President Biden hasn’t been shy about undoing the legacy of his immediate predecessor. It was a rallying cry of his presidential campaign, and as such it has defined his first eight months in office. On Biden’s first day in the White House, he signaled climate change would once again be a top issue by bringing the United States back into the 2015 Paris Agreement, which Donald Trump had withdrawn from when he was president. Biden also reversed Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military and has taken a number of steps to repudiate a president who made white identity politics and racial resentment central to his message.

One notable exception is how Biden has handled America’s relationship with China. On this issue, Biden has hardly distanced himself from Trump: In fact, Biden’s tough-on-China approach has arguably been even tougher. Biden has kept in place many of the much-maligned Trump tariffs. He’s also harshly criticized China for its role in handling the coronavirus outbreak. And he’s taken to task its human rights track record and expressed support for an independent Taiwan, two things the Trump administration also did, albeit at the last minute.

There are, of course, important differences between Trump and Biden; namely, Biden is far more multilateral and cooperative in his approach to foreign policy in general. By and large, though, Biden’s approach to China has resembled that of Trump’s, which is notable in our deeply polarized political era when moments of consensus between the two major parties are rare. That said, Republicans and Democrats are still considerably divided over what America’s relationship with China should look like, which is why U.S.-China relations are unlikely to create an opportunity for bipartisanship going forward, even if both parties consider China an adversary.

To understand why Biden’s approach to China is often considered “Trump 2.0,” it’s important to first establish Americans’ attitudes toward China. Broadly speaking, Americans of all political stripes don’t view the country favorably. Though Democrats and Republicans disagree as to whether the Chinese government should be held responsible for the role it played in the coronavirus outbreak, Americans’ feelings toward the country have gotten worse since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. 

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in February found that two-thirds of Americans — including 79 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats¹ — harbored “somewhat cold” or “very cold” feelings toward China,² and a February survey from Gallup found that 79 percent of Americans overall said their opinion of China was “mostly” or “very” unfavorable — by far the highest level of disfavor the polling firm has found since it started asking the question in 1979. That includes 41 percent of Americans who said they viewed China “very” unfavorably, up from 24 percent the year before.

Interestingly, though, it appears that China’s atrocious record on human rights, rather than its handling of COVID-19, accounts for more of the public’s dislike, which transcends parties. In fact, when asked by Pew to identify the first thing that comes to mind when they think about China, one-fifth of Americans — including 22 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Republicans — said they thought about “human rights.” By contrast, just 7 percent of Americans said they immediately thought of COVID-19.

In recent years, China has come under fire for its harsh repression of political dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities, perhaps most notably the Uyghurs in northwest China. The Chinese government has been accused of engineering a campaign of mass internment and sterilization of Uyghurs, using a sophisticated system of wide-spread surveillance to carry out the abuses. The U.S. Senate has responded, in part, by passing separate bipartisan measures labeling the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide and banning the import of goods — alleged to be manufactured with forced labor — from China’s Xinjiang region. The Senate also allowed sanctions against China for human rights violations as part of a $250 billion bill passed in June.

Both Democrats and Republicans favor a “tough on China” approach when it comes to addressing those abuses, too. According to Pew’s February survey, 69 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans support promoting human rights in China even if it hurts economic ties between the United States and China. By contrast, only 29 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of Republicans favor strengthening economic relations even if it entails not addressing human rights. And though there’s been less polling on Americans’ views of China-Taiwan relations, clear majorities of Americans support recognizing Taiwan as an independent country, including it in international organizations and signing a U.S.-Taiwan free trade agreement, according to a July survey from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 

Of course, though, many Americans also view China as a serious economic threat. Roughly 9 in 10 Americans would describe China as a “competitor” or an “enemy,” while only 9 percent consider it a “partner,” according to Pew’s February survey. Half of Americans also thought that China — not the United States — was the world’s leading economic power, per Gallup, and over 60 percent of Americans believed that China’s economic power would pose a “critical” threat to the United States over the next 10 years. Lawmakers in Washington have taken notice, as well, with the Senate’s $250 billion June bill heavily investing in science and technology so that the United States can stay competitive with China. 

Notably, however, Americans are generally skeptical of the net benefit that tariffs, including those on goods from China, provide the United States, with 44 percent of Americans saying the measures were bad and 30 percent saying they were good (23 percent thought they had no net effect), according to Pew’s February survey. Republicans were not only more pro-tariff than Democrats but also more likely to support a tougher economic approach to China more generally.

It’s not just a question of how tough to be economically toward China, either. There are some fairly clear limits to bipartisanship when it comes to addressing China’s ascendancy. Roughly half of Republicans in that February Pew survey thought of China “as an enemy” of the United States, while only one-fifth of Democrats felt the same way. And according to a July 2020 survey from the Chicago Council, strong majorities of Republicans supported significantly reducing trade between the United States and China, even if American consumers have to pay more for goods; restricting the exchange of scientific research between the two countries; and limiting the number of Chinese students studying in the United States. Democrats, meanwhile, were by and large opposed to all three proposals.

As a long-term foreign policy goal, curbing China’s influence also ranks as a higher priority for rank-and-file Republicans than Democrats: 63 percent of Republicans think that the U.S. should make it a top priority to limit the power and influence of China, while just 36 percent of Democrats agree. To that end, Pew found in a July report that members of Congress — particularly Republicans — grew more outspoken about China on social media in 2020, often using accusatory language surrounding the pandemic or intellectual property theft.

“The biggest difference [between Biden and Trump on China] is that the Trump administration was more unilateralist and even weakened some of our alliances and partnerships, but the Biden administration has come in determined to build coalitions with the countries that share our values and interests,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Yet still, some have argued that an ascendant China could be just the kickstart that America needs to escape an era of hyper-partisanship. But though there is significant room for bipartisan agreement on some of the issues surrounding China in American politics, it is not clear that this is enough for U.S.-China relations to really become a bipartisan issue. 

Rachel Myrick, a professor of political science at Duke University, has found in her research that security threats from foreign foes don’t consistently reduce polarization. Looking across dozens of cases since the start of the 20th century, Myrick found little evidence that such threats reduced polarization; rather, she found that the responses to these threats often reflected already existing partisan dynamics. The assumption that a rising China will bring about domestic unity, Myrick argued in The Washington Post in June, “may be faulty to begin with.”

“We shouldn’t expect external threats to inherently be unifying,” Myrick wrote in an email to FiveThirtyEight. “That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t some threats that will be. Unsurprisingly, the most unifying threats historically have been severe and direct attacks on American soil. In response to the 9/11 attacks, for example, we saw memorable displays of national unity and a sharp drop in polarization.” But, as Myrick pointed out, those types of galvanizing events are few and far between. “Most security crises involving the U.S. tend to have little to no persistent effects on polarization, either among policymakers or among the American public.”

As for whether the United States would rally around beating back China the way it did with the Soviet Union after World War II, Myrick is not convinced. She pointed to the differences in the domestic political environment from that era to this one, highlighting that while Republicans and Democrats increasingly see China as a threat, they are divided on how to respond. She also pointed out that the United States is far more enmeshed with China economically than it was with the Soviet Union, and that American competition with China is “much less about military power and much more about economic competition.”

Of course, the dynamics at play here go beyond the narrow scope of American domestic politics. For instance, a lot has to do with what China itself does — if it keeps using economic and military coercion toward its neighbors, America's posture will likely be adversarial.

But some experts do think that the tension between China and the U.S. could have a unifying effect. Jordan Schneider, a China technology analyst at the Rhodium Group and host of the ChinaTalk podcast, told FiveThirtyEight that increased competition with China on issues like climate change is such an example. “If everyone agrees climate change is a problem, this could be something that actually boosts China’s image abroad, and the same thing with Biden,” said Schneider. “So you could end up in a Cold War circa 1960s and ’70s dynamic, where it’s actually the tension that helped push forward some human rights changes both in the Soviet Union and in the U.S., more famously with Civil Rights legislation.”

Myrick, too, acknowledges there will be some opportunities for bipartisan cooperation on various aspects of U.S.-China policy. “I think we’ll see a fair amount of bipartisanship in the short term on aspects of technology competition, for example.” But she did stress that “[e]xpecting a growing ‘China threat’ to resolve partisan divisions in American politics seems misguided.”

All of that is to say that even on the issues that Americans seem the least politically divided on, existing partisan polarization is still likely to rule the day — if not factors outside of most Americans’ control. And if the past two decades of foreign policy are any lesson, there’s nothing that says that America's current bipartisan consensus on China is stable — or that it will lead to a less divided United States.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew talks about the threat of a government shutdown and debt default, and discusses how likely it is that Democrats will get their legislative priorities passed. Plus, they debate the best way to ask Americans about their political identity.

There’s lots going on in Congress this week, and much of it is existential. The House is scheduled to vote on a $1 trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill this Thursday. But some Democratic lawmakers said they won’t vote for the bill without an agreement on a multi-trillion dollar partisan social programs bill. At the same time, the U.S. risks defaulting on its debt as Republicans refuse to help raise the debt ceiling. Oh, and the government might shut down by week’s end, too.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew comes on to talk about the threat of a government shutdown and how likely they think it will be for Democrats to get their agenda passed on both spending plans, immigration reform, and voting rights. They also discuss what the best use of polling is when surveying people about the ways they politically identify themselves.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

On Monday, Texas lawmakers gave a first glimpse at what the state’s new congressional districts may look like. The redrawn map was highly anticipated given that Texas gained two additional congressional seats — the most of any state — during the reapportionment process and because Republicans are fully in control of the state’s redistricting process. Yet the new map, if passed, would not substantially alter the topline partisan breakdown of Texas’s seats. It appears that Republican mapmakers prioritized defending the GOP’s current seat advantage over trying to significantly expand it.

Overall, this map creates 24 solid or likely Republican seats, 13 solid or likely Democratic seats and one swing seat in the Rio Grande Valley. (The state’s two new districts will be placed in the Austin and Houston metropolitan areas, as those two areas fueled much of the state’s population growth since 2010.) But this isn’t that much different than what Texas’s map currently looks like: At present, the delegation is made up of 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats.

This is still a very good map for Republicans, though, because mapmakers strengthened the GOP’s advantage in the state by making a number of potentially vulnerable seats held by Republicans much redder, with the newest Houston-area seat also drawn so that it’s favorable to Republican candidates. As the table below shows, the current map has 11 Republican incumbents in seats that were less than 20 points more Republican than the country as a whole, according to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean metric.¹ But on the new map, all but one Republican-held seat would be R+20 or stronger for the GOP.

Given that the GOP controls the redistricting process in Texas, it might seem strange that it wasn’t more aggressive in trying to flip a seat or two held by Democrats. But population growth and demographic shifts in Texas have arguably benefited Democrats so significantly that Republican mapmakers were mostly left playing defense — concerned that some GOP incumbents might soon become vulnerable.

At the top of that list is Rep. Beth Van Duyne, the only Texas Republican defending a seat that President Biden carried in 2020. The new map lines, however, would shift Van Duyne’s district between Dallas and Fort Worth nearly 20 points to the right, meaning that she likely has far more to worry about in a primary than in a general election now after winning by only 1.3 points last November.

Three other Republican incumbents in seats that were less than R+10 also saw their districts move at least 15 points to the right. Rep. Dan Crenshaw ranks among these members, although it’s not clear which seat he may run in: About one-third of his current district is in the new 38th District, but the same is true of the new 2nd District, too, which may also be open, considering Rep. Kevin Brady of the current 8th District is retiring. Either way, Crenshaw — a rising star in the GOP — would be far safer than he is now. 

