Senate races they find most interesting and Trump doing everything in his power to help Republicans lose the midterms. The crew, who you may remember from the FiveThirtyEight podcast, dives deep into the numbers, breaking down what polling errors we should expect this November, what kind of candidates overperform versus underperform the national average, and the science behind Nate's midterm election forecast model, FLIPR. Subscribe to Still Counting on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- Duration
- 1h 10m
- Broadcast on
- 06 Sep 2026
- Audio Format
- other
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[MUSIC] Hey everybody, welcome to Ponce America, I'm John Lovett. I just wrapped a great conversation with Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Galen Drew who are launching a new podcast with Crooked Called Still Counting. It was great to get the gang back together. We talked about Trump's politics and what he would be doing if he were actually trying to help Republicans win the Senate. We talked about the races they're watching including Michigan and the challenges facing Abdul El Said and the broader battle between the left and the center left and how each are trying to define what a Democrat is. We talked about political modeling and what it can tell us and what it can't tell us and all in all we had a great time. So do me a favor, subscribe to Still Counting and enjoy the episode. Galen, Claire, Nate, welcome. This is awesome. We feel welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having us. This is so exciting. So I'm just first of all, a huge fan of all of you. And I'm so excited that listening to you now is going to be on Crooked because I get so hooked, especially as we get close to election day. And so as a favor for our listeners, I am going to save-- I have several very pedantic questions about modeling. And I'm just putting them at the end. And if people get there and they don't want to hear those questions and be part of it, that's fine. But so out of respect for the real political sickos, I'm going to keep to politics. And then for the model sickos, I have a little section at the end to talk about statistics and data. But I do want to start with Donald Trump. Nate, your model has Trump approval at around 39, disapproval at 58. We've joked about Trump trying to lose the midterms, the trade war with Canada, the focus on the ballroom, the dismissal of concerns about data centers, the war with Iran, and hosting a midterm convention to make it all about himself. If Trump were making state-of-the-art decisions based on the data, what would he be doing if he were trying to help Republicans win the midterms? Gail, why don't you take it first? What would Trump be doing if he wanted to win the midterms? He would probably end the war in Iran as quickly as possible. He would undo whatever tariffs still remain after the Supreme Court decision. And he would probably try to elevate people
Transcription truncated.
Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and Galen Druke — the hosts of Crooked Media's new show Still Counting — join Lovett to talk about the Senate races they find most interesting and Trump doing everything in his power to help Republicans lose the midterms. The crew, who you may remember from the FiveThirtyEight podcast, dives deep into the numbers, breaking down what polling errors we should expect this November, what kind of candidates overperform versus underperform the national average, and the science behind Nate's midterm election forecast model, FLIPR. Subscribe to Still Counting on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.