About FiftyPlusOne.news
FiftyPlusOne.news is a website for polling aggregation, election forecasting, and political analysis. Whereas our main website constitutes the data side of our business (where we collect polling data and publish products derived from that data), this Substack is the editorial side of the business (where we write articles and analysis for readers).
Why subscribe?
While the two websites are distinct on the web, accounts sync across them; if you pay for a paid subscription on Substack, you get bundled access to the full data on our other website. This is the main explicit benefit of a paying subscription to this Substack.
Paying subscribers to FiftyPlusOne.news get:
Full access to the polling data tables on our website, including all polls of presidential approval, the congressional generic ballot, presidential primaries, Governor, Senate, and House elections, and favorability ratings of key figures.
Semi-regular blog posts about the latest polls and how we calculate our averages and forecasts.
Full access to future projects such as forecasts and crosstab averages, which will be paywalled.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and our polling data bundle, which includes full access to the website FiftyPlusOne.news.
Mission and Standards
Our mission is to further a deeper understanding of public opinion and elections using thoughtful, data-driven, non-partisan analysis.
In practice, this means holding ourselves to the following standards:
Data/research. Data should be complete, fair, rigorous, transparent, consistently adhere to standards, and balance speed and accuracy. Research decisions should be made in a neutral fashion.
Editorial. Our story budget should reflect the balance of questions in public discourse, explore stories from all sides (politically or otherwise). Writers should approach stories from the starting point of political neutrality.
Visuals. We seek to provide clear visuals that enhance understanding of data, demonstrate uncertainty where necessary, display data according to visualization best practices, do not seek to mislead, are technically accessible to all audiences, accessible to the visually impaired, transparent about the limits of the data, and open to public feedback.
Who are you?
Mary Radcliffe
Head of Research
Mary gathers all of the data you see on the 50+1 website, and manages our extensive database of historical polling data, election results, and anything else a data journalist would need. She was previously the head of research at FiveThirtyEight, where she established processes for aggregating all of the data collected and published by 538 and ingested into its models. Before that, she taught Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington. Mary is a proud Pittsburgher and beleaguered Steelers fan.
Katie Marriner
Head of Engineering
Katie designed and developed the front- and back-end of the 50+1 website and implements new visual and technical site improvements. She was previously a Senior Visual Journalist at FiveThirtyEight, where she headed up the design and web development for the outlet’s 2024 presidential election forecasting model. Prior to working at 538, Katie produced interactive graphics and interactive tools for MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal. She enjoys running (slowly), photography and trying new coffeeshops. She lives in Brooklyn.
G. Elliott Morris
Head of Analytics
Elliott manages the editorial operation and statistical models powering 50+1’s averages and forecasts. He was previously the Editorial Director of Data Analytics at ABC News and responsible for FiveThirtyEight’s political data journalism. Before that, he was a Senior Data Journalist for The Economist. He has spent a decade building polling aggregation and forecasting models, using techniques from time-series and Bayesian statistics. He is the author of the book “Strength In Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them” and writes the Substack Strength In Numbers. He lives in Washington, DC.
