This week, a Siena College/New York Times poll showed President Biden with just a 33 percent approval rating, a result so poor that it touched off speculation — including from yours truly — about whether he would even run again in 2024. The Siena/New York Times number is on the low end of the polling consensus, but Biden’s approval rating in our polling average — about 39 percent1 — is nonetheless a historically low number.

And yet, the same poll showed a neck-and-neck race for Congress. Democrats led by 1 percentage point among registered voters2 on the question of which party voters preferred controlled Congress and trailed by 1 point among likely voters.

What to make of this seeming divergence? How much does the president’s approval rating actually matter for predicting congressional outcomes?

From a zoomed-out perspective, the answer is that there’s a reasonably strong relationship. If you knew nothing else about the race for Congress, you’d expect an unpopular president’s party to lose seats. And indeed, that’s likely what will happen this year, too. Republicans are an 87 percent favorite to take over control of the House, according to the Deluxe version of our forecast. The Senate remains much closer to a toss-up, but that has more to do with poor Republican candidates than anything the Democrats are doing well.

But predicting the number of seats lost in Congress based on the president’s approval rating is not quite the question we’re interested in from a forecasting standpoint. Rather, we want to know how much the president’s approval rating matters given all the other information we have about the race. In other words, is Biden’s poor approval already “baked in” to the congressional generic ballot polls and polls of individual House and Senate races? Or is there reason to think that the Democrats’ standing will get worse between now and November?

The statistical answer is that it’s mostly baked in. Warning: The following paragraphs are going to be a bit technical. If you want more of an intuitive answer, skip ahead to the bolded bullet points below.

The way our model addresses this is by looking at every congressional race since 1990 and evaluating how predictable the movement in the generic ballot has been based on baseline conditions, which we sometimes refer to as the “fundamentals.” Specifically, the factors it looks at include the president’s approval rating, the result of the previous election for Congress, whether or not the election is a midterm and the degree of political polarization. (Times of high political polarization — like now — will tend to produce less dramatic swings in races for Congress because there are fewer swing voters.)

Right now, those “fundamentals” expect Democrats to eventually lose the House popular vote by about 8 points, which would be an awful result for the party and would very likely result in its loss of both chambers of Congress. By comparison, if Biden had a breakeven approval rating instead of being about 17 points underwater, the “fundamentals” would predict Democrats to lose the popular vote by around 4.5 points, which would still mean almost certain doom in the House but might be enough for them to save the Senate.

However, the model also weighs those “fundamentals” against the current state of affairs. Right now, Democrats trail in our generic congressional ballot polling average — a proxy for the House popular vote — by about 2 points. But that’s actually more like a 4-point deficit among likely voters, since Republicans are likely to have a turnout advantage in November. Our model accounts for this, but the model also accounts for factors aside from the generic ballot in forecasting the House popular vote, and when we take into consideration those factors, our model predicts Democrats to lose the popular vote by almost 6 points, not that far from what the “fundamentals” show.

Even if there were a bigger gap, though, the “fundamentals” ultimately do not get all that much weight in the model. The reason is simply that, even at this fairly early point in the cycle, the generic ballot (at least if you properly adjust it to account for likely voters) and other indicators directly related to the current election have historically been more reliable predictors than the “fundamentals.” The model does expect conditions to get a bit worse for Democrats, but really just a bit.3

So what is the intuition behind this? Here are a few factors to keep in mind:

1. Voters have good reasons to disapprove of Biden without wanting Republicans in Congress

When your approval rating has fallen into the 30s, you’ve not only lost the confidence of most swing voters but also some members of your own party. The Siena/New York Times poll, for instance, showed Biden with only a 70 percent approval rating even among Democrats. However, 90 percent of Democrats in that same poll prefer Democratic control of Congress, compared to just 4 percent who want the GOP in charge.

One concern for Democrats is that those disaffected voters won’t turn out. Still, there’s no particular reason to expect them to vote Republican if they do. A lot of them think Biden is too old — a concern also shared by many independent voters — but that’s more a factor for 2024 than in congressional preferences for 2022.

And on many issues — from abortion to LGBTQ rights to the integrity of the 2020 vote — Republicans are adopting highly right-wing, partisan positions that have little appeal to swing voters and might even motivate otherwise disaffected Democrats to turn out. Parties generally pay a penalty for ideological extremism. In other words, although Democrats have also adopted unpopular left-wing positions on many issues, Republicans aren’t as poised to capitalize on a high inflation and poor electoral environment for Democrats as a more moderate, less Trumpian version of the party would be.