Rep. Tony Gonzales of the 23rd District is the only Republican incumbent who wouldn’t end up in a seat that’s at least R+20, but his perennial battleground district would be reforged into a relative GOP stronghold: His district would be R+13 under the new lines. Like Van Duyne, Gonzalez would breathe far easier under this new map, after he only won by 4 points in 2020.

In order to make many of these seats safer for Republicans, GOP lawmakers moved more Democratic voters into seats that the GOP had previously targeted but now seem to have abandoned. For example, the seat held by Democrat Lizzie Fletcher, who unseated a Republican incumbent in 2018, would go from D+1 to D+25. Meanwhile, the Dallas-area seat represented by Democrat Colin Allred, who similarly ousted a Republican incumbent in 2018, would go from D+2 to D+25. It’s a similar story for almost every other Texas Democrat under this plan. (In some instances, Republican mapmakers also made some super-red seats a slightly paler shade, “unpacking” some GOP voters to boost Republican-held seats. For instance, Rep. Van Taylor’s 3rd District outside of Dallas shifted east to take some red turf from Rep. Pat Fallon’s 4th District.)

One of the biggest takeaways from this map is that almost every seat — Democratic or Republican — would be uncompetitive at its baseline. All but two seats would lean at least 10 points more Democratic or Republican than the country as a whole. 

And it’s heavily Hispanic South Texas that holds both of those exceptions. This is a potentially important development as that region might hold opportunities for the GOP since Biden performed worse there than past Democratic presidential candidates. Most notably, the 15th District, represented by Democrat Vicente Gonzalez, would become more Republican-leaning on the new map. He was already facing a difficult reelection bid, as he narrowly won his 2020 race by 3 percentage points after winning reelection by 21 points in 2018. But now under the new map, his district would go from D+2 to evenly split. Meanwhile, Rep. Henry Cuellar’s 28th District would actually become slightly bluer — it only moved from D+4 to D+7 — and could be in play in 2022. (Rep. Filemon Vela’s 34th District doesn’t fall neatly into this category because it went from D+5 to D+17, but it is the other border seat in Texas, and it seems to have gotten a little friendlier toward Democrats, although Vela won’t seek reelection.) 

Another notable change under the new map is that it would result in a smaller share of districts with Hispanic majorities despite the addition of two new congressional districts. This could make the map vulnerable to a racial gerrymandering lawsuit considering Texas’s Hispanic population has driven the bulk of Texas’s population growth since 2010. According to census data, the current congressional map included 18 districts with white majorities and nine with Hispanic majorities. But the newly proposed map doesn’t give Hispanic voters any more clout: There are now 19 districts that have white majorities and still nine districts with Hispanic majorities, based on the voting age population.

This is only the first draft of Texas’s new congressional map, so it could still change before it’s passed by the GOP-controlled legislature. The Senate Redistricting Committee is expected to take up the congressional map on Thursday. But remember the GOP ultimately controls the redistricting process in Texas. That said, past congressional maps proposed by Texas lawmakers have been endlessly litigated — and it’s possible that could happen again this time around.

When the suburban Chicago hospital where her mother was being treated for COVID-19 refused to give her ivermectin, Tiffany Wilson had her moved to another hospital. The antiparasitic drug achieved a cult following as a treatment for COVID-19, despite no current evidence it is effective. But that didn’t deter Wilson from suing when the next hospital also refused to give her mother, 68-year-old Leslie Pai, ivermectin. And she won. This week, after the hospital obliged a judge’s injunction ordering it to give Pai ivermectin, Pai’s heart rate plummeted, hospital doctors said in court documents. The hospital pushed back in court, and Wilson dropped the case, with her lawyers asking the court to lift the injunction while continuing to argue that the ivermectin was, in fact, helping. 

What’s most remarkable about Wilson’s story is that it’s not the only one of its kind. In recent months, there have been multiple cases of patients or their families demanding ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, not only going to court but also harassing hospital staff. And in at least seven instances, judges have granted these requests, ordering hospitals to either administer the drug or allow other physicians into the facility to administer it. These incidents mark a new era of the pandemic: As hospitals struggle under the weight of new COVID-19 cases, they are also being forced to fight this new battle spurred by an avalanche of fear and online misinformation. The infodemic has officially arrived in the ICU. 

“I’ve never encountered this and I’ve been in practice over 40 years,” said Dr. Rodney Hood, who chairs the National Medical Association’s COVID-19 Task Force on Vaccines and Therapeutics. 

In some instances, hospitals refusing to treat patients with ivermectin have faced protests. One case in particular garnered a sizable public response. In 2016, Veronica Wolski, then a 59-year-old Chicagoan, first drew public attention when she waved Bernie Sanders signs from a pedestrian bridge over a highway. Over the last five years, her occupation of the bridge continued but her message shifted to promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, the Big Lie and anti-vaccine sentiments — endearing her to the alt-right. And then recently, after Wolski was hospitalized with COVID-19, supporters on QAnon-focused Telegram channels shared contact information for the hospital and began a campaign of calling and emailing to demand Wolski receive ivermectin. This was amplified when L. Lin Wood, the pro-Trump lawyer who filed a number of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results, got involved, encouraging his followers to do the same.³ The hospital reported hundreds of emails and calls “associated with one patient’s care,” and there was even an in-person protest. Wolski died on Sept. 13.

Along with demands and protests over ivermectin, there have been multiple cases of individuals suing hospitals to force them to treat a COVID-19 patient with the drug. In more than one case, these lawsuits have been successful. A judge in Illinois (separate from the Wilson case) ordered a hospital to allow a patient with COVID-19 to receive ivermectin after her daughter sued for the treatment. In at least two cases in New York, judges made similar orders. In Ohio, a judge ordered a hospital to administer ivermectin to a patient with COVID-19 after his wife sued, but then a different judge overturned that order. Similar cases have been brought forward in California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Delaware and Texas. (Many of these cases have even been brought forward by the same lawyer, as first reported by the Daily Beast.) 

The fixation on ivermectin is largely driven by online misinformation and a misrepresentation of what we know about the drug. Ivermectin is an antiparasitic that has been around for decades and is very effective at treating certain parasitic infections, like river blindness. Its effectiveness on viral infections, particularly COVID-19, is still being investigated. Unfortunately, there’s not yet good evidence showing it’s effective in this case, and one of the biggest papers suggesting it could be effective was withdrawn due to ethical conflicts. That said, it’s not as if ivermectin has been written off; clinical trials to test ivermectin’s effectiveness against COVID-19 are ongoing, and their results will be carefully monitored by federal agencies and professional groups that help create guidelines for treatment. That same process has led to other existing drugs, like the antiviral remdesivir, getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration for treating COVID-19. But neither the FDA nor the World Health Organization nor the National Institutes of Health currently approve of ivermectin for treating COVID-19.

But misinformation has convinced many people that they know more about how to treat COVID-19 than the medical establishment and experts. The thing is, they don’t. “The number of studies and the quality of them and the different research methodologies in any field of medicine is always pretty overwhelming. That’s why we have professional societies and regulatory bodies who take all of that evidence into consideration,” said Carolyn Bramante, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and the principal investigator on an ongoing randomized clinical trial of ivermectin and other potential COVID-19 treatments. 

It can, of course, be a good thing for patients to advocate for their own care. The difference in ivermectin cases is that their advocacy is based on rumors and lies, not on scientific evidence. Though ivermectin has been around for decades, it’s still a drug and it can have side effects and potentially negative impacts, Bramante said. Not only is there not yet evidence that it works, we also don’t know if it could be harmful. That can also cause complications for a hospital system already stretched thin by the pandemic it’s trying to treat.

“You don’t get treated based upon what you feel or think,” Hood said. “There are certain approved treatment regimens for certain diseases. If [what a patient is demanding] doesn’t fit within that regimen, then you cannot treat them.”

Online, however, proponents of ivermectin tout it as both a prophylaxis and a cure for COVID-19, cherry-picking data from preprint studies and sharing anecdotes of miraculous recoveries. It’s an infectious narrative that leads many people to believe the drug ought to be used widely — and to wonder if the fact that it isn’t is evidence of a conspiracy. Amid the desperate haze of the pandemic, this type of thinking is leading people to extreme actions. All this while another preventive medical intervention, one that has been shown to be highly effective and safe — the vaccine — is shunned by many of the same people. These lawsuits may represent a precedent of conspiracy-theory-influenced patients using the courts as a cudgel to force medical professionals to practice against their own expertise. Right now, it’s ivermectin, but what’s stopping patients from demanding to be treated with colloidal silver or bleach?

Congress is in full-on chaos mode right now, with the future of infrastructure, government funding, the debt limit and voting rights all uncertain. But at the heart of the chaos is a core disagreement over a basic tenet of governing: Is bipartisanship still possible?

Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema certainly both think it is. They are so strong in their commitment to working across party lines that they stand alone among Democratic senators in objecting to changing the filibuster. 

But they are lone voices for a reason: The political environment most senators inhabit makes public bipartisanship anywhere from difficult to politically suicidal. This is for a variety of reasons, including that so much of our politics is now nationalized, that party leaders keep most potential “bipartisan” bills from reaching the floor and, perhaps most importantly, that the national parties are now geographically isolated, meaning there’s minimal overlap in the interests and values the parties represent.

This is, of course, not limited to the Senate, but for the purposes of this article, I’m focusing primarily on how bipartisanship has largely disappeared from the Senate, as that’s historically where more bipartisanship has taken place.

To understand why a senator like Manchin is such a strong and singular proponent of bipartisanship, it helps to understand just how rare a senator like him is. He is one of just six senators who represent a state that voted for the other party in the most recent presidential election — and one of just two senators whose state voted for the other party’s presidential nominee by at least 10 points in 2020.¹

There were once plenty of senators who represented states that voted for the other party for president. Between 1960 and 1990, roughly half of all sitting senators fit into this group. But over the last three decades, that number has plummeted, as the chart above shows.

Likewise, in an earlier political era, many senators shared their state with a senator from the opposite party. Not only did this serve to reinforce the electoral reality that either party could win a state, but it also gave such senators an obvious bipartisan partner in the Senate, particularly on issues of concern to their home state. Today, though, only 12 senators — the six senators mentioned above, plus the fellow senator in their state² — have a colleague who’s from the other party.

So, what changed? Well, pretty much the entire nature of American electoral party politics. 

One way to clearly see this change is to map American partisan competition. From the 1960s through the early 2000s, both Democrats and Republicans were genuinely national parties in the Senate. That is, Senate Democrats and Republicans used to hail from all parts of the country. 

This was important because it kept both parties politically diverse and thus moderate overall. Moreover, because Senate elections were more about local issues, both parties were able to compete nationally. Voters didn’t care as much whether they sent a Democrat or a Republican to Washington. What mattered was whether they sent somebody who could represent their state well. And senators could prove their worth by bringing home federal funding for roads and bridges — just the kind of issue that used to facilitate bipartisan dealmaking.

But today’s political campaigns and voters care far less about roads and bridges. They care far more about national culture-war issues — and which party controls the majority in Congress. As a result, Democrats can’t win in much of the Southeast and the Mountain West, and Republicans are now perpetual losers in the West and the Northeast. Only the Southwest and the Midwest remain competitive, and that’s only because state populations are currently balanced between liberal cities and conservative exurbs.

