Should we trust polls campaigns leak to the press?

And what can history tell us about Trump's chances in the Republican primary?

September 6, 2023, 9:00 AM

Now that we are on the other side of Labor Day and summer is subsiding, this is — as tradition goes — when focus on political campaigns really begins to heat up. The off-year elections this November will get some attention, but the main attraction is still the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we ask a question we will undoubtedly return to in the four months until the Iowa caucuses: Is Donald Trump’s nomination inevitable? And if not inevitable, how can we place the likelihood he wins the GOP primary in historical context?

We also have partial results from two special primary elections and we debate “good or bad use of polling” for a classic and controversial topic: internal polls.