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Brewers' Pat Murphy Discusses Viral Jacob Misiorowski Interaction
When Milwaukee Brewers’ fire-balling prospect refused to hand over the ball, a veteran manager’s strict rules vanished. Discover how a defiant stare-down forged unbreakable trust at Coors Field.
Jacob Misiorowski hits Tyler Freeman in helmet with pitch
Brewers fireballer Jacob Misiorowski hit the Rockies' Tyler Freeman in the helmet with a pitch.
Jacobs Entertainment and Reno Apex Soccer hosting their first downtown youth soccer tournament
The tournament is happening on the newly completed fields in Reno's Neon Line District.
Game Discussion: Milwaukee Brewers (38-23) @ Colorado Rockies (24-40)
Can Jacob Misiorowski master the high elevation of Colorado?
Jacobs Entertainment hosts first soccer tournament on new Neon Line District fields
Reno’s first downtown soccer tournament kicked off at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 6, on newly completed fields in the Neon Line District, marking a major step in a br
Jacobs Entertainment and Reno Apex Soccer Club host first downtown soccer tournament
Jacobs Entertainment and Reno Apex Soccer Club are celebrating their first downtown soccer tournament Saturday.
Digging out: One man’s recovery and the business it inspired
Craig Stevens was just a kid when he started to build worlds. While growing up in West Brookfield, he’d take the blocks he was always given for Christmas and construct cities in his backyard. He used the garden hose to make flowing rivers, his hands to sculpt the land. When he was 10, he wanted […]
How Americans got hooked on “drive-thru” healthcare
When did getting a prescription start to feel like ordering at McDonald’s?
Rubio torches Democrat after bizarre hearing questions about his shoes: 'Is this a circus?'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing "a circus" after Democratic California Rep. Sara Jacobs questioned him about shoes gifted by Trump.
Dynasty Fantasy Football RB Rankings: Don't let Derrick Henry fool you, Father Time is coming for these backs
Dynasty RB rankings stay stable as McCaffrey, Barkley, Jacobs and Derrick Henry age
Eli Lilly's top dealmaker says don't be surprised to see more M&A that pushes Lilly into new areas
Eli Lilly's new top dealmaker explains how the company changed its approach to M&A now that it's the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world.
Marvin Harrison Jr. gives concerning answer regarding Jacoby Brissett situation
GLENDALE – In his first chance to talk to the media this offseason, Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. revealed plenty about the relationship, or lack there of, with quarterback Jacoby Brissett.
‘Business as Usual’ for Packers as Josh Jacobs Returns to Practice.
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs has returned to practice following his arrest last Tuesday. Jacobs practiced on Monday and again on
Packers OTA Recap: Josh Jacobs returns to practice
Packers kicker Trey Smack went 4 of 8 on field goals during Tuesday’s practice
Josh Jacobs at practice Tuesday, Matt LaFleur calls it "business as usual"
Jacobs was arrested in Wisconsin last month.
Charli XCX announces new album 'Music, Fashion, Film' out in July
Charli XCX has announced 'Music, Fashion, Film,' an 11-track album arriving July 24, with cover art featuring John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese as its titular muses.
Brewers' Jacob Misiorowski Produces Historic Month of May
Milwaukee Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski posted a historic month of May.
Jacob Misiorowski outduels Tatsuya Imai, pitches 7 scoreless innings in shutout of Astros to finish May with 1 run allowed
Misiorowski allowed just one run in 38 1/3 innings in May and lowered his ERA to 1.65 with Sunday's win.
Fantasy Baseball Winners and Losers from Week 9 2026
Jacob Misiorowski set a record that probably should not be possible. The week that was in fantasy baseball featured a 451-foot exclamation point from a man who had been making contact with the baseball at an elite level while somehow watching all of it stay inside the park, a 26-year-old pitcher who threw 57 pitches at 100 miles per hour or faster in a single game — a number that had never been achieved in the pitch-tracking era — and a Saturday afternoon at Citi Field that produced two of the purest moments of the season in the same box score.
Checking in on the NL Cy Young race: Shohei Ohtani, Jacob Misiorowski, Cristopher Sánchez lead a stacked field of contenders
Budda Baker speaks on Jacoby Brissett’s absence from Cardinals OTAs
GLENDALE – One of the most glaring comments in the Arizona Cardinals’ media session came from what defensive captain Budda Baker said about Jacoby Brissett’s holdout situation and the Cardinals’ QB future. Arizona safety Baker (3) celebrates a defensive stop against the Seattle Seahawks at State Farm Stadium in Glendale on Sept.