It’s also why bipartisanship in the Senate is waning. Republican senators in solidly Republican states do not have to worry about winning over some Democrats; the senators’ general election win is all but assured. Rather, the most likely way they could lose is if they face a primary challenge to their right. And the most likely way they could draw such a challenger is if they were to publicly work with Democrats. 

In other words, a bipartisan record has become a liability in today’s electoral environment.

Even in competitive states, a bipartisan record is no guarantee of electoral success. Take former Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. His attempt to prove his bipartisan bona fides in his reelection bid in 2020 ultimately proved no match for a state that is continuing to trend blue. And we saw the same fate recently befall three Democratic senators of increasingly red states: Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly and Claire McCaskill. All were sunk in 2018 by the “D” attached to their name. 

Swing states (and swing districts) also don’t have more swing voters than anywhere else; in fact, they might have fewer, since many swing states are only swingy because their populations are evenly balanced between very liberal cities and very conservative exurbs. Consider Georgia: Despite a closely contested runoff for both of the state’s Senate races, none of the candidates really tried to run to the middle. It’s a similar story in Wisconsin. It’s unclear yet whether Republican Sen. Ron Johnson will run for reelection in 2022, but if he does, he has also chosen to double down on his party’s strategy (embracing former President Trump) versus trying to persuade voters in the middle — even though Wisconsin voted for Biden in 2020 (albeit narrowly). More broadly, the electoral penalty for extremism has declined considerably in recent years, as the political middle has become a muddled vacuum. 

But even for senators who want to publicly prove their bipartisan bona fides, the problem is that party leaders like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell prefer votes that draw sharp contrasts between the two parties. Divisive partisan politics help with campaign fundraising in an era of increasingly ideological donors (both big and small). And high-stakes elections mobilize and excite voters. Bipartisanship, in contrast, muddles the stakes and blurs the lines. What about infrastructure, you say? After all, that is the one big-ticket issue this year where there has been at least some very public bipartisanship. Is West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, right when she says, “What you see is when we work together and really put the nose to the grindstone, we can get bipartisan support to move forward. That’s what the bipartisan group did, so I think it blunts the argument on the filibuster”?

Of course, if there were ever an issue where Congress should be able to be bipartisan, it would be an issue like infrastructure. In the good old days of bipartisanship, infrastructure would have been an easy bipartisan win; every senator would get some money to spend on their state’s roads and bridges, thus allowing them to tout their home-state spending for their next reelection. Big appropriations bills, stuffed full of earmarks, have long been a path to bipartisan agreement.

And yet, for four years, the perpetual joke in Washington was that it was always “infrastructure week.” Certainly, Biden worked harder than Trump to foster a bipartisan deal. But arguably, it was the Democrats’ threat of eliminating the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation that pushed McConnell into supporting a bipartisan agreement in a way that bolstered Sinema and Manchin’s faith in bipartisanship. This is hardly a sustainable formula for bipartisan dealmaking on major issues.

To be sure, Congress can still accomplish some lower-profile bipartisan lawmaking (like a recent major upgrade of our drinking-water and wastewater systems) through what Matthew Yglesias and Simon Bazelon have dubbed “Secret Congress.” It turns out that members of Congress can still work across party lines when issues are relatively noncontroversial and there is not much media attention.

Indeed, if you look beyond the partisan media’s name-calling, you can find surprising amounts of bipartisan activity, as political scientist Laurel Harbridge-Yong showed in her 2015 book “Is Bipartisanship Dead?” The same is true in a more recent working paper by Harbridge-Yong and fellow political scientists Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman. They found that lawmakers who cosponsor more bipartisan bills are more effective in passing legislation.

But “Secret Congress” works only because it’s secret, and it’s secret only because the issues are not high-profile enough to draw the public spotlight. But if the only bipartisanship that happens in Congress happens on uncontroversial one-off issues, this leaves the most important issues of the day to wither on the shoals of a 60-vote threshold in the Senate or, more commonly, in the gridlock of a divided government.

Of course, most Americans are sick of all the partisan fighting in Washington. They are, in one widely cited phrasing, part of the “exhausted majority” — i.e., the two-thirds of Americans who are “fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society.” Most Americans also say they want compromise and bipartisanship, though that desire for compromise is conditional — most Americans still prefer that their party win.

Still, partisans are the most hostile to compromise — especially those individuals whose racial, religious and cultural identities line up most strongly with one party. But the partisan sorting that has aligned these identities so closely with one party over the last several decades is precisely the reason why voters have come down so hard on politicians who compromise. The more that national political conflict is centered on abstract moral issues and the identity of the nation, the more any compromise feels like a surrender.

To recreate the conditions that allowed bipartisanship to flourish in the Senate once upon a time seems unlikely anytime soon. Instead, the most bipartisan-oriented senators are the most endangered. Manchin is a dying breed. His eventual replacement in West Virginia will almost certainly be a Republican.

There may also be moments when the incentives align to navigate an occasional bipartisan deal that can get 60 votes in the Senate, especially on issues that are less covered and therefore lower-profile. But more likely is that the rewards for demonstrating party loyalty will remain stronger than the rewards for trying to be bipartisan, and that the disagreements dividing Republicans and Democrats will stay centered on issues like immigration, democracy and racial justice, where compromise is all but impossible in a binary politics system defined by these conflicts. Certainly, a few senators may still value bipartisanship for intrinsic reasons. But when almost all the structural political pressures are stacked against bipartisanship, American politics — and especially the Senate — will remain stuck for the foreseeable future.

It’s a big election week for liberal democracies. On this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we turn our focus abroad, to Canada and Germany, to see how other democracies’ electoral systems work and what cleavages their politics are facing.

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

It might be an off-year election cycle in the U.S., but September has been full of high-profile elections. First we had the California recall election, then Canada’s parliamentary election this past Monday. And on Sunday, Germany will go to the polls to decide the makeup of its parliament’s lower chamber, the Bundestag. Those results will determine who leads Germany’s government, and importantly, that individual won’t be long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is stepping down after nearly 16 years in charge.

The race to replace Merkel appears to be very uncertain, too, because no one party looks likely to win a large plurality of seats, much less a majority. That means the next government, like every one in Germany since World War II, will likely be a coalition of at least two parties — and quite possibly a third. And while the leader of the party that wins the most seats often ends up as chancellor, that’s not always the case. In all likelihood, though, the next chancellor will come from one of Germany’s two major parties: either the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) helmed by Olaf Scholz, or Merkel’s party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), now led by Armin Laschet. However, there is a small chance that Annalena Baerbock of The Greens, a left-leaning, environmentally conscious party, could also lead the next government.

Most polling averages show a tight race with a highly fragmented vote across Germany’s seven notable parties. The SPD has been on the rise since late July and now leads in the polls with just around 25 percent, thanks in part to Scholz’s status as the most popular choice among German voters to be the next chancellor. Next up is the CDU and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU),¹ which together have seen their polling numbers fall into the low 20s as Laschet has received negative reviews for his performance in debates and on the campaign trail. The Greens, who held a small lead in the polls back in the spring, are now at around 15 percent. Three other parties are polling above the 5 percent threshold necessary to make it into the Bundestag (more on that cut-off later), although only two are potential coalition partners: The classically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) is polling at about 11 percent, while the left-wing and aptly named The Left Party is polling at about 6 percent. The far-right and xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) is actually polling higher than The Left at around 11 percent, but Germany’s other parties have ruled out forming a governing coalition with the AfD because of its extreme views.

Yet there’s reason to be a tad worried about the state of the polls in Germany. The Washington Post’s Lenny Bronner recently found there’s a strong likelihood pollsters are “herding,” which is the tendency for pollsters to produce results that are too similar to one another. Bronner noticed that the shares the SPD and AfD have received in polls are very consistent across pollsters — in fact, in all likelihood too consistent. As we’ve found at FiveThirtyEight, herding can be especially common at the end of the campaign, perhaps because pollsters are afraid of producing outliers that go against the rest of the field. But the unfortunate upshot is that herding often leads pollsters to underestimate some parties’ support and, in turn, leads election forecasters to underestimate the uncertainty in the polls.

Even with this concern, however, there is clearly no party flying high in the polls, which makes it difficult to say with any certainty what the eventual governing coalition will look like in Germany. Germans like to name potential governing coalitions after things that match the colors of their respective parties, so bearing that in mind, the two most likely coalitions at this point are probably a left-leaning “traffic light” government formed by the SPD (which uses red as its color), the FDP (yellow) and The Greens (no explanation needed), or a right-leaning “Jamaica” government formed by the CDU/CSU (black), the FDP and the Greens. However, each of those coalitions would include a party that doesn’t comfortably align ideologically — the FDP in the former, The Greens in the latter — which could complicate coalition negotiations. In 2017, for instance, efforts to put together a “Jamaica” coalition fell apart. And while the business-friendly FDP could join a “traffic light” coalition, FDP leader Christian Lindner has said he wants control over the finance ministry in exchange for helping Scholz become chancellor, which could be a hurdle for the SPD and The Greens since having the FDP in that position could limit how much they can raise taxes and expand deficit spending.

That’s why other coalition options could come into play, including an “R2G” (red, red, green) coalition made up of the SPD, The Left and The Greens. In the final days of the campaign, Merkel has voiced fears about the possibility of a left-wing government, arguing it would turn the country away from the moderate course she’s pursued over the past decade and a half. And The Left does have some views that could make an all-left coalition untenable, including a desire to leave NATO and a lingering connection to old Communist East Germany. Some additional coalitions include a “Germany” coalition of the CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP or a larger “Kenya” coalition of the CDU/CSU, SPD and The Greens. There could even be a renewal of the current “grand coalition” government of the CDU/CSU and SPD, too.

But OK, that’s a lot of potential coalitions. Let’s talk about how the German electoral system works — as that’s why so many different coalitions are possible. Elections for the Bundestag combine the principles of proportional and district-level representation, so Germans actually cast two votes at the ballot box: one for a local candidate and one for a party, which allows voters to potentially split their ticket between parties. The first vote functions similarly to most elections in the U.S.: The candidate with the most votes in each of Germany’s 299 single-member districts wins the seat. But the second vote is more important, as it determines the proportional share of seats each party will have in the Bundestag once all is said and done. The 299 district-level members are joined by at least another 299 members elected from a ranked list of candidates submitted by each party ahead of the election, with each party gaining whatever number of candidates from the party list it needs to reach its proportional share of seats based on the second vote.

And as we mentioned earlier, a party must win at least 5 percent of the party-preference vote, or win at least three single-member districts, to gain proportional representation in the Bundestag.² However, there is one last wrinkle in Germany’s electoral system: It is possible for a party to win more single-members seats than it is entitled to based on its party-preference vote. When this happens, the Bundestag expands beyond its 598 seats by adding even more members from party lists to ensure each party’s seat total aligns with its party-preference vote share. After the 2017 election, for instance, the Bundestag ended up with 709 total seats, 111 more than its base number, and some projections suggest the Bundestag could be even larger after the 2021 election to ensure proportionality.

Heading into Sunday, it looks like an unpredictable race, with perhaps an even more uncertain coalition-building process to follow. But one thing is certain: This election will mark the end of a distinct era in German and European politics. That’s because Merkel, a longtime force of stability and leadership in her country, and for the European Union more broadly, is exiting the stage. Merkel, who was sometimes called “leader of the free world” during Donald Trump’s presidency because of his isolationist bent, was Germany’s first woman chancellor and ranks high among the country’s longest-serving leaders. Whoever has the job next will have big shoes to fill.

