FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis - hard numbers - to tell compelling stories about elections, politics and American society.

White elephant gift exchanges, also known as Yankee swaps or, somewhat creepily, “dirty Santa” games, are a fun alternative to the old office staple “secret Santa.” Like secret Santa, everyone brings ...

It used to be, if you wanted to see a Poweshiek skipperling butterfly, the thing to do was go out on the prairie and stare into the middle distance, like you were trying to see a sailboat buried in a ...

Sometimes statistical analysis is tricky, and sometimes a finding just jumps off the page. Here’s one example of the latter.

This is the 11th and final article in a series that reviews news coverage of the 2016 general election, explores how Donald Trump won and why his chances were underrated by most of the American media.

Since Donald Trump effectively wrapped up the Republican nomination this month, I’ve seen a lot of critical self-assessments from empirically minded journalists — FiveThirtyEight included, twice over ...

I’m not that impressed by long-term projections of Democratic doom in the Senate. Mostly that’s because I’m not that impressed by long-term political projections in general. Political coalitions ...

At FiveThirtyEight, we’ve been running NBA predictions since 2015. We started with Elo ratings before introducing our CARMELO player projection system, which we then incorporated into our “CARM-Elo” ...

All market ratings are adjusted for projected population growth through 2040. Popularity measured by Google Trends. Sources: Zach Miller, Google Trends, The New York Times, CollegeRaptor.com, ...

The greatest drivers in the world are assembling in Monte Carlo this weekend for Formula One’s flagship race, the Monaco Grand Prix. So we thought it was the right time to dive into the history of ...

The fight for D.C. statehood is hardly new. It’s been decades since Congress first introduced legislation to make Washington, D.C., a state, and 27 years since such a bill got a full (losing) vote in ...

“Can we trust election polls?” is a question that has reached a fever pitch in political junkie circles dating back to the 2016 election. One popular theory about why election polls missed in 2016 and ...