The Strength In Numbers Podcast with G. Elliott Morris

Watch this video on gelliottmorris.com. On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott Morris and David Nir walk through the current electoral state of play just over one month out from the 2026 midterm elections. This video is free to watch, but it was not free to produce. If you value this podcast and want to help keep it going, please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Strength In N...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott Morris and David Nir dig into the latest batch of good news for Democrats: an all-time low for Trump's approval rating in our monthly Strength in Numbers /Verasight poll; a record Democratic lead on the generic ballot; and a flurry of Senate polls showing the party competitive in states as red as Texas, Iowa, Ohio, and Kansas. We ask if this is w...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David dig into Elliott’s newsletter piece arguing the conventional wisdom on polling error might have it backwards this cycle — that the polls could be understating Democratic support, not overstating it, as the polls did in 2020 and 2024. They break down two structural reasons why that could be happening. Then, the podcast closes with a stat...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David react to the first night of “Trumpapalooza,” the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, and explain why its proponents misunderstand what low-turnout Republican voters actually want. We also dig into Trump’s promise to send every adult American a $5,000 check if the GOP keeps Congress. Plus, we walk through the standards The Downballo...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is reunited with David (who is back from a short break to recover from knee surgery) to discuss how Trump continues to alienate voters ahead of the midterms. Polls also show more Republicans than ever are saying they regret voting for Trump in 2024 — and GOP candidates for the House and Senate are scrubbing mentions of the president from their ca...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is joined by Rajiv Sethi , professor of economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, and author of the Substack Imperfect Information (currently on hiatus as he finishes a forthcoming book), for a deep dive into prediction markets. We talk about how they work, which types of markets work better than others, whether they beat statistical mod...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott is joined by Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, to dig into a truly wild week in polling. This week truly had it all: one “pollster” that turned out to be entirely fictional, a real pollster that admitted to reassigning respondents’ vote choices, and two firms that our investigation found were doing polls for campaigns but passing...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David dig into why the Wisconsin governor’s primary polls overestimated Francesca Hong by 20 points, why the “the polls are overestimating the left” narrative falls apart pretty quickly (look at Minnesota), and why late primaries are bad for democracy (and frustrating for election forecasters). Here are the big takeaways: * Hong’s miss is a 9...

On this week’s Deep Dive episode of the Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott sits down with Peter Enns — Cornell University political scientist, political methodologist, and co-founder of the polling firm Verasight — to talk through a huge new paper he has published, " How a Seemingly Innocuous and Intuitive Methodological Choice Confused a Generation of Research on Policy Responsiveness ." We get...

On this week's Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David dig into why the Michigan Senate primary polls may have missed so badly, why the electability discourse about Abdul El-Sayed misses the mark, and how the new FiftyPlusOne election forecast that gives Democrats an 87% chance in the House and a 54% chance in the Senate actually works. Here are the big takeaways: * Michigan’s primary polls...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast — the first live episode back from Elliott’s paternity leave! — Elliott and David break down Donald Trump’s new all-time-low approval rating, what gas prices and the war in Iran have done to it, and take a look at The Downballot’s newly updated hexagonal map of all 435 congressional districts. Here are the big takeaways: * Trump just hit another all-time...

On this week’s Deep Dive episode of the Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott sits down with Ben Wikler, former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 2025 candidate for DNC chair, and author of the new book This Is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy . We have a wide-ranging conversation that includes such topics as: why no message would have saved Democrats in 2024, ho...

Strength In Numbers is on a short summer break while Elliott takes paternity leave with his new baby. This deep dive episode was recorded in early May, and things may have changed since we recorded it. In this Deep Dive episode of the Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott sits down with Seth Masket , political scientist at the University of Denver and author of the Smotus Report Substack, to swap i...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast — the last live episode before Elliott heads off on paternity leave — Elliott and David break down just how historically unpopular Donald Trump has become and dig into the surging public appetite for age limits on members of Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. Here are the big takeaways: * Nobody likes Trump, and gas prices are only part of t...

In this Deep Dive episode of the Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott sits down with Lee Drutman, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Representation in America , to talk about whether the way out of America’s escalating gerrymandering war isn’t legislation for fairer maps or redistricting commissions, but maybe doing a...

On this week’s Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David briefly revisit Elliott’s hypotheses on why economic vibes are still so sour before turning to the alarming speed at which Republican-led states are moving to redraw their congressional maps in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision last week. Here are the big takeaways: * The economic vibes may not be “normal” again until 202...

On this week's Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott and David unpack the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais and explain what it means for the midterms and beyond. Then Elliott pushes back on a trendy take that Democrats' "only" 7–8 point generic ballot lead, despite Trump's –22 net approval, proves the party is fundamentally misaligned with voters on cultural issues. Here are the big...

In this week’s first-ever live, in-person recording of the Strength In Numbers podcast — at the America Votes State Summit in Washington, D.C. — G. Elliott Morris and David Nir debut exclusive new polling on the midterms, dig into what voters actually dislike about the Democratic Party, and explain why none of this changes the trajectory of a brutal midterm for Republicans (even though it could ma...

We have some very exciting news: Next week, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir will record the Strength In Numbers podcast live and in-person in Washington, DC—and we’d love it if you’d join us! Our session will take place on Thursday, April 23, at 11:15 AM at the America Votes Summit, which is being held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center (the address and directions can be found here ). E...

In this week’s live recording of the Strength in Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir cover the latest on the Iran ceasefire, Tuesday’s elections in Wisconsin, and Elliott’s new statistical model estimating Trump’s approval rating in every congressional district and state in the country. Here are the big takeaways: * Wisconsin was a wipeout, and the swing was especially large in rural...

In this first special deep dive episode of the Strength in Numbers podcast, Elliott sits down with Joy Wilke, senior director of polling at BlueLabs, to discuss a set of focus groups she conducted in Michigan among independent, politically disengaged Americans — the exact kind of affordability voters who swung toward Trump in 2024, and who Elliott has been writing about over the last year. BlueLab...

In this week’s live recording of the Strength in Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir, publisher of The Downballot, dig into a news-packed week — from the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case and Donald Trump’s televised address about the war in Iran on Wednesday to the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi and the first anniversary of Trump’s “Liberation Da...

In this week’s live recording of the Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir, publisher of The Downballot, talk about prediction markets and AI “polls” — the new hot crazes in political and election reporting. Elliott and David take a look at the accuracy of each source and compare them against traditional polls. Here are the big takeaways: * Prediction markets have real struc...

In this week’s live recording of the Strength In Numbers podcast, G. Elliott Morris and David Nir, publisher of The Downballot (and back from a week off!), talk about new polling showing Trump holding his MAGA base on the war in Iran—but losing ground overall. Trump’s support has badly decayed among soft partisans, lower-income whites, and Hispanic voters — the groups that swung most sharply towar...

In this week’s live recording of the Strength In Numbers podcast, Elliott flies solo (David’s on vacation — he’ll be back next week) for a special “chart-a-rama” episode breaking down the “rally around the flag” effect in presidential approval polls, and why Trump isn’t getting one. Elliott also covers a bad use of polling in a Washington Post article about the GOP’s midterm prospects. Here are th...