2. It’s usually best to trust a direct measure over an indirect one

This is just a good principle of statistical analysis. If you have a direct measure of the quantity that you’re interested in, there’s not much need for a proxy or an indirect one.

Suppose, for instance, that you’re trying to estimate the volume of home sales in — I don’t know — Indianapolis. You could imagine some clever ways to get at this. You could drive around town and count the number of “FOR SALE” signs. Or you could track the number of clicks on Zillow and other websites that list homes for sale. But all of that is beside the point because home sales can be directly measured, albeit with something of a lag until reports are compiled.

Likewise, if you’re interested in races for Congress, and you ask voters how they’re going to vote for Congress and also how they feel about the president, voters’ preference for Congress is the direct measure and the one that should be more reliable. It’s presumptuous, frankly, to suggest otherwise and to disbelieve a voter who says she disapproves of Biden but also wants Democrats to stay in charge of Congress.

3. Biden and Democrats weren’t that popular to begin with

In the national exit poll in November 2020, 52 percent had a favorable opinion of Biden and 46 percent had an unfavorable opinion. That’s considerably better than his numbers now, and Biden won a fairly comfortable victory in the popular vote. But, it also wasn’t the sort of sweeping mandate that, say, former President Barack Obama had in 2008, which was accompanied by approval and favorability numbers that initially soared into the 60s and 70s. Moreover, Democrats rode into Obama’s first term with 257 House seats, far more than the 222 they held after the 2020 election.

Part of the reason that the 2010 midterms were so awful for Democrats was because they had a long way to fall from being about as popular as a party probably could be in modern American politics. In 2022, Democrats don’t have that problem because they weren’t very popular to begin with. They barely held onto the House.

So while goodwill toward Biden may have been just enough to get him over the hump in 2020 — and a lot of that goodwill has now evaporated — conditions aren’t necessarily that different than they were two years ago. The major parties are both unpopular, there are few if any nationally beloved political figures and the country is highly polarized. What’s more, with unpopular former President Donald Trump potentially set to declare a 2024 bid soon, he could also be a factor in the race — maybe one that helps Democrats.

4. So far, presidential approval and the race for Congress have diverged, not converged

Finally, I’d note that if you had predicted some months ago that polls for Congress and Biden’s numbers would have converged toward one another, you would have been wrong. Since May 1, Biden’s approval rating has declined by about 15 points:

And yet, the generic ballot has been essentially unchanged:

Instead, as voters have gathered more information about the race, they have drawn more of a distinction between how they feel about Biden and what they’d like to see happen in Congress. Maybe this trend will reverse itself. But the “fundamentalists” — the analysts who think the races for Congress are predictable based on presidential approval and other baseline conditions — have been wrong so far.

FiveThirtyEight is seeking a temporary Video Producer to join our team full-time from mid-July through mid-November. This person will pitch, storyboard and edit videos about U.S. politics, filling an important role in our coverage of the 2022 midterm elections.

The Video Producer will report to and work with the Senior Video Producer to direct and edit a short-form video series that gives our audience a deeper, data-informed understanding of American politics. They will also be responsible for editing the video version of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, which comes out twice a week. During the primaries, the second weekly episode is often filmed on Tuesday nights after election results come in, so the video producer must be open to working a shifted schedule at times, which will include some late nights.

The Video Producer will work closely with the rest of FiveThirtyEight’s video team; FiveThirtyEight reporters, visual journalists and copy editors; and the graphics team from ABC News Digital. This is a U.S.-based position, and work can be conducted remotely or out of our New York City office. Candidates should be able to work 40 hours a week on an Eastern time zone schedule. To apply, please send a résumé and two clips by Sunday, June 19 to anna.rothschild@abc.com with the subject line “Temporary Video Producer.”

Basic Qualifications:

Proficiency in Adobe Premiere ProAbility to script and storyboardExperience working in a fast-paced environment on a tight deadlineExperience with multi-cam editingAbility to communicate about visual style and provide thoughtful, constructive feedback to animators and other collaboratorsSolid news judgmentGeneral knowledge of and interest in U.S. electoral politicsAn interest in data journalism

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Experience working in a newsroom Proficiency in Adobe After Effects and IllustratorAbility to light a studio shootExperience filming with a Canon C300Experience directing a remote film crewExperience editing a multi-guest podcast video

FiveThirtyEight is seeking a diligent, well-organized and kind Research Assistant to help track down and input polls and other election data, as well as contribute research to political stories and projects. 

