As someone who is always pushing for evidence based policy and performance management that includes measurement, I love Strength in Numbers.
But you gotta take care of you, if you find you're putting in more than a sustainable workload.
Re: discoverability; I think short form video can work across both youtube and tiktok, main thing for even short video is to have some movement or dynamism. So floating head with an image of a chart or graph works fine. I don't think people automatically assume that short form video of quantitative analysis will do well on platforms like tiktok, but there's some data fiends there, trust. The biggest thing for any algorithmic video medium is not forcing something you don't want to do. Alysa Liu's gold medal, "let's fucking go!," performance attracted a lot of praise and was all over social media feeds for the infectious joy of it. If video content does not spark joy for you to make, it may not spark joy in viewers, and it might be worth skipping if it doesn't feel authentic or if it feels forced.
Preach! Well said about the mission here! There is an interesting race developing in my district MN6 for the house seat currently held by Tom Emmer. I’d like to see some data on how the highly qualified candidate Doug Chapin is fairing. May be a bit early yet but please put it on your ‘to do’ list. I know you’re working hard right now and hope things slow down a bit when this pseudo administration leaves power and the rebirth of democracy begins.
Oh my goodness, yes! Back in the day while getting my heavy on statistics PhD in labor relations, we called looking for data to back up a hypothesis “statistical mãştǔrbatïøñ” (trying to avoid getting bleeped). Beat the data til you get a happy ending. There’s always variance and depending on the sample and its size you can generally get what you want. One of many reasons I follow you and subscribe
Elliott—you’re doing fine! When Jeff Bezos started the Washington Post on the road to ruin in late 2024, I began to assess whether or not I could assemble something approximating a full replacement on Substack. It turned out not to be easy, but largely achievable. Problem is (as you correctly note) there are plenty of folks here mostly offering hot takes or doing a lot of “pearl clutching” about the current state of affairs. That feels like the journalistic equivalent of empty calories.
What you, and a carefully curated list of other authors are offering is something more substantial—actionable insights and ideas for steps to take to improve our national situation. I really do rely on you as my “numbers guy” but you’re showing us more than that. I give a lot of consideration to your interpretation of what the numbers you post actually mean. Thanks for all your hard work. This is one paid subscriber who is deeply appreciative of your efforts.
Matt Stoller commented in his recent roundup that Biden's support cratered following his forcing our withdrawal from Afghanistan. It got me thinking about public support (or lack thereof) for foreign wars/conflicts/regime changes etc., especially in light of recent events. There was overwhelming support for the invasion of Iraq, which turned out to be based on a lie. The Afghanistan conflict lasted 20 yrs without a positive result yet terminating it hurt Biden. The latest poll I found on Ukraine was YouGov in late December, showing support for more military aid to Ukraine falling and very few think Ukraine is winning. A super majority oppose a war with Iran. Support for Israel in relation to Palestine seems to be waning significantly. What is your sense of the overall mood regarding our involvement in foreign conflicts? Is opposition to it trending up? Is 'America First' orthogonal to the left-right split, like the anti-system voter? Has the mainstream media lost credibility in "selling" war to the American public? There does not seem to be much on this topic in Fifty Plus One.
Great questions! One note (for Matt, I guess) is that any account of Biden’s approval falling in 2021 that doesn’t include inflation and gas prices is only half the story
Also, regarding your approach to content, you may have noticed Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism quoted you at length in her article on Trump and Tariffs. Quite the compliment as she does not suffer fools. (It was through her that I discovered you, in fact.) Good work.
You GO, GEM. I like your insights and really appreciate your application of mixed-effects models to the data. I would guess that way too many of the pundits and analysis sources you note arrive at their conclusions through supporting analyses that ignore important sources of variance in the data. Getting at the correct conclusion is hard work, very time-consuming, and you're the best out there that I can find. So keep it up. Hire you a sharp grad student, maybe even an immigrant one, if need be :^) to extend your reach. There's only so many hours in a week, and your dear readers want this project to be sustainable for ya.
