Announcing a new polling and elections data business (and new site for my polling averages)

FiftyPlusOne will publish polling averages and election forecasts, and make bespoke data collection available to individuals and business clients

Note: This post has two parts. First, I share some exciting news about a new polling aggregation and political data business I’ve built with my friends. Second, I explain how that news will impact things here at Strength In Numbers (nothing about content will change — the only change is that polling averages will move to a new URL).

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Today, I am excited to announce the launch of a new political polling and elections data business, FiftyPlusOne¹ (online at fiftyplusone.news).

The team at 50+1 will deliver high-quality, methodologically transparent polling averages for many questions of interest to the press and public, and produce forecasts for major federal U.S. elections. Our goal is to be faster, more comprehensive in data collection, more accessible, and to use more sophisticated aggregation models than the competition.

We think FiftyPlusOne will fill a few needs for both consumers and other businesses:

• 50+1 will present non-partisan, high-quality averages of polls to anchor conversations about public opinion to verifiable, trusted sources.

• 50+1 will produce election forecasts as a way of explaining the uncertainty inherent in polling data.

• 50+1 can save media outlets that publish polling averages from having to read every poll release, and from having to spend hours watching various social media websites for pollsters to post new results.

• 50+1 can serve data directly to people who participate in political betting markets, who can get a leg up on the competition with faster data feeds.

• 50+1 will license the data in our charts to institutional use — for example, to an analyst writing a report about how an upcoming election might impact financial markets.

50+1 is the brainchild of several people I have worked with previously, who all wanted to put together a business with a proper, sustainable funding model that ensures we are able to collect and publish public opinion polls for the long haul.

We launch today with a website for publishing polls and polling averages, and a live API for customers to download this data directly to their computers. (If you are a researcher, we may make some data available to you for free. Email our team at data@fiftyplusone.news for more information.)

Currently, we compile individual polls on the following topics: Approval of the president, vice president, Congress, and the Supreme Court; favorability ratings for POTUS, VP, and officially declared major candidates for president or vice president; the U.S. House generic congressional ballot; and horse race polls for partisan primary and general elections for president, as well as U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and governor races.

We currently have polling averages for Trump’s approval rating and the generic congressional ballot, and we are adding averages for the Virginia and New Jersey governor elections in the next week.

I want to emphasize three things about our value-add here: The first is speed. For the past six months, our co-founder and head of research, Mary Radcliffe, has been maintaining a public spreadsheet of polls that is consulted as the official record by The New York Times, Decision Desk HQ, Nate Silver, and even here at Strength In Numbers. On several occasions, she has found a poll everybody else missed, and it only popped up on their websites after going live on our public spreadsheets. So if you’re looking for polls, we are confident we have the fastest-updating, most comprehensive database in the industry.

The second highlight is our website design. Aesthetically and functionally, I think it is gorgeous. We have learned from previous polling websites and built this one to be fast, lightweight, and easy to navigate. I mean, look how good this list of horse-race hypotheticals from a recent Texas Senate poll looks! The density of information is unmatched.

The design was spearheaded by Katie Marriner, who designed the 2024 FiveThirtyEight election forecast website and has a knack for presenting complex data. Additionally, the site has no algorithmic ads, no social media trackers, and no distracting links or tricks to get you to click on unrelated content — just polling data and charts.

Finally, we think the addition of an API for downloading polling data will unlock a lot of value for readers. While other companies have tried this, we think ours is faster, more comprehensive, and can be customized on a client-by-client basis to provide any data they may need. Organizations that are interested in collecting more polls can commission custom datasets, either as one-offs or ongoing tracking series. (The hope is that this service, if we can get it to take off, will be enough to pay our server bills in perpetuity.)

While we have worked hard to get a polished version of the site up for public consumption, there are always bugs we can’t find on our own. If you have any questions or feedback, email us at data@fiftyplusone.news.

Check us out at fiftyplusone.news!

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Small changes to Strength In Numbers

Now, taking off my FiftyPlusOne hat and putting on my Strength In Numbers cap, let me talk about the implications of this new enterprise for the business and editorial schedule here. The upshot is that there will be minimal disruption to this website for now.

The big thing for readers to note is that the location of the SIN polling averages will change. We are excited that the new site will allow us to build much more custom graphics and interactive content than Substack currently supports, but it doesn’t make sense to keep two data pipelines running and bifurcate attention from the new site.

Over time (we’re thinking over the next 6 months-1 year, depending on the resources we have to hire programming help), most of the polling averages currently on the Strength In Numbers data portal will eventually move to the new site. The economic index and my upcoming cost of ruling index will stay here at SIN, and I’m planning to add more historical and other data downloads for readers, too.

Aside from this, subscribers’ experience on the whole will stay exactly the same. Instead of getting your Trump approval and generic ballot average in one click on this domain, your one click will lead you somewhere else. I hope this will be an easy adjustment.

SIN vs 50+1

I’m aware this new site may cause some brand confusion at first. In the long run, I think separating off the polling averages to a business where the multiple people working on things can all benefit from their work is the right move. This also has the benefit of separating my personal brand from the poll-tracking work of my colleagues; sometimes my personal opinions (such as on the unpopularity of Trump’s OBBBA and the cruelty of Medicaid cuts) undercut the non-partisan goals of polling aggregation.

Yet given the potential brand confusion, I want to spell out the differences between these two projects to make things crystal clear for both audiences:

Readers should think of Strength In Numbers as my personal data-driven newsletter on politics and polling. In contrast, people should think of 50+1 as the spiritual successor to FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregation operation and election forecasting website. Eventually, we will have an editorial operation as well, so that we can report on trends in our averages and publish methodological deep dives, etc., for readers. We will also welcome (and pay for!) freelancer articles on the editorial side of that business.

So, here’s what you still get from me, Elliott, here at Strength In Numbers:

• Opinionated commentary from me for paying subscribers about politics and elections, democracy, and just data journalism and statistics in general

• My weekly Chart of the Week posts on Friday and Sunday political data roundups, both free to read

• Toplines and crosstabs from the Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll

• Things derived from the poll, including projections from our growing suite of MRP models

• Continued access to the growing Strength In Numbers private Discord server

• Data analysis that doesn’t have to do with polling averages or election forecasts

And FiftyPlusOne will offer…

• Visualizations of polling data for a public audience

• Institutional and media clients (and political bettors) access to an API for polls and election data

• Access to all the data underpinning my polling averages and forecasts

• Articles by other freelance political analysts and data journalists

And to really drive the point home, two final clarifications/promises. First, all of the polling averages SIN readers can currently access on the data portal will be available on FiftyPlusOne, for free, whenever you want to look at them. I will link the new site in the Strength In Numbers data portal, so you will always be able to find it easily.

Second, this is not the end of Strength In Numbers. I am only moving the data-aggregation and forecasting components to a new location, where (1) the support for custom data interactives is better, (2) the other people involved in this work will get the proper credit and compensation for their work, and (3) we can unlock other revenue sources to safeguard the business of collecting and publishing public opinion polls for many cycles to come. Paying subscribers will receive the same data and content they originally signed up for.²

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Thanks to everyone who has signed up to become a Strength In Numbers member as I figure out my career outside traditional media. I’m excited to be working with some of my old colleagues again, and looking forward to what we can accomplish together!

Elliott

1. The name is a reference to the number of votes you need for a numerical majority: 50%, +1. It’s also the number of states, plus Washington, D.C.

2. If we ever change this, SIN subscribers will be given complimentary subscriptions to 50+1.