Packers' Josh Jacobs arrested on domestic violence charges, denies allegations
Jacobs faces five charges after turning himself into police
Packers RB Josh Jacobs arrested Tuesday on 5 charges
The Packers running back was arrested and booked on Tuesday.
Chicago Cubs update: Ethan Roberts, Jacob Webb, Hoby Milner
This past week was mostly “down.”
Is Gardner Minshew the Cardinals answer at quarterback in 2026?
GLENDALE – With mandatory minicamps well on its way, the Arizona Cardinals are still without last year’s starting QB Jacoby Brissett. The 33-year-old is holding out for a new deal in 2026, after setting career marks in passing yards and touchdowns.
‘Euphoria’: Is Nate Jacobs Dead? That Rattlesnake Moment Explained
Inside that rattlesnake moment.
‘Euphoria’: Is Nate Jacobs Dead? That Rattlesnake Moment Explained
Inside that rattlesnake moment.
‘Euphoria’: Is Nate Jacobs Dead? That Rattlesnake Moment Explained
Inside that rattlesnake moment.
‘Euphoria’: Is Nate Jacobs Dead? That Rattlesnake Moment Explained
Inside that rattlesnake moment.
Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski continues unprecedented run with 8 Ks in 6 scoreless innings vs. Cubs
It's been more than a month since the Brewers flame-thrower allowed an extra-base hit.
See images of Reno Neon Line entertainment district’s next phase
Jacobs Entertainment shared new renderings of the next phase of its downtown Reno Neon Line entertainment district project.
See images of Reno Neon Line entertainment district’s next phase
Jacobs Entertainment shared new renderings of the next phase of its downtown Reno Neon Line entertainment district project.
Jacobs Entertainment teases new additions to Reno's Neon Line District
a once dilapitated portion of downtown reno... Breathing new life after a $400 million investment. And more development could be on the way in the future: (lklv
Casino operator Jacobs Entertainment celebrates $400M completion in downtown Reno
Jacobs Entertainment officials were joined Monday by local dignitaries and community leaders to celebrate the completion of J Resort's $400 million, five-year p
Jacobs Entertainment celebrates the completion of Phase One in Downtown Reno
Jacob’s Entertainment is celebrating the completion of Phase One, following a $400 million investment and five years of revitalizing the historic 4th Street in Downtown Reno.
Jacoby Brissett’s holdout is a strongly miscalculated risk
The NFL offseason has entered the OTA phase, and teams like the Arizona Cardinals will soon transition into minicamps before they know it. In just a few months, the preseason will usher in the return of professional football. The Cardinals,…
Jacobs Entertainment completes Phase One of Reno’s Neon Line District
The celebration took place in the property's new 4th Street expansion.
Appeals court reverses Albert Lea’s denial of cannabis business registration
The Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the City of Albert Lea’s denial of Jacob Schlichter’s cannabis business registration, The Smoking Tree LLC, ruling the city violated its own ordinance requiring registrations to be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.
Jacobs teases next phase of Reno Neon Line entertainment district
Jacobs Entertainment shared plans for what’s next for the Reno Neon Line district after the initial $400 million first phase.
Class of 2027 football recruiting rankings — a Texas DL headlines composite top 50
Jalen Brewster, John Meredith, DJ Jacobs and Maxwell Hiller headline the top 50 Class of 2027 recruits entering the summer.
US eyes Guyana's bauxite for new business opportunities
The U.S. is turning its attention to Guyana's bauxite for business opportunities. Jacob Helberg, U.S.
Daniel Radcliffe and Mariska Hargitay Toast ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ and the Center for Youth Mental Health
Dr. Zandy Forbes, Ayesha Shand, Dr. Charlie Shaffer, Elizabeth Shaffer, and Anna Wintour served as co-hosts for the evening, which welcomed Louisa Jacobson, Derek Blasberg, Natalie and Ava Massenet, and more.
Kohli hits unbeaten century as RCB move top
Virat Kohli hit a brilliant unbeaten 105 as Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat Kolkata Knight Riders by six wickets to move top of the Indian Premier League table. Opening the batting, the 37-year-old struck 11 fours and three sixes in his 60-ball innings as RCB chased down their target of 193 with five balls to spare. Kohli, who was dismissed for ducks in his two previous innings but is still averaging over 50 for the fourth consecutive year, lost opening partner Jacob Bethell for 15 when he was caught and bowled by Kartik Tyagi.
