Ta'Leah Van Sistine
Nate Silver
For part of the presentation, Nate Silver answered questions from Susan Webb Yackee, director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 midterm elections, campaign ads have made clear what issues are important to Wisconsin voters on different sides of the political spectrum: inflation, abortion and crime. But at a talk on Oct. 26 at the Wisconsin Union Theater, Nate Silver — founder of the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight — said a fourth issue is also top of mind for many voters: threats to democracy.
Silver said 60 percent of Americans will have a candidate on their ballot who believes the 2020 election was stolen. Some of these candidates, he added, will win their races, both in traditionally conservative states and states like Wisconsin that fluctuate between Democratic and Republican leadership.
“If we have more people in power, including [in positions] to officiate elections, who believe the previous election was stolen, then there are a variety of bad things that could happen,” Silver said.
He allowed that the press sometimes exaggerates the urgency of certain elections and issues, but he said the importance of this particular issue cannot be overstated. Silver referenced a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College that found that 71 percent of respondents believed that “American democracy is currently under threat.” Voters, he said, have different reasons for feeling this way: some incorrectly believe the election was stolen and others are worried about voter suppression.
“If we have a constitutional crisis the next time we have an election in the U.S., that’s a big problem sooner or later for our democracy,” he said.
Silver’s talk was hosted by the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, where he serves as this year’s public affairs journalist in residence. He spent most of the evening discussing the implications of recent national polling with the midterm elections less than two weeks away.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s “2022 Election Forecast,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has a slight lead over Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Gov. Tony Evers has an even more narrow lead over Tim Michels.
But Silver warned that some races might not be determined on Election Day or possibly for days after. He said delayed results, usually due to the counting of absentee ballots, can create concern among some voters.
“I don’t really want to dignify 2020 claims of election fraud,” he said, “but it’s just going to strike a lot of voters as wrong if one batch of ballots are coming in at a different time and they’re different than the other batch of ballots.”
While it’s difficult to help everyone feel confident in the voting process, Silver said standardizing vote-counting procedures from state to state could reduce some voters’ concerns.
Theola Carter, a La Follette School alum and member of the school's Board of Visitors, said Silver's talk reminded her that people both within and outside of government don't understand how the voting process works. “It’s important," she says, "the American public understands the Democratic system other than through Schoolhouse Rock.”