Other polling bites

• The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear a case in December concerning a Mississippi abortion law that challenges Roe v. Wade. Mississippi’s 2018 law bans most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. This case comes as most Americans (62 percent) want the court to leave the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as is, per a recent Monmouth University poll. The Mississippi law isn’t the only high-profile law to challenge the right to abortion, either. Earlier in September, the nation’s most restrictive abortion law went into effect in Texas after the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 vote declining to pause the law while lower courts continue to rule on its constitutionality. Overall, Americans’ disapproval rating of the Supreme Court’s performance (45 percent) is only three percentage points higher than approval of the court (42 percent).
• Favorability of the United States has fallen in France after Australia pulled out of a $66 billion submarine deal. Australia canceled this contract with France in favor of partnering with the United States and the United Kingdom instead. Upset by this deal, France withdrew its ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia. And, per a recent Morning Consult poll, favorable views of the U.S. have since slipped in France from 49 percent to 44 percent. However, U.S. popularity among Australians has increased by 2 points with 51 percent of Australians now viewing the U.S. favorably, according to the same poll.
• President Biden announced on Wednesday that the U.S. is doubling its purchase of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to donate to lower-income countries. Forty-nine percent of Americans say that providing COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries is important (although not a top priority), per a recent Pew Research Center poll. Meanwhile, the Biden administration also wants to roll out Pfizer booster shots for U.S. adults, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends only high risk adults and those over 65 receive a third dose. This has been tricky for the Biden administration to navigate as only 32 percent of the world is fully vaccinated, but most vaccinated Americans (62 percent) say they would get a booster shot if recommended, according to Pew.
• Thousands of Haitian migrants are trying to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Many fled to Central and South America after an earthquake in 2010 and are now leaving due to a lack of jobs, but say they don’t feel safe returning to Haiti. Since that disaster, in 2021 alone, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the southwestern part of the nation, and the country’s president was assassinated. Per a recent Rasmussen survey, 52 percent of likely U.S. voters think Biden’s response to immigration issues has been poor. Moreover, a majority of voters across the political spectrum — 84 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of voters not affiliated with either party — deemed the current immigration situation at the southern U.S. border a crisis. Many respondents (54 percent) blame Biden administration policies for current immigration problems, while only 37 percent place blame on Trump-era policies.
• On Tuesday, world leaders gathered for the start of the high-level week at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Pressing issues on the agenda included climate change, the pandemic and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. According to a Pew poll, most Americans (59 percent) see the U.N. in a favorable light. Europeans are also largely upbeat on the U.N., with majorities across all nine of the European countries polled feeling favorable toward the organization. Additionally, the U.N.’s response to climate change is mostly favorable around the world. A median of 56 percent of people across the 17 countries surveyed thought the U.N. was doing a good job handling climate change.

Biden approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker,³ 45.8 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 48.7 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -2.9 points). At this time last week, 45.9 percent approved and 48.6 percent disapproved (a net approval rating of -2.6 points). One month ago, Biden had an approval rating of 48.5 percent and a disapproval rating of 45.9 percent (a net approval rating of +2.5 points).

Generic ballot

In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot,⁴ Democrats currently lead Republicans by 2.7 percentage points (44.4 percent to 41.8 percent, respectively). A week ago, Democrats led Republicans by 2.6 points (43.8 percent to 41.2 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats over Republicans by 2.9 points (43.8 percent to 40.9 percent).

On Monday, Canadians granted Justin Trudeau a third term as Prime Minister but did not give his party a majority in Parliament. Germany will have an election on Sunday to determine who will be the next Chancellor now that Angela Merkel is stepping down after sixteen years in power. In this installment of the Politics podcast, senior writer and CBC polls analyst Éric Grenier along with FiveThirtyEight’s Kaleigh Rogers come on to discuss the outcome of the Canadian election. Later, Politico Intelligence Analyst and co-founder of Poll of Polls Cornelius Hirsch and Berlin-based journalist and Politico Europe contributor Emily Schultheis join to talk about how the race is playing out in Germany.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

The redistricting process that’s underway now will determine which political party holds more power for the next decade. Here, FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast host Galen Druke explains how you can follow the process using our redistricting tracker.

Last Tuesday’s gubernatorial recall election in California was the campaign that launched a thousand takes: It was a good sign for Democrats in 2022; it was a good sign for Republicans in 2022. But we at FiveThirtyEight urge far more caution before taking away any national lessons from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s victory. To be sure, Newsom’s win was decisive, and with 89 percent of the votes now counted,¹ we can dive a little more into what the results mean. But what they mean is very much up for interpretation — if they mean anything at all. After all, this was just one election and it was conducted under unusual circumstances to boot. 

One thing we do know is that turnout was really high: More than 13 million people voted.² That means more than 50 percent of California’s 26 million eligible voters cast a ballot — a remarkably high turnout rate for an off-year election. In fact, it’s higher than the 49 percent turnout in California’s regularly scheduled 2018 gubernatorial election, which was a historically high-turnout midterm.

It’s possible that this eye-popping figure means the high level of interest voters had in the previous two elections (the 2020 election had the highest turnout for a presidential election in over a century) is here to stay. But there are also other possible explanations for the recall’s high turnout. First, under a pandemic-inspired voting law, every registered voter was automatically mailed a ballot — a reform that political scientists say can significantly increase turnout. Second, recall elections may inherently generate a lot of voter interest (which makes sense, given that there needs to be strong grassroots passion on at least one side to force a recall in the first place). In two of the three previous gubernatorial recall elections in U.S. history, turnout was higher than in the respective state’s previous gubernatorial election, though this is admittedly a very small sample size.

The second thing we know about this year’s California recall is that the polls were off by quite a bit. The recall is currently failing by 26 percentage points (63 percent to 37 percent), and while that margin may tighten a tad more given the slight Republican trend in the count, it still marks a substantially more pro-Newsom result than FiveThirtyEight’s final recall polling average, which gave keeping Newsom in office a 16-point lead. This 10-point miss was about twice the size of the average polling error in gubernatorial elections dating back to 1998, and more than twice the size of the polling error in the 2020 presidential election, when Biden led by 8.4 points in FiveThirtyEight’s final polling average but won by 4.5 points. Notably, too, unlike the national polls in the 2020 presidential election, the polls in California were biased toward Republicans and not Democrats, which fits into a pattern where polls in very blue states have at times underestimated Democratic performance, particularly in the 2016 presidential election. As we’ve noted previously, it’s hard to predict the direction of polling errors because their movement is inconsistent from year to year — something to remember in 2022 and 2024.

At this point, we see two broad, potential explanations for this polling error: the difficulty of polling an unusual race like a recall, and/or late movement in voter engagement. There’s also another, simpler story: that the polls were off all along. Regardless, these explanations may all relate to one other. For one thing, pollsters may have struggled to identify who a “likely” voter was in this election; some surveys found an unusually large gap between the results for likely voters and all registered voters. California normally holds statewide elections in November of even-numbered years, but this was an election in September of an odd-numbered year. Additionally, because every voter received a ballot in the mail, some voters who did not seem likely to vote could have eventually cast a ballot. In that way, higher turnout may have contributed to the polling miss. The polling average also suggested at least some movement toward Newsom’s position after the polls tightened in early August.³ It’s possible, then, that a large number of previously unactivated Democratic-leaning Californians could have become engaged and then shown up as likely voters in polls conducted closer to the election, making the late movement not about changing minds about Newsom but about waking up California’s latent Democratic electorate.

Still, despite the polling miss, it would be unfair to cast many aspersions on pollsters. CNN’s Harry Enten noted ahead of the recall that the polling error in the 2003 recall was about 9 points, and the “true” margin of error in polls of recent special elections for the U.S. House (which also occur at odd times of year) was around 13 points. Additionally, we perhaps should have expected Newsom to outperform the polls because the status quo — in this case, Newsom staying in office — sometimes does better than expected in referenda, thanks to a tendency for undecided voters and lower-information voters to vote “no” when faced with a yes-or-no ballot proposition. This is really another reason to be cautious about reading too much into the California result.

Also, the degree to which one party overperforms in special elections has historically predicted the national political mood in the next regularly scheduled election, so you could take this recall result to mean that the midterms will be decent for Democrats, or at least better than expected given the tendency of the president’s party to lose ground in the midterms. But you have to look at the whole body of special elections for that correlation to be reliable. Individual election results can vary due to local factors, and a gubernatorial recall election is so unique — almost by definition, some major news controversy must have occurred to even get it on the ballot — that it’s not clear we should read anything national into it. In fact, one way to interpret the result in California is that it was largely in line with the state’s base partisanship. The recall’s 26-point loss was very close to California’s FiveThirtyEight partisan lean⁴ of D+25.

It’s also hard to draw too many conclusions about what this means for the pandemic’s effect on elections, either. Despite Republican criticism of Newsom’s handling of the pandemic, an exit poll of recall voters⁵ found that 47 percent thought Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions were about right, while only 3 in 10 voters felt they were too strict. Moreover, a plurality of voters said the pandemic was their most important issue, and 81 percent of them voted to retain Newsom. This is telling in that it jibes with other evidence that Republicans aren’t winning over many new voters with their resistance to COVID-19 precautions. Yet it’s also inconclusive as an answer to the question of whether the coronavirus issue will help or hurt Democrats in the midterms. Republicans’ strategy of doubling down on their anti-coronavirus-restrictions base may not be effective, but California also isn’t a great bellwether for the rest of the nation. Voters in a state that blue were probably predisposed to approve of Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions; it also helps that California is making it through the pandemic relatively well (its vaccination rate is high and case rate is low). On the other hand, voters may have different preferences if they live in red Kansas, where Democrats are defending a governor’s seat in 2022, or in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which Democrats would do well to hold if they want to keep control of the U.S. House. Furthermore, Newsom’s lack of a significant overperformance provides little evidence that COVID-19 will help Democrats win over new voters, either.

But here’s the thing about the 2022 midterms: Republicans don’t need a significant shift in the electoral environment to flip the House, considering that Democrats hold only a 222-to-213 seat edge there.⁶ For one thing, the GOP will control the redistricting process for more districts than Democrats, so new map lines alone could provide Republicans with enough of an edge before we even consider the electoral environment. Newsom’s 26-point win also contains some potentially ominous signs for Democrats. Take Orange County, the ancestral home of the state’s GOP that is now a key swing suburban county. In 2020, Biden won Orange County by 9 points, while opposition to the recall leads by about 3 points there. And if we dig into two key, swingy House seats that Republicans flipped in 2020, we see that “yes” on recall leads relatively narrowly in the Orange County portions of California’s 39th Congressional District (by less than 1 point) and 48th Congressional District (by more than 4 points).⁷ By comparison, Biden performed about 5 to 6 points better in both districts in 2020, carrying the Orange County part of the 39th District by about 5 points and the 48th District (entirely in Orange) by about 1.5 points. These small shifts don’t mean Democrats can’t flip those seats back in 2022 — the lines will change to an unknown extent in redistricting, for one thing — but at the very least, it doesn’t suggest that turf is getting friendlier to them.