Brewers star pitcher makes MLB history Friday night against Yankees
Jacob Misiorowski didn’t just dominate the New York Yankees on Friday night. He made MLB history doing it. The young Milwaukee Brewers star delivered one of the most electric pitching performances baseball has seen in years during Milwaukee’s 6-0 shutout…
Jacob Misiorowski dominates Yankees, as Brewers blank Bombers
Spencer Jones’ debut did no go as hoped for him and the Yankees.
Jacob Misiorowski hits 103.6 mph vs. Yankees, unleashes hardest pitches ever tracked by MLB from starter
Misiorowski got a strikeout for every letter in his last name.
Cardinals' dialog with Jacoby Brissett 'good'
The Cardinals and veteran quarterback Jacoby Brissett continue to have discussions amid his request for a raise and absence from voluntary work.
Brewers host the Yankees to start 3-game series
New York Yankees (26-12, first in the AL East) vs. Milwaukee Brewers (19-16, fourth in the NL Central) Milwaukee; Friday, 7:40 p.m. EDT PITCHING PROBABLES: Yankees: Max Fried (4-1, 2.39 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 43 strikeouts); Brewers: Jacob Misiorowski (2-2, 2.84 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 59 strikeouts) LINE: Yankees -139, Brewers +117; over/under is 7 runs BOTTOM LINE: The Milwaukee Brewers host the New York Yankees on Friday to open a three-game series. Milwaukee has a 19-16 record overall and a 10-8 record at home.
From Archaeology to Medicine: How a Health Crisis Led to a Major Career Change
Lydia Jacob ‘26PBPM reflects on how proud she is of the Columbia student body and the ways the program has facilitated her career change.
With Tarik Skubal Injured, Back Jacob deGrom for AL Cy Young Award
The reigning AL Cy Young winner has hit a major bump in the road. Could the Rangers' ace be next in line? Will Hill believes so.
Brewers All-Star Jacob Misiorowski pulled while working on no-hitter vs. Nationals due to cramp
Misiorowski was absolutely dealing but motioned to the dugout in the sixth and was removed
New movies to watch this weekend: See 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' in theaters, rent 'Hoppers,' stream 'Wuthering Heights' on HBO Max
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi's steamy take on Brontë is streaming now — or you can watch "Hoppers" with the kids.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Winner Announced
A computer science major who received NSF fellowship plans to tackle complex problems in software engineering at Columbia University.
3 Minutes of Gameplay From the PC Version of 007: First Light
NVIDIA's Jacob Freeman has shared three videos, showcasing three minutes of gameplay footage from the PC version of 007 First Light.
EU business investment rate hit 21.8% low in Q4 2025
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the EU business investment rate reached 21.8%, the lowest point since the third quarter of 2015. Since 2014, the EU’s non-financial corporation investment rate has shown 2 clear trends, with notable spikes. Between 2014 and 2018, the investment rate rose steadily from 22% to nearly...
New York Yankees @ Texas Rangers: Cam Schlittler vs. Jacob deGrom
The budding star will clash with an icon in Arlington.
'Euphoria' new episode hits major character with shockingly gory surprise
'Euphoria' season 3, episode 3 just hit Jacob Elordi's Nate with a shockingly gory surprise after the character's wedding to Sydney Sweeney's Cassie.
Iraq’s Communists Are Fighting Against Sectarian Politics
Although Iraq’s Communist Party has lost much of the support it enjoyed at its peak, it still has a real presence on the Iraqi political scene. Its general secretary Ra’id Fahmi tells Jacobin about the need to challenge Iraq’s sectarian power structure.
Can Class Politics Win Again?
Krystal Ball, Vivek Chibber, and Matt Karp discuss how class politics stalled after the Bernie Sanders campaigns — and why a new political opening is finally emerging.
Entertainment briefs | ‘Dance Visions’ at Cal Poly Humboldt
“The Year to Save the Earth,” a multimedia experience mixing powerful songs and projected images, will be featured May 1 at 7 p.m. at the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 24 Fellowship Way off Jacoby Creek Road in Bayside. “The Y…
Marc Jacobs' Rachel Sennott Collab Kicks Off Pivot to Social Entertainment
Marc Jacobs teamed up with Rachel Sennott on a new microdrama as it shifts toward social-first entertainment.