Amen, Jennifer! And thank you GEM for SIN (like the sound of that.) You are so refreshingly honest. And not just a pollster or a "numbers guy," but someone who reads and understands political theory. Appreciate your insights, hard work and desire to continuously improve SIN.
Thanks for this. If we ever get out of this mess, one of my major takeaways will be the failure and/or submission of mainstream journalism. So depressing. Though a big win for Substack.
This is a general comment, not directly addressed to the topics/path raised in this post.
Why aren't women included -- not even as contributors or guests, let alone as authors -- in most substacks (including this one) on political topics, let alone on ones related to polling/stats? I read a lot, and I'll go months with a certain 'stack before realizing, HEY! There are no women involved here! What's with that?
I am a retired English professor (Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama), so I cannot always follow the intricacies of the data at Strength in Numbers, but I subscribed because Elliott's method is exactly what I taught students about writing, whether in freshman composition, lower and upper division literature courses, or graduate courses: research and write to explore a hypothesis or accepted fact, and if you find that your original idea does not fit, then change that idea accordingly. When I write, I always start with a rough outline of what I think the argument will be, but by the end of the writing process, I have usually gone in another direction based on new evidence or ideas. Too many of the political "analysts" these days want to jump from the beginning to the end instead of spending time in the process of hammering out ideas. Perhaps that is part of living in an "instant" society. If more people did process oriented tasks, such as baking bread, gardening, etc., they would develop a healthy respect for what the process can teach us and how changing course can help us learn.
Just subscribed. Please visit my non-profit website where I am fighting for America in a new and different way, via an online “third path” to a better societal, problem solving future at EthicalGovtNow.org. I urge all liberal thinkers to visit today, evaluate our path and join our patriotic movement.
Please keep the podcasts concise and focused. While I enjoy the humor and the apt digressions, sometimes there's too much information for us amateurs to digest in multi-topic casts. Thanks for your work, both polling and analyses.
As someone who is always pushing for evidence based policy and performance management that includes measurement, I love Strength in Numbers.
But you gotta take care of you, if you find you're putting in more than a sustainable workload.
Re: discoverability; I think short form video can work across both youtube and tiktok, main thing for even short video is to have some movement or dynamism. So floating head with an image of a chart or graph works fine. I don't think people automatically assume that short form video of quantitative analysis will do well on platforms like tiktok, but there's some data fiends there, trust. The biggest thing for any algorithmic video medium is not forcing something you don't want to do. Alysa Liu's gold medal, "let's fucking go!," performance attracted a lot of praise and was all over social media feeds for the infectious joy of it. If video content does not spark joy for you to make, it may not spark joy in viewers, and it might be worth skipping if it doesn't feel authentic or if it feels forced.
Preach! Well said about the mission here! There is an interesting race developing in my district MN6 for the house seat currently held by Tom Emmer. I’d like to see some data on how the highly qualified candidate Doug Chapin is fairing. May be a bit early yet but please put it on your ‘to do’ list. I know you’re working hard right now and hope things slow down a bit when this pseudo administration leaves power and the rebirth of democracy begins.
Thanks for the hard work and thoughtful analysis. I just subscribed.
Oh my goodness, yes! Back in the day while getting my heavy on statistics PhD in labor relations, we called looking for data to back up a hypothesis “statistical mãştǔrbatïøñ” (trying to avoid getting bleeped). Beat the data til you get a happy ending. There’s always variance and depending on the sample and its size you can generally get what you want. One of many reasons I follow you and subscribe
Elliott—you’re doing fine! When Jeff Bezos started the Washington Post on the road to ruin in late 2024, I began to assess whether or not I could assemble something approximating a full replacement on Substack. It turned out not to be easy, but largely achievable. Problem is (as you correctly note) there are plenty of folks here mostly offering hot takes or doing a lot of “pearl clutching” about the current state of affairs. That feels like the journalistic equivalent of empty calories.
What you, and a carefully curated list of other authors are offering is something more substantial—actionable insights and ideas for steps to take to improve our national situation. I really do rely on you as my “numbers guy” but you’re showing us more than that. I give a lot of consideration to your interpretation of what the numbers you post actually mean. Thanks for all your hard work. This is one paid subscriber who is deeply appreciative of your efforts.