Nonetheless, Orange County’s result might also demonstrate Democrats can still hold onto their edge in the suburbs. Even though “yes” on recall performed better than Trump, this contest marked yet another election where the Republican candidate or the Republican-backed ballot position still lost the huge suburban county — a sign that it probably won’t return solidly to the GOP fold anytime soon. Conversely, although the recall vote failed by 26 points in heavily Hispanic Imperial County, which is located along the U.S.-Mexico border, such a result still suggests Republicans might be able to hold onto the improvements they made among Hispanic voters in 2020. That’s because that result, while positive for Newsom, is similar to Biden’s 24-point edge in 2020, which is a far cry from Hillary Clinton’s nearly 42-point lead there in 2016.

Using California’s recall as a dead-certain indicator of the future electoral environment is a dicey proposition. Instead, keep an eye on the generic-ballot polling average and Biden’s approval rating, which can serve as broader signals of where things stand as we move forward.

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): With Congress fully back in session, Democrats are once again in the business of legislating. This fall, they’re trying to push through a number of ambitious policies, including both the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill and their ambitious $3.5 trillion (for now) spending plan, which they’ll most likely pass via budget reconciliation. 

But that’s not all. Democrats have also said they’ll try to pass a bill on voting rights and, in light of the Senate parliamentarian’s decision to exclude a pathway for citizenship for immigrants from the upcoming reconciliation bill,  will continue to push on this front, too. And, of course, looming over all this is the possibility of a government shutdown — there are just eight days before the government potentially runs out of money — as well as an impending fight around raising the nation’s debt limit (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he and Senate Republicans will refuse to raise it).

So we’re taking a step back today to assess just how likely each of these proposals are to pass Congress, what we think might end up in them if they pass and how Americans feel about them.

Let’s start with the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. What do we make of its chances of passing?

lee.drutman (Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America and FiveThirtyEight contributor): A $3.5 trillion bill probably has 0 percent chance of passing. A $2.5 trillion bill, on the other hand, has a much better chance of passing.

This is all part of a negotiation process, some of which is taking place in public, but most of which is taking place in private. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have said they can’t vote for a bill this big. But there’s still plenty of room to trim, and Manchin and Sinema and other moderates can say they got a victory if they reduce it. The fact is $3.5 trillion has an anchoring effect that makes $2.5 or $2 trillion seem reasonable. 

This is a classic bargaining strategy.

alex (Alex Samuels, politics reporter): I agree with Lee. I feel like it will pass, but I’m almost certain it won’t cost $3.5 trillion. I say that because, once again, it seems like progressive and moderate Democrats are at an impasse about the price tag associated with the bill and members are essentially talking past each other. 

The reason why I think it still passes, though, is because it’d be a pretty humiliating defeat for President Biden if it didn’t. I know there are a lot of threats being thrown around from both progressive and moderate Democrats, but I want to think that the glue holding everyone together is that no one wants to harbor blame for tanking Biden’s agenda — and there’s a lot on the line here. So it’s likely not everyone is going to be happy, but maybe out of a shared sense of not wanting everything to fail, Democrats will find a way to figure this out?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): Agreed. Manchin — who, of course, is one of the crucial moderate swing votes that Democrats need to convince in order to pass their agenda — has said that $3.5 trillion is too much and has called for a “pause” on the legislation (presumably so it can be pared down to a number he feels better about). 

The flip side of this, though, is that some progressives — such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal — have said they won’t vote for anything smaller than $3.5 trillion. Their preference is closer to $6 trillion, so they already see the $3.5 trillion number as a compromise.

So the question is, who blinks first? And if no one blinks, there goes Biden’s signature domestic legislation. For that reason, I agree with Alex that the Democrats will figure out a way to make it work.

alex: Yeah, considering how underwater Biden’s approval rating is now, I think there’s a need for the Democrats to succeed in passing this, showing they can be effective leaders.

sarah: Right, because to Alex’s original point — no Democrat wants to be responsible for sinking this, moderate or progressive. So it seems as if we have consensus here — you all think some version of this bill will pass eventually, just not necessarily at its current price tag.

Do we have a sense yet for what will actually make it into this bill? And whether some proposals are more popular than others?

lee.drutman: I think the things that get cut are the things that the moderates will want to fight for. For instance, if Sinema opposes pricing reforms to prescription drugs and wants to make that a key issue, it’s likely that it will be struck from the reconciliation bill.

alex: I’m using a July AP-NORC survey to answer to your second question, Sarah, but it seems like while things like funding for roads, bridges and ports are pretty popular, some additional things that might be tackled in Democrats’ solo bill weren’t quite as popular — especially among Republicans.

While about two-thirds of Americans surveyed (67 percent) said they support funding for affordable housing, just 41 percent of Republicans do, compared to 85 percent of Democrats. There is also a pretty large gap in support for free community college tuition, with 27 percent of Republicans in favor versus 76 percent of Democrats. And of the 12 topics AP-NORC asked about, both Republicans and Democrats were least in favor of things like funding for electric vehicle charging stations (23 percent and 64 percent, respectively) and funding for passenger and freight rail services (37 percent and 68 percent). 

nrakich: I’m not sure that what is popular with the public is going to determine what stays and what goes, though. To Lee’s point, it’s all about what’s palatable to these moderate senators. And sometimes, they are reluctant to pass things — like a higher minimum wage — that are nevertheless broadly popular with the public. 

It’s interesting to think about why that is: Are they misreading the electorate? Are they trying to satisfy their donors? Do they just genuinely oppose liberal fiscal policy?

sarah: But as Democrats jockey back and forth on this party-line reconciliation bill, does that put their bipartisan infrastructure bill in jeopardy at all? 

Asking because the bipartisan bill actually passed the Senate in August, but Democrats in the House won’t vote on it until this other bill is ready, although as we saw with moderates in the House, appetite for this strategy might be waning among some Democrats.

nrakich: Yes, that bill is in danger too — and we’ll have an answer pretty soon. House Democratic leaders have said they will put the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to a vote on Sept. 27 — contrary to the wishes of progressives who didn’t want to vote on it until after the $3.5 trillion bill was resolved. The question now is whether progressives follow through with their threats to vote against the infrastructure bill if they don’t get their way. 

alex: I agree that the infrastructure bill is probably in danger now, too, because as Nathaniel said earlier, a lot of this comes down to who blinks first. And it seems like the biggest bargaining chip progressive Democrats have right now is threatening to tank the infrastructure bill.

nrakich: If you look at how often House Democrats have voted in line with Biden’s position so far this year, all but one Democrat has done so at least 89 percent of the time. 

That’s why I think if push comes to shove, even progressive Democrats will hold their nose and vote for the infrastructure bill. House leadership probably wouldn’t be holding this vote next week if they didn’t believe it would pass.

Maybe a few progressives will vote against it out of protest, but I bet it will be just few enough that the bill still passes (perhaps with the support of a few moderate Republicans too?).

lee.drutman: I agree with Nathaniel. Progressives have actually moved the needle quite a bit, and my guess is they understand that. A lot of this is about positioning for the future.

Progressives will vote against it only if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t need their votes. It’s also possible multiple votes fail before a deal is reached.

sarah: It’s also possible the government runs out of money … throwing any talk of passing either this infrastructure bill or the other one on the backburner, no?

As I said at the outset, there are just eight days before the government potentially runs out of money — and Republicans don’t seem likely to pass Democrats’ short-term government funding bill.

What are the risks Democrats face with the possibility of the government running out of money and Republicans also refusing to raise the nation’s debt limit? Does this potentially undermine Democrats’ larger legislative goals?

lee.drutman: I think a government shutdown is quite likely. I would guess both sides see it in their interest because it sharpens the differences.

nrakich: Really, Lee? That’s interesting. I feel like a government shutdown with Democrats in full control of the federal government would be quite embarrassing for them.

sarah: Yeah … it certainly didn’t go well for former President Donald Trump and Republicans in 2019 when they played the government shutdown game. 

nrakich: Exactly, Sarah. And during that shutdown — and the one in 2013 — Democrats presented themselves as the responsible, anti-shutdown party. It would be quite the 180 for them to now allow one. 

lee.drutman: But there’s the short-term and the long-term aspect. The 2022 midterms are still a ways off, and the Republican strategy is to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, and make Biden seem like a failure, while the Democratic leadership’s strategy is to get the moderates to see that Republicans are unwilling to compromise — maybe even convincing moderates to agree to get rid of the filibuster.

I think McConnell is trying to triangulate here — that is, show just enough willingness to compromise so as not to provoke Manchin and Sinema into abolishing the filibuster — but not so much as to actually help Democrats.

nrakich: Wow. That seems like a very high-risk, high-reward strategy. Do you think the demise of the filibuster is really that important to institutionalist Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi? And for that matter, what about Biden, who still (publicly, at least) opposes ending the filibuster? 

alex: I’m super, super skeptical, since there’s never been widespread support among Democratic lawmakers, let alone the public, to end the filibuster. Late last month, we found that public attitudes on filibuster reform barely budged even when voting rights were on the line, so I’m not super confident there’s an appetite for reforming it for any of Democrats’ other priorities. 

lee.drutman: It’s all part of the long game, though. If Biden is going to abolish the filibuster — or at least reform it — it has to be at the end of a process where he can say he’s changed his mind because of Republican obstructionism. Same for Manchin.

sarah: The one thing I find interesting around the impending fight over government funding is that this crisis over the government spending too much money isn’t new. In fact, Republicans racked up a significant amount of spending debt under the Trump administration — America’s debt rose by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s presidency. But as FiveThirtyEight contributor Dan Cox wrote earlier this year, it’s possible voters won’t factor that into the current fight over the debt ceiling and will instead blame Biden/Democrats for big spending proposals.

That’s why it seems as if the fight over the debt limit comes at an especially difficult time for Democrats. Do we know how Americans feel about government spending now?

nrakich: Americans are happy to spend lots of money on things they want. Quinnipiac found that 62 percent of Americans favored the $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education and Medicare expansion. That poll notably mentioned the price tag, which not every poll asking about the budget bill does. 

alex: And it doesn’t seem like the price tag of the bill is turning off voters the same way it is for moderate Democrats. An August HuffPost/Data for Progress survey, which tested three hypothetical spending amounts, found that support — regardless of the price tag — was almost the same. Over 60 percent of respondents in each group said they supported the proposal by about a 2-to-1 margin regardless of whether pollsters said the bill would cost $1.5 trillion, $2.5 trillion or $3.5 trillion.

lee.drutman: For Democrats, I think the far more consequential bill for the midterms and for the 2024 presidential election is their latest attempt to pass sweeping voting rights legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act.

I’m just not convinced government spending is going to move many voters in the midterms. Republicans are going to accuse Democrats of spending too much money no matter what.

We’re at a very strange point in our politics in which the connection between policy and election outcomes is very tiny. The fundamentals have always been more important than policy, but now that’s true more than ever before, given just how few voters are changing their minds. For instance, despite all that happened between 2016 and 2020, the 2020 presidential election saw the smallest share of voters who changed which major party they voted for, going back to at least the 1948 and 1952 presidential elections.

sarah: Lee brought up one of Democrats’ other big priorities this fall: passing a voting rights bill. Alex, Nathaniel, you’ve both covered this issue a lot for FiveThirtyEight — what do you think the odds are that Democrats are going to be able to get something through Congress?

nrakich: I don’t think a voting-rights bill will pass. Even the Freedom to Vote Act — which is essentially a compromise version of H.R. 1, the For the People Act, with controversial provisions like public financing for campaigns removed or reduced — was met with a cool reception from Senate Republicans. Even moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins still felt like the bill was too much of a federal takeover of state election administration. 

