[ad_1] Nathan Posner / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images If Rep. Kevin McCarthy didn’t have a lucky number before, it’s surely 15 now. Just after midnight on Saturday morning, the House of Representatives finally voted to make McCarthy speaker of the House on the 15th ballot — the resolution of an historic, multi-day staredown with…

[ad_1] PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY FIVETHIRTYEIGHT / GETTY IMAGES Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. Many of us at FiveThirtyEight have been glued to C-SPAN this week, as we’ve watched the yet-to-be-sworn-in House repeatedly try — and fail — to elect a speaker. With a slim majority in the chamber, Republicans were held hostage by…

[ad_1] MANDEL NGAN / AFP / GETTY IMAGES Before the revelations, George Santos was the type of fresh face the Republican Party would have put front and center. The representative-elect is Latino, openly gay and just 34 years old. And by winning the election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District last year, he appeared to…

[ad_1] Win McNamee / Getty Images The 20 Republicans who opposed Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker of the House had something in common before Tuesday’s drama: They are very conservative and scorn the Republican Party establishment. As you probably know by now, the 118th Congress began on Tuesday, and the election for speaker of the…

[ad_1] JoJo Siwa, now 19 years old, has racked up billions of views on YouTube for her performances since she was a child. “Kidfluencers” — children whose social media presence is followed and monetized — are a notable part of the growing business of social media. But this industry lacks protections for the children whose…

[ad_1] FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver considers the impact young voters had on the midterm election results on “This Week.” [ad_2]

[ad_1] MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images Democrats now have a slightly bigger Senate majority but not much to do with it. And so, it’s time for more judges. Retaining the Senate means that President Biden and Senate Democrats will be able to continue nominating and confirming federal judges, and, if they play their…

[ad_1] What a year 2022 has been. There was so … much … news. We saw record-high inflation, war in Ukraine, a landmark Supreme Court session, continuing effects of the pandemic, the Winter Olympics, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the World Cup and, of course, the midterms. In typical FiveThirtyEight fashion, we’ve been reflecting…

[ad_1] PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY DAN DAO AND EMILY SCHERER / GETTY IMAGES A few weeks before the midterms, I attended an election-denying group’s Zoom meeting. There had been alarming reports of a massive, well-funded campaign to place election deniers in voting centers that could cause havoc on Election Day. I wanted to know exactly what…

[ad_1] This video is part of our series “The Numbers That Defined 2022.” Transcript Maya Sweedler: One of the most important numbers coming out of 2022 is nine. That’s the difference between the number of seats Republicans won in the U.S. House of Representatives in November and the number of seats Democrats won. If you’re…