What's next for data-driven election journalism? | #214 - April 25, 2023

Hopefully, a focus on polling methods and the substance of public opinion, not just predictions

Dear readers,

I am sure by now the majority of you have seen the news that many (most?) of the journalists at data-journalism website FiveThirtyEight, including Nate Silver, have been laid off (or, in Silver’s case, are expecting to leave/be terminated shortly).

I am not going to comment on whatever business calculations Disney and ABC News, which own FiveThirtyEight.com, are making, but I do want to take the opportunity to highlight what I see as a potential moment for political journalists to advance the way we cover elections. In particular, I see 2024 as an opportunity for “data-driven” (or perhaps “data-first”) election journalism to embrace a new set of guiding principles centred around (1) discussing the particular challenges of polling in our day and age as well as (2) covering the substance of public opinion more broadly, rather than making predictions for prediction’s sake or committing to narratives without first consulting the data (what I see as the big misstep with 538, …