So to me, it just keeps coming back to the question of ending or circumventing the filibuster. While it’s not impossible that Democrats could, say, create a voting-rights exemption from the filibuster in order to pass this bill, I don’t think it’s likely. Manchin and Sinema’s opposition seems firm.

alex: Slim to none, if I’m being honest … The Guardian reported earlier this week that the Freedom to Vote Act likely won’t move this week as Manchin is looking to shore up Republican support. But getting Republicans on board with any voting rights legislation is highly unlikely, as we’ve said before.

lee.drutman: I’m more bullish on the Freedom to Vote Act — I give it a 50-50 shot.

sarah: Why, Lee?

lee.drutman: Democrats see this as a priority. Although, of course, part of this is a performance again. That is, Manchin has to make a very public showing of trying to get Republicans on board and he has to fail.

But the dangers of a contested 2024 election are becoming more real to Democrats as Republicans continue to push baseless claims of election fraud and pass restrictive voting laws in the process. 

The bottom line is Biden is going to come under tremendous pressure to intervene. Democratic activists are just extremely fired up about passing a voting rights bill.

alex: I’ll admit that at one point I thought Manchin would support ending the filibuster to pass a voting bill, but now I feel less confident about that, namely because he said in April that he won’t vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. 

I can’t tell which is more plausible: Democrats ending the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation or 10 Republican senators signing onto the newest bill.

nrakich: Ooh, good question, Alex.

lee.drutman: Alex — I would say the first. The second has a 0 percent chance of happening.

alex: I would say neither.  

nrakich: I agree with Lee that this particular bill definitely won’t get 10 Republican votes. But I’d be curious what would happen if Democrats tried to pass, say, a stand-alone gerrymandering ban.

alex: Plus, Republicans and Democrats have different approaches to voting rights legislation, and polls do a fairly good job of capturing that. According to this Morning Consult/Politico survey from June, Democrats (70 percent) are way more likely than Republicans (32 percent) to think restricting voting access is a major threat to American democracy.

nrakich: Right, Alex — Republicans just fundamentally see voting differently from how Democrats see it. According to a Pew Research Center poll from July, 78 percent of Democrats feel that voting is a “fundamental right for every U.S. citizen and should not be restricted.” But 67 percent of Republicans believe that voting is a “privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited.”

sarah: OK, so it doesn’t seem as if there is consensus among you all on whether Democrats will be able to get a voting rights bill through Congress. What about immigration reform and passing a pathway to citizenship, now that the Senate budget parliamentarian has said that can’t be included in the upcoming reconciliation bill? Is that even less likely to pass Congress than the voting rights bill?

lee.drutman: I would say immigration reform is dead for now. It’s not a great issue for Democrats, especially going into the midterms, and it’s certainly not the issue that 50 Democrats are going to abolish the filibuster for.

alex: I think it’ll happen eventually, Sarah, but I’m also not sure anything will happen imminently here either because it doesn’t seem like Democrats had a concrete Plan B after the Senate parliamentarian ruled against their efforts to include immigration reform in the spending bill?

I’ve read reports that Schumer and other Democrats want to hold additional meetings with the parliamentarian to find alternative ways to include citizenship opportunities. But since there’s probably not enough Republican support to pass an immigration bill without using the reconciliation process, I think the odds are stacked against Democrats on this one, too.

nrakich: I think it has a better chance than voting rights legislation, though, if only because there’s still a chance it could pass via reconciliation.

It’s also worth noting that creating a path to citizenship for many immigrants is quite popular with the public. In an NPR/Ipsos poll from May, 66 percent said they supported it for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, and 70 percent supported it for immigrants with temporary protected status.

sarah: OK, we’ve covered a lot of ground regarding what’s at stake this fall. What are you going to be paying special attention to moving forward as Democrats try to pass big parts of their agenda?

alex: I’ll be keeping a close eye on whether there’s any movement on axing the filibuster, though I’m highly skeptical this will happen. And I’m curious to examine the bubbling tensions between progressive and moderate Democrats more. I know that’s not a specific *policy thing* to watch, but it’s still fascinating, considering a lot of media attention has been on fissures within the GOP.

nrakich: I’ll be watching the infrastructure vote in the House on Sept. 27. How many progressives will vote for it? And if most of them do, does that undercut their current claims that they won’t accept a number lower than $3.5 trillion for the reconciliation bill?

lee.drutman: I suspect we’re going to see a lot of failed votes for Democrats over the next several weeks and a lot of public bargaining and a lot of “Democrats in disarray” stories. But I’ll be watching to see what compromises senators are spelling out between the lines, and what they are not taking off the table.

I never ever bet against Nancy Pelosi.

In Christian art, saints often hold an object associated with their martyrdom. Saint Stephen, stoned to death, holds a pile of rocks. Saint Lawrence, burned over an iron grill, stands with a gridiron. Saint Lucy offers a small dish with two eyeballs, a reference to her own eyes having been gouged out with a fork.

If the same principles applied to right-wing martyrs these days, plenty would be holding just a lawsuit with their name as the defendant.

The hundreds of Americans who have been arrested and charged for their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have been lionized as freedom fighters by some on the right, including members of Congress. It’s what inspired the “Justice for J6” rally — the muted political demonstration that took place this past weekend in D.C. — and it’s the culmination of years of rhetoric on the far-right that has celebrated violent, extremist figures. This tendency to beatify certain figures is something mainstream conservatives now share with extremist ideologies elsewhere. The martyrs create a sense of community and underscore an essential narrative: that you can be punished simply because of what you believe, and that the willingness to receive that punishment is worthy of reverence.

Lifting certain figures to a quasi-sainthood has a long history on the extreme right, dating back to the post-WWI era, according to Daniel Koehler, the director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies. Koehler laid out this history in a paper published last year, citing an example of a group of 16 Nazis killed by police during a failed coup d’état in 1923. Those Nazis became known as the “Blutzeugen” (blood witnesses), which other Nazis honored with specific flags, medals and even two “temples.” But the narrative around these and other Nazi martyrs, Koehler wrote in the paper, “explicitly used the fact (or claim) that they were always killed by the movement’s enemies.”

Importantly, though, suicidal demonstrations of ideology were not part of the deal. Unlike jihadist extremists, who have cultural and religious motivations for celebrating those who die in suicide bombings, the far-right tended to elevate individuals who survived or were killed in battle, rather than those who died on a suicide mission. “What their narrative usually tells their followers is you have to stand and fight to the very end,” Koehler said in an interview.

More recently, this has manifested through the idolization of mass shooters who were apprehended, such as Dylann Roof, the white supremacist terrorist who killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Neo-nazis and white supremacists turned such terrorists into memes and icons, often depicting individuals like Roof as a saint (though sometimes with tongue in cheek). The terrorists have even inspired the formation of groups like the “Bowl Gang,” named for Roof’s bowl cut hairstyle. These shooters’ manifestos and journals are routinely passed around among far-right extremist groups online, almost like sacred texts. Koehler said the celebration is because the terrorists are seen as continuing the fight and as willing to suffer personally for the cause.

This trend largely remained relegated to the extreme right until last summer, when 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot and killed two people during protests against police shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Suddenly, those in the mainstream right had a figure to rally behind, since his actions could be explained away as self-defense, said Ari Ben-Am, an extremism researcher and information operations analyst for ActiveFence, an online security firm that detects hate speech, terrorism and disinformation.

Republican politicians openly praised Rittenhouse, with Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky saying he “exhibited incredible restraint and presence and situational awareness,” and state Rep. Anthony Sabatini of Florida tweeting, inexplicably, “Kyle Rittenhouse for Congress.” Far-right groups like the Proud Boys (self-proclaimed “Western chauvinists”) have stated they support Rittenhouse’s case and “are rooting for him. He has become an American hero and we look forward to celebrating his exoneration with a beer.” Among the more mainstream right online, such as the pro-Trump message board patriots.win, posters have been carefully following Rittenhouse’s trial and celebrating his actions, calling him “Saint Kyle”¹ and a “hero,” and making comments such as “Every freedom loving American should be thrilled that this young man was able to defend himself and not become a victim to the mob.”

“Rittenhouse was the first one to break the barrier of mainstream popularity and support,” Ben-Am said. “He was viewed by both the far-right and the mainstream right as a martyr for the cause, though the mainstream right didn’t really know how to articulate that.”

The right’s response to the Jan. 6 attack was mixed. Many Republican politicians condemned the event, and alt-right conspiracy theorists floated the idea that the whole event was a false flag. This theory proposed that the rioters were actually anti-fascists, not Trump supporters. Soon, though, many rallied around those who were arrested or killed, as in the case of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol police during the attack. Those on the right have cast these individuals as martyrs in the fight against what they believe was a fraudulent election.

This rallying included the Proud Boys, who have been sharing fundraisers on Telegram for the legal funds of individuals charged for allegedly participating in the attack on the Capitol. They’ve even set up a separate Telegram for promoting these fundraisers called “Free the Boys.” L. Lin Wood, the pro-Trump lawyer who filed a number of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results and has become a celebrity of the alt-right, has also rallied around Jan. 6 arrestees, calling them “political prisoners.” And mainstream Republicans, including former President Trump and members of Congress like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, have advocated for arrestees, whom they claim are being unfairly treated. Ben-Am said this evokes the kind of lionization of terrorists on the extreme right, but with individuals who are much more palatable to the mainstream right.

“We started off with really extreme, decentralized individuals loving people who go kill for their ideology,” Ben-Am said. “The more mainstream it gets, the less violent and extremist the [martyrs] are.”

Treating these individuals as ideological martyrs serves a number of functions within these groups, according to Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University, who studies online extremism. Having figures to rally around deepens a sense of community among people who are often largely connected only online, Squire said, while legal fundraisers provide an opportunity to signal in-group values. It also fosters a narrative of persecution that is fundamental to many of these groups since they feel they’re fighting an unjust battle against groups wishing to destroy the American way of life. Depending on which apportionment of the right-wing landscape you’re talking about, those enemies could be the Democrats, the deep state, immigrants or Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

“It makes what they’re fighting for [feel] on par with other serious political movements and things that have happened in history,” Squire said.

Though the attendance at the Justice for J6 rally was modest, its messaging is evident in many places across the right, tapping into both mainstream and fringe groups. Creating martyrs serves a valuable function in these communities, which can be very energizing if tapped in the right way. And while this particular event failed to do so, the symbol of a martyr is powerful and should not be underestimated.

UPDATED SEP. 21, 2021, AT 10:34 AM

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Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez announced he is retiring from Congress at the end of his term. He is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses how the other nine Republicans are faring in their reelection bids and debate whether CNN’s new polling methodology is a good or bad use of polling.

Last Thursday, Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio announced he would not seek reelection in 2022. The 37-year old congressman was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, and he is now the first to call it quits.

Facing fervent opposition from Trump supporters in his district, a Trump-backed primary challenger and a potentially thorny redistricting process — Ohio will lose a congressional district after apportionment — Gonzalez decided there was no future for him in the GOP. It’s early yet, but Gonzalez’s retirement could foreshadow what awaits the other nine House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump; many of them could face a difficult path to reelection. And if they retire like Gonzalez or lose reelection, the outcome will likely be an even Trumpier Republican Party in Washington.