Matt Stoller commented in his recent roundup that Biden's support cratered following his forcing our withdrawal from Afghanistan. It got me thinking about public support (or lack thereof) for foreign wars/conflicts/regime changes etc., especially in light of recent events. There was overwhelming support for the invasion of Iraq, which turned out to be based on a lie. The Afghanistan conflict lasted 20 yrs without a positive result yet terminating it hurt Biden. The latest poll I found on Ukraine was YouGov in late December, showing support for more military aid to Ukraine falling and very few think Ukraine is winning. A super majority oppose a war with Iran. Support for Israel in relation to Palestine seems to be waning significantly. What is your sense of the overall mood regarding our involvement in foreign conflicts? Is opposition to it trending up? Is 'America First' orthogonal to the left-right split, like the anti-system voter? Has the mainstream media lost credibility in "selling" war to the American public? There does not seem to be much on this topic in Fifty Plus One.
Great questions! One note (for Matt, I guess) is that any account of Biden’s approval falling in 2021 that doesn’t include inflation and gas prices is only half the story
Also, regarding your approach to content, you may have noticed Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism quoted you at length in her article on Trump and Tariffs. Quite the compliment as she does not suffer fools. (It was through her that I discovered you, in fact.) Good work.
You GO, GEM. I like your insights and really appreciate your application of mixed-effects models to the data. I would guess that way too many of the pundits and analysis sources you note arrive at their conclusions through supporting analyses that ignore important sources of variance in the data. Getting at the correct conclusion is hard work, very time-consuming, and you're the best out there that I can find. So keep it up. Hire you a sharp grad student, maybe even an immigrant one, if need be :^) to extend your reach. There's only so many hours in a week, and your dear readers want this project to be sustainable for ya.
Cheers
Amen, Jennifer! And thank you GEM for SIN (like the sound of that.) You are so refreshingly honest. And not just a pollster or a "numbers guy," but someone who reads and understands political theory. Appreciate your insights, hard work and desire to continuously improve SIN.
Yeah! And invite this Jenifer person on!
Thanks for this. If we ever get out of this mess, one of my major takeaways will be the failure and/or submission of mainstream journalism. So depressing. Though a big win for Substack.
This is a general comment, not directly addressed to the topics/path raised in this post.
Why aren't women included -- not even as contributors or guests, let alone as authors -- in most substacks (including this one) on political topics, let alone on ones related to polling/stats? I read a lot, and I'll go months with a certain 'stack before realizing, HEY! There are no women involved here! What's with that?
FWIW, 50+1 is 60% woman-owned!
That's great, but how would I know, and when will I SEE one?
Congrats for leaving corporate media and into the light of true journalism.
I am a retired English professor (Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama), so I cannot always follow the intricacies of the data at Strength in Numbers, but I subscribed because Elliott's method is exactly what I taught students about writing, whether in freshman composition, lower and upper division literature courses, or graduate courses: research and write to explore a hypothesis or accepted fact, and if you find that your original idea does not fit, then change that idea accordingly. When I write, I always start with a rough outline of what I think the argument will be, but by the end of the writing process, I have usually gone in another direction based on new evidence or ideas. Too many of the political "analysts" these days want to jump from the beginning to the end instead of spending time in the process of hammering out ideas. Perhaps that is part of living in an "instant" society. If more people did process oriented tasks, such as baking bread, gardening, etc., they would develop a healthy respect for what the process can teach us and how changing course can help us learn.
Just subscribed. Please visit my non-profit website where I am fighting for America in a new and different way, via an online “third path” to a better societal, problem solving future at EthicalGovtNow.org. I urge all liberal thinkers to visit today, evaluate our path and join our patriotic movement.
Please keep the podcasts concise and focused. While I enjoy the humor and the apt digressions, sometimes there's too much information for us amateurs to digest in multi-topic casts. Thanks for your work, both polling and analyses.
If you’re looking for people to add to your surveys, I’m interested. I always decline polls, but trust yours. White retired male in Maine.
Great question.
why i am paid subscriber