Six New Projects Are Empowering Early-Career Engineering and Computer Science Faculty
Six teams from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering have been awarded funding to accelerate interdisciplinary research collaborations that include an early-career faculty member.
An Instagram DM changed everything for Rachel Reid, Jacob Tierney and 'Heated Rivalry'
Rachel Reid and Jacob Tierney were sensations at BookCon, thanks to the success of “Heated Rivalry.” | Talk 1370
From Donald Trump to Jacob Frey — has politics lost its profanity filter?
If there was ever a set of rules for politicians interfacing with the public, steadfast avoidance of profanity might have been at the very top of such a list. Robert’s Rules of Order, which are often invoked in political spaces, certainly prohibit personal insults, including profanity. But these are new times. Just last week, President Donald Trump […]
Shaky political science: using "simulated" elections over real-world elections
[Dear DSOS readers – this article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in early December, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting. We found that many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data, and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first three articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report, the second one analyzing a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report, and a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research]. In this fourth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we shine a spotlight on seven studies that were web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group (the ERRG is an ad hoc committee headed by New America’s Political Reform Program and joined by the American Enterprise Institute, the Unite America Institute and Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law). This research consortium has been led by Lee Drutman, senior fellow with New America’s Political Reform Program. These seven studies are simply not credible from any objective standard about how political “science” is supposed to illuminate our understanding of either ranked choice voting or politics in general. The feature that six of these seven studies have in common is that they all used surveys – artificial, simulated elections -- to attempt to say something cogent or interesting about ranked choice voting (RCV) elections. None of them used real world data from actual RCV elections – either the 1000+ elections in the US or the many thousands of elections from places like Australia, Ireland and elsewhere where RCV has been used for 100 years. While a few of these studies conclude with some mixed positives about RCV, our analysis here is content neutral. The idea that, with a political reform like RCV, you can ask respondents in a mock, artificial election to vote with that method, with only the barest of explanation about how RCV works or its likely impacts (i.e. no spoiler candidates, majority winners, voters liberated to pick their favorite candidates, coalition-building), and then ask them their thoughts/reactions about voting in that system, with fake candidates and no real campaigning, no real exposure to an actual election or actual candidates, rests on some very puzzling assumptions. The findings of these seven studies actually are contradicted by the findings from many other studies based on real-world RCV elections. These New America studies also failed to list the real-world RCV studies in their own citations, instead including those studies that reinforced their conclusions. The seven studies featured in this article were chosen because they form a cohesive cohort which precisely illustrates one of the main points of our research paper, namely that using surveys, i.e. artificial elections, or mathematical/theoretical models, instead of real-world data, is in fact “shaky political science.” Below are summaries of our analysis of five of the seven New America studies. You can read our complete analysis of all seven studies at our paper, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting.” Choosing to “Vote As Usual” by Andre Blais, Carolina Plescia, and Semra Sevi. New America. (Blais et al., 2021). This study, web-hosted and funded by New America’s Political Reform Program and its Electoral Reform Research Group, used two surveys in which respondents completed ballots for simulated elections using plurality, approval, RCV and point (Score) voting. In both cases the authors provided the respondents with only minimal explanation of each method. For example, the entire explanation for RCV was “For this vote, rank the candidates from your first to your last choice (you do not need to rank them all). This is called the ranked vote.” That’s it. The study did not provide any context or explanation to survey respondents about why she/he might want to rank multiple candidates. Participants were not even told that ballots would be tabulated using an “instant” runoff, not to mention any description of RCVs ability to eliminate the spoiler effect or liberate voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of helping the “greater evil” candidate to win. That’s like taking an iPhone back in time to 1970 and asking someone if they like it better than their rotary phone without explaining how it works. Their first survey targeted states that held 2020 Super Tuesday Democratic primaries and used the real candidates’ names in the survey; the second survey used fictitious candidates. In other words, they surveyed respondents who had only ever participated in plurality elections, had no history or background with using RCV or any of the other methods, had no clue about its likely impacts, and did not communicate how the alternative methods would be counted, and then asked them: “How satisfied are you with using each system?” Predictably, the