At this point, all but one of these 10 Republicans has received a formal rebuke from their state or local party committees, as the table below shows. Additionally, all 10 now face at least one primary challenger (or faced, in the case of Gonzalez). While not all of these intraparty opponents are real threats, many are shaping up to be roadblocks to renomination. This is particularly true in the four districts where Trump has endorsed a primary challenger, including Gonzalez’s race, where former Trump aide Max Miller has the former president’s backing and, now, no incumbent to run against.

And outside of Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the 2021-22 redistricting process could be an added complication for these representatives, too.¹ These 10 members can largely be split into two groups: those most endangered by primary challenges and those most endangered by redistricting. Let’s start with those facing the toughest primary hurdles — the three incumbents besides Gonzalez who face a Trump-endorsed challenger.

Trump’s endorsement track record is a bit of a mixed bag in that there is some evidence that he padded his record in 2020 — that is, endorsing candidates who were already likely to win — so it’s unclear how powerful a Trump-endorsement will be in 2022. But at this point, Cheney may be in the most trouble, despite being the strongest fundraiser and the most well-known of the Republicans who backed impeachment.

Earlier this month, former Republican National Committee member Harriet Hageman entered the Wyoming House race, with an endorsement from Trump. Hageman could prove to be a powerful opponent, too, considering her political background and competitive showing in the 2018 GOP primary for Wyoming governor — she won 21 percent in a crowded race, finishing just 12 percentage points behind now-Gov. Mark Gordon. Hageman may also be able to consolidate anti-Cheney sentiment in the state, which would be a blow to the incumbent, who would benefit from a large, fragmented field. Tellingly, three other primary challengers have already withdrawn from the race, two of whom then endorsed Hageman. Just one notable candidate has refused to drop out at this point: state Sen. Anthony Bouchard. But it’s hard to know how much support Bouchard’s candidacy will garner due to the disturbing revelation that he impregnated a 14-year old girl when he was 18 and married her when she was 15.

Also in this category are Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington. Upton faces Trump-backed state Rep. Steve Carra, who recently introduced legislation to audit Michigan’s 2020 election results. This, in large part, explains his endorsement by the former president, which could help topple Upton, who was also censured by at least five GOP county committees in his district for supporting impeachment. Upton has been around for a long time (he won his first election in 1986), but he might be vulnerable, too, as his lone 2020 primary opponent won 37 percent despite raising almost no money and attracting little notice — and this was before Upton voted to impeach Trump. Meanwhile, Herrera Beutler’s main challenger in Washington is Trump endorsee Joe Kent, a former Special forces officer and husband to a Gold Star recipient. Like Carra, Kent has questioned the 2020 election results, telling CNN in July that “I think Trump won, but I want to prove it.” However, the electoral math might be more complicated in Washington than Michigan because of Washington’s top-two primary system (also used in California), where the top-two vote getters — regardless of party — advance to the November general election. If Democrats consolidate around one candidate, Herrera Beutler could still attract enough backing from some Republicans and independents to finish second and advance. Moreover, the anti-Herrera Beutler vote could be fragmented among Kent and Heidi St. John, a Christian author and home-schooling advocate who has criticized Kent as a carpetbagger who only recently moved to the southwestern Washington district.

While Reps. Tom Rice of South Carolina and Dan Newhouse of Washington don’t yet have Trump-endorsed opponents, they still face more primary woes than redistricting problems. Rice, for instance, has to win a majority of the vote in the Republican primary — or a majority in a runoff if no candidate initially wins more than 50 percent of the vote. This isn’t true of the other Republicans we’ve examined, which means a crowded candidate field could be especially tricky for Rice as he can’t skate by with a plurality win in the primary. Rice currently faces at least three serious-looking GOP opponents in conservative media personality Graham Allen, state Rep. Russell Fry and Horry County school board chair Ken Richardson, along with a host of other Republicans. (Eight Republicans are running against Rice so far.) Newhouse, meanwhile, also has three notable Republican opponents: Loren Culp, a former police officer and Washington’s GOP nominee for governor in 2020, as well as state Rep. Brad Klippert and businessman Jerrod Sessler. Like Herrera Beutler, Newhouse might benefit from Washington’s top-two primary format if he can retain enough base support while the other Republican contenders split the rest of the GOP vote. And Newhouse has performed this feat before in his solidly red district and gone on to win in November against another Republican, so it’s plausible that his impeachment vote could win over some independent and Democratic voters in both the primary and the general. But it would not be a shock to see Trump step in to better help Republicans consolidate around one opposition candidate — perhaps Culp, who made false claims about widespread voter fraud in the state’s 2020 gubernatorial election.

As for the other four other Republican representatives who voted to impeach Trump, they may face more danger from redistricting at this point. Reps. John Katko of New York and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois both hail from states where Democrats could change their district lines to make it harder for the Republicans to win reelection. Katko has held onto his Democratic-leaning district since he first won in 2014, but in an effort to defeat him, New York Democrats could make his seat even bluer and/or draw him in with Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney in the hopes that her more conservative track record would help her best Katko in a GOP primary, perhaps making her easier to defeat in a general election. So far, Katko has only attracted minor primary opposition, but Trump said this summer he would back a high-profile conservative challenger if one could be found. Meanwhile, Kinzinger’s seat in exurban Chicago could be dismantled by Democratic mapmakers in Illinois, potentially forcing him into an uphill race against an incumbent. And if he faces another Republican, he might have a particularly difficult time winning a primary given his criticism of Trump. After all, even if Kinzinger ends up with a decent district to run in, he will still face a primary challenge from former Trump administration official Catalina Lauf.

The two remaining Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment, Reps. David Valadao of California and Peter Meijer of Michigan, don’t have to worry about Democratic state legislators targeting them because their states use independent redistricting commissions. However, Valadao already holds the bluest seat of any Republican in the House, so any shift to the left could cost him reelection. Valadao also has to navigate the top-two primary format, but unlike Herrera Beutler and Newhouse, he doesn’t have much Republican opposition. The only notable Republican to pop up is Chris Mathys, a former Fresno city councilman who actually ran a distant third in a GOP primary for a House seat in New Mexico last year. Meanwhile, the initial draft maps from Michigan’s redistricting commission created a Grand Rapid-based district that Trump would have carried by less than 1 point in 2020. If lines like that hold true for the final map, that could make Meijer’s seat slightly more Democratic than it is right now (Trump +3 in 2020). That area moved to the left during the Trump era, and it could continue to do so. But working in Meijer’s favor is that he lacks a high-profile GOP primary opponent — the most notable name at this point is Tom Norton, who finished a distant third behind Meijer in the 2020 primary.

With Gonzalez already headed for the exits, the departure of some or most of these 10 members could have large consequences for the Republican Party — and democracy itself. Nine of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment ranked among the 28 Republican House members who have been most likely to vote in ways to protect electoral democracy, according to FiveThirtyEight’s recent analysis of congressional voting patterns.² In fact, Cheney, Katko and Kinzinger were the likelist members of the House GOP to vote in favor of pro-democracy positions. But those three may be most in danger of losing their seats. And now with Gonzalez’s retirement and the difficult paths to reelection for many of the other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, it seems there’s not so much an intraparty debate with the GOP about Trump’s position in the party, but rather a one-sided battle where the small minority looks set to get even smaller.

Last Thursday, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez announced he is retiring from Congress at the end of his term. He is one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump after his supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6th. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses how the other nine Republicans are faring in their bids to win reelection. They also debate whether CNN’s new polling methodology is a good or bad use of polling and give some final takeaways from California’s recall election.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.

It’s always an election year if you know where to look. This time, it’s up north: Canada heads to the polls today to decide whether to elect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to another term. 

Think of this election like a U.S. presidential and congressional election all rolled into one: Under Canada’s parliamentary system, each of Canada’s 338 electoral districts (called “ridings”) will elect a member of Parliament using normal first-past-the-post, plurality rules. (Unlike some other parliamentary democracies, Canada does not use proportional representation.) And the leader of the party that wins control of Parliament will become the new prime minister.

Right now, the election looks like a close race between Trudeau’s center-left Liberal Party and the center-right Conservative Party. But Canada’s many smaller parties could play decisive roles too. Here are five questions we’ll be looking to get answered as the results roll in starting tonight.¹

1. Did Trudeau end his own political career?

The biggest question, of course, is whether Trudeau will survive as prime minister. And if he is ousted, it could go down as one of the biggest self-owns in political history. That’s because Canada wasn’t originally scheduled to hold a vote this year; Trudeau chose to hold an early election in response to polls showing the Liberals with a solid lead. (Liberals held only 155 seats in the outgoing House of Commons² — shy of a majority of 170, which made it difficult for Trudeau to govern.) The strong polls gave Trudeau hope that Liberals could win a majority in a snap election. But after the election was greenlit in August, the polls immediately tightened, and the Conservatives even briefly took the lead — making Trudeau’s decision look like a huge miscalculation.

Things are looking a bit better for the prime minister now, though. Canada has two prominent, FiveThirtyEight-style election forecasters: Philippe J. Fournier of 338Canada and Éric Grenier, who writes the newsletter The Writ and runs the Poll Tracker for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.³ And as of Sunday evening,⁴ they gave Liberals a 68 percent and 75 percent chance of winning the most seats, respectively. However, it looks pretty unlikely that Trudeau will get his coveted majority government: There is only a 15-17 percent chance that Liberals win 170 or more seats. In fact, both the Poll Tracker (154) and 338Canada (147) are estimating that Liberals will win fewer seats than the 155 they had before the election, though of course there is a wide margin of error on those projections. So Trudeau may yet live to regret calling this election.

2. How will the Conservatives do under their new leader?

This is also a high-risk, high-reward election for the Conservative Party’s Erin O’Toole, who was chosen as the Conservative leader just last year. While O’Toole was initially unpopular with the Canadian public, his centrist persona has helped make the party competitive (though he has also had some stumbles). These days, the Poll Tracker gives Conservatives an average seat projection of 118 and a 25 percent chance of winning the most seats, while 338Canada is a little more optimistic for them (127 seats and a 31 percent chance). So while the likeliest outcome is that they will stand pat or make only small gains (they went into the election with 119 seats), they are still only a normal polling error away from becoming the biggest party in the House of Commons. On the flip side, though, there is still a significant chance that they lose seats, which could cost O’Toole his job as party leader.

3. How many seats will the New Democrats gain?

Canada differs from the U.S. in that an analysis of its elections can’t stop with just the two dominant parties. The left-wing New Democratic Party is also a major player; in fact, it could be the biggest beneficiary of this election. The Poll Tracker and 338Canada are forecasting that the NDP will win 34 seats and 32 seats, respectively, up from 24 in the previous Parliament. That’s largely thanks to the charisma of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, the first person of color to lead a major Canadian party; he consistently earns the highest favorable ratings of any of the party leaders. Nevertheless, the NDP has still struggled to break into the first tier. It trails the Liberals and Conservatives by double digits in the polls, and the forecasters give the party virtually no chance of winning the most seats.

4. Will the nascent right-wing parties be a factor?

Like in the U.S., Canada’s right wing has gotten increasingly vocal in recent years (although it represents a much smaller slice of the population than in the U.S.). A new party called the Maverick Party, which advocates for the secession of conservative parts of Western Canada, is running candidates in 29 ridings, mostly in the rural, inland provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. And former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier recently splintered off to form the People’s Party of Canada, which was originally known for its climate-change skepticism and hardline stance against immigration but this year has become a vessel for opposition to coronavirus lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccines. (Bernier himself is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was arrested in June for refusing to self-quarantine after traveling.) According to a recent poll from Forum Research, 62 percent of PPC supporters were unvaccinated, and 70 percent were “very angry” with the policies of the Canadian government. 