This part-time position plays a critical role in supporting FiveThirtyEight’s political coverage and interactive projects like our presidential approval tracker and pollster ratings. You’ll help maintain the databases that keep FiveThirtyEight running, especially our one-of-a-kind polling database. And, what’s most exciting, you’ll be part of the team who feed data into FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 midterm forecast model in real time.

This position is ideal for someone interested in breaking into the world of political data. You’ll work closely with our Senior Research Assistant and collaborate with our politics reporters, copy desk and visual journalists. 

This is a U.S.-based position. Remote work will be considered, or you can work out of our New York City office once it reopens. The exact schedule is flexible (we’ll work with you to set it), but hours are capped at 29 per week. Our hope is that you will stay in the job at least through the 2022 midterms, if not longer. 

To apply, please email a cover letter and résumé to Senior Research Assistant Mary Radcliffe at mary.l.radcliffe@abc.com. Due to the number of applications we receive, we cannot guarantee a response to every applicant.

Responsibilities:

Monitor polling news, collect and enter new polls into our polling database and upload data to our polling trackers and models.Contribute to original research for specific stories and projects.Develop an expertise in U.S. poll operators — their methodologies, quirks and quality.Respond to inquiries from pollsters and the general public about our projects and datasets.

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Experience with spreadsheets and collecting data.A solid understanding of U.S. politics, particularly electoral politics.Strong attention to detail and a willingness to perform repetitive tasks (e.g., data entry) in service of important projects.Facility using online tools, like search engines and public databases, to track down specific information.Comfort with calling, emailing and chasing down sources to get them to send and answer questions about their data.Availability and willingness to work odd hours. (Polls often drop late at night or on weekends.)

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It wasn’t long ago that the U.S. economy needed a shot in the arm. Millions of Americans had lost their jobs as the country shut itself down to slow the spread of a deadly virus. At the time, policymakers, advocates and economists agreed that Americans needed immediate relief — and so they quickly acted on it. 

Lawmakers passed a $2.2-trillion stimulus package in March 2020, followed by two more installments of COVID-19 relief later in 2020 and then again in 2021. In total, it added up to one of the most generous fiscal responses to the virus globally.

There would be a catch, though. As U.S. prices continue to rise by rates not seen in decades, it’s become clear that the stimulus came at a significant, unintended cost: inflation. It’s unclear whether inflation has reached its peak, but the situation is now economically and politically toxic, and it has left many of the same policymakers, advocates and economists now asking whether the stimulus checks were a mistake.

The stimulus had big economic benefits — but it also fueled inflation

On the one hand, COVID-19 stimulus undoubtedly helped Americans in some very big, tangible ways. Namely, it reduced poverty — beyond merely keeping people afloat during the early days of the pandemic. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure, the stimulus payments moved 11.7 million people out of poverty in 2020 — a drop in the poverty rate from 11.8 to 9.1 percent. And the 2021 poverty rate was estimated to fall even further to 7.7 percent, per a July 2021 report from the Urban Institute. We don’t know yet whether this came to fruition, but Laura Wheaton, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the analysts behind the 2021 numbers, told us that it was clear from their analysis that the stimulus checks were driving a dramatic decline in poverty.

More broadly, the stimulus checks also cushioned workers during one of the worst economic crises in modern history, which likely helped the economy bounce back in record time. In April 2020, when Americans were receiving the first round of checks — up to $1,200 with the CARES Act — the unemployment rate was at a disastrous 14.7 percent. But two years later, it’s almost returned to its pre-pandemic levels, with many job openings. “I hope we don’t forget how awesome it was that we supported people so well, and that we recovered as quickly as we did,” said Tara Sinclair, a professor of economics at George Washington University. 

However, there is also evidence that the stimulus, especially the last round, likely stoked higher and higher prices for the very people it was intended to help. Though global supply chain issues (and, more recently, the war in Ukraine) have been significant drivers of inflation, the divergence between U.S. and European inflation suggests there’s more to it than that. In fact, a recent analysis from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that the stimulus may have raised U.S. inflation by about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021. 

Americans are struggling financially as a result — particularly low-income people who don’t have a cushion to absorb higher prices. Moreover, inflation is outpacing wage growth. Despite a 5.6 percent jump in wages year-over-year, 8.5 percent inflation in March 2022 meant that Americans saw a nearly 3 percent decrease in inflation-adjusted wages. 