winner was plurality elections, the system used for president, Congress, gubernatorial and state legislative elections – in other words, the method they have been using, year after year, all their voting lives. With so little explanation of RCV and its impacts, this study is simply not credible in discovering anything useful about real-world RCV elections. It merely shows that a basic voter education campaign is needed when adopting a new election system. Additionally, the result contradicts many other post-election surveys following real RCV elections, asking opinions from voters who had just participated in a RCV election, that showed a great deal of satisfaction with RCV (see details on that in Studies 22-25 in our paper, as well as the four studies cited in the review for Study 28). Share Other studies on “satisfaction” and “understanding” make similar mistakes, in terms of basing their surveys on inadequate explanation to respondents and lack of education about context. How could any survey ever hope to measure accurately, in essence simulate a real-world election, without actual campaigning candidates, the media writing about those candidates, organizations endorsing candidates and voters being inundated with crucial information? More than anything, what these “studies” based on surveys show is that if you ask voters about something they don’t know very much about, and fail to adequately educate them, their responses will unsurprisingly reflect their confusion. Equally puzzling is that New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group, headed by political scientist Lee Drutman, found this to be a credible enough study that they not only published it but highlighted it in Drutman’s own discussion of research related to ranked choice voting. This pattern was repeated in study after study featured by New America’s Electoral Reform Research Group. For example in Ranked-Choice Voting and Political Expression: Voter Guides Narrow the Gap between Informed and Uninformed Citizens by Cheryl Boudreau, Jonathan Colner, and Scott MacKenzie, the researchers based their analysis on a survey which found that respondents who were asked to vote in a simulated RCV election, with minimal explanation of RCV or how it works, displayed less evidence of being informed about how to use RCV effectively, with the least informed voters ranking fewer candidates. As pointed out under the study above, in a real election voters are informed by a wide variety of methods, including public education by the election administration, by interested political groups, the media, and the candidates themselves who benefit from voters being aware of how to vote in the new system. In Support for Ranked-Choice Voting across Race and Partisanship by Joseph Anthony, David C. Kimball, Jack Santucci and Jamil Scott, the researchers used respondents from different parties and races voting in simulated plurality and RCV elections, who indicated their satisfaction with each voting method. Instead of using real world election results, the authors fell back on the easy, armchair and less reliable academic research methodology of making up mock elections. As with the other studies, little explanation was given of how RCV works or what its implications might be (electing majority winners or eliminating spoilers, for example). Unsurprisingly, this study found that respondents were not very satisfied with RCV. However, when the authors added an explanation that RCV has a tendency to elect more women and people of color, they found that this greater explanation increased the preference for RCV. The more voters were familiar with it, and the more they understood potential positive impacts – surprise! -- the more they were open to switching away from the status quo. Of note, the results from this study are thoroughly contradicted by a number of other studies whose data was obtained from real RCV elections with real voters. Those studies show a great deal of satisfaction with RCV. More “fake election” research An interesting wrinkle on this “research by fake elections” approach, which only served to illustrate how unreliable such “research” can become, was taken in Ranked-Choice Voting, Runoff, and Democracy: Insights from Maine and Other U.S. States by Joseph Cerrone and Cynthia McClintock_,_ also web-hosted and funded by New America’s ERRG. It gets high marks for creativity, but an eye-roll for thinking this could possibly add anything meaningful to our understanding of real world RCV elections. This study tried to determine whether RCV, plurality or two-round runoff elections provided greater voter satisfaction and acceptance of election results. To determine that, the authors conducted a survey asking if voters were satisfied with a fictional newspaper report of an election, with three different versions given to respondents – plurality, runoff and RCV, with variations of Republican/Democrat winners and variations of “come-from-behind” winners,” i.e. candidates not initially in first place but who win the “runoff.” Again, a minimal explanation of RCV or how it works was given, and the survey showed that respondents had the greatest unfamiliarity with RCV than the other methods. The unsurprising result? Respondents were much more satisfied with “come-from-behind” victories in a traditional two-round runoff election than in RCV, even though RCV is also a runoff system but with a single round of counting. Interestingly, the dissatisfaction with RCV disappeared for those who were more familiar with RCV. In fact, among those respondents who were “very familiar” with RCV, they were equally satisfied with RCV, runoff and plurality. Surprise, surprise. Again, what this study revealed, more than anything, is not only the inadequacy of the explanation for RCV given by the authors of this study, but the failure of the research format itself, thinking that such an artificial mock election