While the Maverick Party is specifically running candidates almost exclusively in solidly Conservative seats, the PPC has a candidate in 312 of the 338 ridings and could very well play spoiler to the Conservatives. Though the PPC is not expected to win any seats of its own, it is averaging around 6-7 percent in the polls,⁵ enough to cost the Conservatives a win in some close ridings. And even if it doesn’t, it will be interesting to see how deep anti-establishment grievances run in Trudeau’s Canada.

5. Will we get another counter-majoritarian result?

In the previous Canadian election, in 2019, Trudeau was actually reelected while losing the national popular vote: The Liberals won 33.1 percent of the vote to the Conservatives’ 34.3 percent. But the Liberals won the most seats because, unlike in the U.S., Canadian geography puts the right at a disadvantage. The places in Canada where one party runs up the biggest margins (thus wasting votes) are not liberal cities but conservative rural areas: In 2019, every candidate who got 70 percent of the vote or more was a Conservative.

It’s possible the same thing could happen in 2021: The Liberals and the Conservatives are locked in a virtual tie in the polls at around 31-32 percent. That said, the Liberals are still favored to carry the most seats in that configuration because of the Conservatives’ vote inefficiency. In fact, Grenier recently estimated that the Conservatives will need to win the national popular vote by more than 3 points to be favored to win the most seats.

However, it’s worth noting that the combined vote of the Liberals and the NDP — whose voters generally prefer Trudeau to O’Toole as their second choice — will surely far exceed the Conservative vote (as it did in 2019). So Conservatives winning the most seats with only a plurality of the vote could also be considered a counter-majoritarian outcome. (The possibility of vote-splitting has led to many calls for electoral reform in Canada, but they haven’t gained traction.)

But there’s a twist: Thanks to the quirks of the parliamentary system, it’s possible that Conservatives could win the most seats and Trudeau would remain prime minister. Unlike an American president, Trudeau remains prime minister unless he resigns or is defeated in the House of Commons, and it’s possible that the NDP⁶ would side with the Liberals to keep Trudeau in power. 

Coalition governments are rare in Canada, though, so Trudeau would probably only try to cling to power in this way if the circumstances were perfect — namely, if Liberals come a very close second to Conservatives in the overall seat count. But it does mean that Trudeau’s chances of staying prime minister are probably higher than the 68-75 percent chance that Liberals have of winning the most seats. Then again, reelection in this way would hardly be a win for Trudeau, as it would put him in a very precarious situation politically — which could lead to more governmental dysfunction and thus, perhaps, another premature election as soon as next year.

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Roughly two weeks ago, a highly restrictive abortion law went into effect in Texas, outlawing abortions once fetal cardiac activity can be detected — usually about six weeks into a pregnancy — which is before most women know they are pregnant.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice filed an emergency injunction asking a judge to halt the law, and a hearing is set for early next month to consider temporarily blocking it, but, as of today, no one in Texas has brought a suit against an abortion provider in the state; clinics have said they plan to abide by the law.

But that hasn’t stopped abortion from once again being at the forefront of American politics. Beyond the Texas law, there is a law in Mississippi banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that the Supreme Court is expected to take up later this year. This means abortion could reshape next year’s midterm elections. And although abortion has historically animated Republican voters more, it is proving to be a motivation for Democrats, too. During the summer of 2018, shortly after then-President Donald Trump nominated conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Democrats were increasingly likely to say abortion was an important factor in how they would vote that year. So it’s likely that this year and next, as Roe’s legal status is up in the air and more states move to pass restrictive abortion bills, the issue will be a top concern for many Democratic voters.

A recent Morning Consult poll of registered voters suggests that Democratic women are already prioritizing the issue more than they were prior to Texas’s law taking effect. Per their survey, 14 percent of Democratic women said issues like abortion, contraception and equal pay are their top voting concerns — up 6 percentage points from before the Texas law took effect. To be sure, though, abortion isn’t the top voting issue for Democratic women. The survey notes that the economy (25 percent) and health care (18 percent) each ranked as higher priorities.

Meanwhile, among Democrats overall, 10 percent said that abortion, contraception and equal pay were top of mind when voting — up from 5 points from before Texas’s law. Independents seemed to care about these issues, too. The share of independent women who listed these issues as top concerns jumped from 7 percent before the law went into effect, to 10 percent after. (Among all independents, the increase was smaller: 4 percent then to 6 percent now.) Republicans, however, didn’t really budge on the issue. Among Republican women, the percentage who said the issues of abortion, contraception and equal pay were top of mind increased from only 2 percent to 3 percent — the same numbers as for Republicans overall.

Majorities of voters have also said they don’t want the high court to overturn Roe. According to a September Data for Progress survey, which was fielded after the Texas law took effect, 60 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court should keep Roe intact. This was up 3 points from a similar Data for Progress poll fielded in May. Meanwhile, a September survey from The Economist/YouGov found that 50 percent of U.S. adults did not want Roe overturned, versus 28 percent who did; this aligns with a separate YouGov poll from last year, which found that 49 percent of adults wanted Roe to remain, while only a quarter wanted it overturned. And earlier this month, The Economist/YouGov found that half of Americans (50 percent) disapproved of the Texas abortion law, while just 36 percent were in favor of it.

Of course, it’s still early, and even if abortion rights energizes Democrats now, it’s hard to know whether it will be top of mind for them heading into the 2022 midterms. It’s also possible that this issue will also energize anti-abortion Republican voters, as Kavanaugh’s nomination seems to have done in 2018. Back then, GOP voters saw Trump — and the appointment of Kavanaugh — as a way to have a solidly anti-abortion Supreme Court majority, and Republicans began attacking certain Democratic candidates who supported abortion rights or had received funding from Planned Parenthood. Some Republican senators running in red states also used Kavanaugh and his fight for Senate confirmation to energize voters in states Trump had won in 2016. This was less true in House races — after all, 2018 was a “blue wave” for Democrats — but in the Senate, it meant some staunch, anti-abortion conservatives like Sens. Josh Hawley in Missouri and Mike Braun in Indiana were able to defeat incumbent Democrat senators who had voted against Kavanaugh’s nomination.

It’s possible, then, that abortion will once again energize conservative voters, turning their focus to opportunities to ban abortion elsewhere — not just in the nation’s most conservative states. Which is why we’ll be watching whether other red states move to mirror Texas’s laws — as some have already promised to do — and how that might animate GOP voters, as well as the extent to which Democratic voters continue to prioritize abortion rights while Roe’s legal status remains in limbo.

Other polling bites

• Earlier this month, President Biden announced vaccine and testing requirements for both federal employees and private businesses with more than 100 employees. As my colleague Maggie Koerth reported last week, vaccine mandates do work — and recent polling suggests that Americans are largely on board with the federal government issuing the mandates. Per the latest Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index, 60 percent of Americans supported Biden’s vaccine mandates. Similarly, 57 percent of Americans supported their own employer requiring vaccines in the workplace. Of course, though, there was a partisan divide. Republicans, who are generally more wary about getting the jab, were less likely to support Biden’s policies, according to the poll. Only around one-third of Republicans said they backed Biden’s new requirement on federal employees and his mandate on private businesses. Among Democrats, however, 84 percent supported both mandates.
• Most Americans feel that democracy in the U.S. is under attack or at least being tested, according to a CNN/SSRS poll. In total, 93 percent of Americans said democracy was either under attack (56 percent) or being tested but not necessarily under attack (37 percent). Republicans were the most likely to say that democracy is under attack (75 percent), compared with just 46 percent of Democrats. This might have something to do with how both self-described conservatives (71 percent) and Americans who disapproved of President Biden (71 percent) were the most likely to believe democracy was under attack .
• On Tuesday, the Pew Research Center published a far-reaching study into the concerns around climate change among residents in some of the world’s most economically developed countries. Among U.S. adults, 60 percent said they were worried about the personal impacts of climate change, whereas, across the 17 nations surveyed, a median of 72 percent of adults shared this sentiment. Notably, an overwhelming majority of people (a median of 80 percent) in these 17 nations — which included places like South Korea, Italy, Japan and Australia — said they’d be willing to make at least some changes to their personal and work lives to help mitigate climate change. Seventy-four percent of Americans said they’d be open to making some changes, too.
• Tailgates, face paint and packed stadiums are back as the 2021 NFL and NCAA football seasons have kicked off while the coronavirus pandemic continues. Week one of the NFL season has wrapped up, and four of the league’s 32 teams — the Buffalo Bills, Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints and Seattle Seahawks — have a vaccination or testing policy in place for fans. And according to a Harris/Sportico poll, 66 percent of Americans were in favor of a vaccine mandate for fans. But despite 93 percent of NFL players being vaccinated, no team in the NFL has mandated its players to get vaccinated, although the same poll showed that 69 percent of Americans supported such a mandate for coaches and players.
• Most Americans support letting at least some Afghans resettle in the U.S. Per an NPR/Ipsos poll, 74 percent of Americans supported admitting Afghans who had worked with the U.S. government, 73 percent supported admitting Afghans who had served in the Afghan special forces and 65 percent supported admitting Afghans who feared oppression from the Taliban. But as FiveThirtyEight contributor Michael Tesler wrote recently, past polling data shows that Americans have a history of opposing refugees, so it’s possible public opinion on this question could eventually fall, although it hasn’t yet.
• Last year, to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, most Americans turned to alcohol. But now many are at least trying to curb their drinking, according to a recent Cutback Coach/Ipsos poll (Cutback Coach, who sponsored the poll, aims to help people who drink implement healthier habits). Per their survey, 50 percent of Americans said they’d made an effort to drink less or implement healthier drinking habits over the last three months, though just 20 percent said they drank less in that timeframe. On the other hand, 55 percent said their personal drinking habits stayed the same over the last three months, while 26 percent said they were drinking more now than three months ago.

Biden approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker,¹ 45.9 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 48.6 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -2.6 points). At this time last week, 45 percent approved and 47.8 percent disapproved (a net approval rating of -2.8 points). One month ago, Biden had an approval rating of 49.8 percent and a disapproval rating of 44 percent (a net approval rating of +5.7 points).

Generic ballot

In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot,² Democrats currently lead Republicans by 2.6 percentage points (43.8 percent to 41.2 percent, respectively). A week ago, Democrats led Republicans by 2.5 points (43.7 percent to 41.1 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats over Republicans by 3.4 points (43.9 percent to 40.5 percent).

Additional research by Mackenzie Wilkes.

Are Democrats Or Republicans Winning The Race For Congress?

An updating estimate of the generic ballot, based on polls that ask people which party they would support in a congressional election.

Show more polls

KEY

= NEW

A = ALL ADULTS

RV = REGISTERED VOTERS

LV = LIKELY VOTERS

V = VOTERS

When the dates of tracking polls from the same pollster overlap, only the most recent version is shown.

Polls listed here are those that ask either which party’s candidate a respondent would vote for in his or her district or which party the respondent would prefer control Congress.

By Aaron Bycoffe, Dhrumil Mehta and Nate Silver. Notice any bugs or missing polls? Send us an email.