could somehow simulate what actually happens in the real world in a real RCV election. Those four studies reviewed above are fitting examples of inadequate and shaky political “science.” Other studies reviewed in our paper from the New America/Electoral Reform Research Group cohort which also used mock elections included: Ranked-Choice Voting is an Acquired Taste by Joseph Anthony and David C. Kimball. New America. (Anthony et al., 2021). Ranked-Choice Voting is No Refuge for Extreme Candidates by Melissa Baker. New America. (Baker, 2021). Also included in this New America cohort is Does Ranked-Choice Voting Reduce Racial Polarization? by Yuki Atsusaka and Theodore Landsman, which actually did use real-world election results data but applied an odd and unconventional methodology to the data which relied on shaky assumptions and non-real-world scenarios that were too divorced from reality. To determine levels of “racially polarized voting,” the researchers imagined “ethnic parties,” by which they mean political parties for each ethnic group, which was especially odd since the election data they were using came from nonpartisan RCV races. But then they made an even odder assumption, namely that since race and ethnic characteristics of studied voters were not available, the authors tried to infer that information based on who voters selected and the racial make-up of voters in each district. This amounted to little more than vague and ambiguous guesswork dressed up with a bunch of mathematical equations used to give it a veneer of scientific appearance. Indeed, it seemed to assume racial polarization in order to prove racial polarization. Based on this questionable methodology, the authors concluded that RCV doesn’t reduce racial polarization. But the premise of this study missed an obvious reality: since RCV incentivizes more candidates to run and can result in more diverse fields of candidates, one would expect more racially-polarized voting in voters’ top rankings, not less, because more voters would have someone on that ballot who represents their racial or ethnic identity and more freedom to vote for their real first choice. By encouraging more diverse candidates and eliminating the spoiler effect, RCV facilitates voting for a favorite candidate of your own race and then selecting a second choice with the best likelihood of winning. The real measure is what voters do with their additional rankings – do they consider other candidates and vote “for the best of the rest”? This study didn’t tell us anything useful about that. But readily available data shows this is common in real RCV elections, and candidates act on this knowledge by engaging with voters outside their racial group. So the authors of this study failed to consider or account for what actually happens in real-world elections, and their conclusions are tainted by this failure. New America has contributed a great deal over the past 2.5 decades to our understanding of many policy areas, including politics and political reform (full disclosure: Steven Hill, one of the authors of this article and of the “Shaky Political Science” research paper and series, is a former senior fellow and former director of New America’s political reform program, 2005-2010). So it was especially disappointing that New America funded and published such a large batch of dubious studies about ranked choice voting. The stated praiseworthy goal of its Electoral Reform Research Group was to inspire new academic research about ranked choice voting that would shed light and help the public better understand the impacts of RCV. Instead, the ERRG research did just the opposite. It produced dubious research that created more confusion and misinformation. In so doing, New America’s political reform program contributed to “shaky political science.” Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS, a reader-supported digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
'Heated Rivalry' showrunner calls season 2 'much more serious territory,' teases Troy's arrival
'Heated Rivalry' season 2 will get into 'much more serious territory,' showrunner Jacob Tierney teased during a BookCon 2026 panel this weekend. He also confirmed that new character Troy Barrett will be 'quite damaged': 'We're digging into that even harder.'
Briggs: Our takeaways from Toledo football's promising first spring under Mike Jacobs
The Toledo football team wrapped up spring practice Saturday in front of a couple thousand fans at the Glass Bowl, where the sun began to sneak through the ...
Athletics' Jacob Wilson problem might not go away anytime soon
This might become a season-long issue for the A's.
Report: Jacoby Brissett not at Cardinals workouts, wants new contract
The Cardinals haven't named Jacoby Brissett their starting quarterback, but he reportedly would like a contractual commitment from the team that reflects the chance that he'll be under center in Week 1.
Exclusive First Look: Ridley Scott Says The Dog Stars Will Surprise You
Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, and Josh Brolin play desperate survivors in this adaptation of Peter Heller’s end-of-days novel.
Pre-draft picture: Packers looking for better health at running back
Josh Jacobs played banged up in 2025, MarShawn Lloyd still trying to get going
EOU students win awards for their business ideas
LA GRANDE — Local university students and alumni made a big splash in April with their business ideas at the Eastern Oregon Innovation Jam. The Rural Engagement and Vitality Center […]
Minneapolis public safety debate back in a familiar place: anger, political squabbling
The Minneapolis City Council’s rejection of Mayor Jacob Frey’s public safety commissioner renewed the angry divisions over policing that have characterized city politics in recent years.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
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