This wasn’t a completely unforeseen problem, either. Back in early 2021, some economists raised the alarm about the size of the final round of stimulus — the American Rescue Plan, which was headlined by $1,400 direct payments to individual Americans — for its potential to overheat the economy and create an inflationary environment. According to Thomas Philippon, a professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, the stimulus checks played a chief role in creating excessive demand, which in turn spurred inflation. “The demand boost was very large in the U.S., and the stimulus checks were a large part of it,” Philippon said. But at the same time, many policymakers — including Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve — thought that the risk of putting too little money into the economy seemed greater than the risk of putting in too much.

The stimulus became political

Part of the problem is that the last rounds of stimulus — the checks that went out in December 2020 and March 2021 — may actually have been too big. But the decision to send an extra $2,000 to most Americans wasn’t backed by evidence or economic calculations. It was shaped by politics. 

Though the CARES Act passed on a near-unanimous, bipartisan basis in March 2020, when former President Donald Trump was in office, a much different story played out in the transition from his administration to now-President Biden’s. Toward the end of 2020, Trump pushed for additional $2,000 payments, which House Democrats supported and later passed, but that effort was blocked by Republicans in the Senate who were alarmed by the price tag. Ultimately, direct payments of just $600 were greenlit — despite broad-based support for the bigger checks among voters of both parties. 

But Democrats, with control of the Senate hanging in the balance, decided to campaign for larger stimulus checks in the run-up to the Georgia run-off elections. It’s impossible to know whether support for the checks gave now- Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff their respective edges, but Democrats did end up winning both seats and passing the American Rescue Plan two months later, which included $1,400 checks to meet the desired $2,000 target.

Claudia Sahm, director of macroeconomic research at the Jain Family Institute, said that the March 2021 check should have ideally been smaller. But because of the politics of the issue, there wasn’t room to push for a lower number. “People had been promised the $2,000 checks,” she said. Politically, that meant it was either going to be a $2,000 payment — or nothing at all.

Moreover, a lot of the COVID-19 economic response leaned left, which may help explain why so many policymakers underestimated the threat of inflation. They were instead more worried about not giving Americans enough money — a lesson of a previous era. Democrats who were in office during the Great Recession — including Biden, who helped oversee the 2009 recovery as vice president — approached the COVID-19 recovery determined not to repeat the mistakes of spending too little money. It wasn’t clear at the time, but many economists now believe that Congress’s reluctance to pump money into the economy after the 2008 crash led to a long and grinding recovery.

That’s why this time around, Democrats wanted to pour money into the economy. It seemed like a clear political winner, since support for another round of stimulus payments was extremely high: Polls from late 2020 and early 2021 consistently found that the vast majority of Americans, including many Republicans, supported the proposed stimulus checks. But though Democrats won control of the Senate and passed the overwhelmingly popular stimulus — albeit on a party-line vote — that popularist ethos hasn’t seemed to bear fruit since. In particular, voters don’t seem to be rewarding Democrats and Biden for the extra money granted by the stimulus. A majority of voters blame Biden for inflation — including a sizable chunk of Democrats — and disapprove of his handling of the economy more broadly. 

Instead of helping Biden and his party, then, the stimulus could end up hurting them in the 2022 midterm elections. 

We will likely learn the wrong lessons from the stimulus

The lessons we draw from the response to the COVID-19 recession are important, because they’ll almost certainly shape how we respond to the next economic downturn. In the wake of the Great Recession, policymakers shot too low. Now, they appear to have shot too high. If this were the story of Goldilocks, we’d be poised to get things just right next time — but politics is not a fairy tale, and it’s very possible that we’ll overcorrect whenever another recession hits. 

In many ways, we’re still figuring out what the lessons are as the pandemic still isn’t over. And it’s, of course, hard to disentangle what could have happened had the government’s response not been so aggressive. One clear lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic, though, is that America’s social safety net wasn’t prepared to deal with a crisis of this magnitude, which is a big part of the reason why the response had to be so massive.

Our social safety net wasn’t ready to catch everyone who needed it, so it was very difficult to figure out who really needed relief and when the tap should be turned off, according to Sinclair. Rickety state unemployment insurance systems couldn’t be recalibrated to replace people’s incomes, so many people ended up being paid much more after they lost their jobs. It wasn’t easy to target direct payments to people in specific income brackets, so the payments went out to some families who didn’t need them.

But with a better social welfare infrastructure, we might not have been as vulnerable to inflation, according to Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy at the New School. Had we been able to identify and reach the people who were most in need of support, a huge, blanket response wouldn’t have been necessary. 

“[T]he automatic stabilizer of that leaves us less vulnerable to economic shocks, like a pandemic recession,” Hamilton said. “We would have that type of policy infrastructure already in place.”

The problem is that politicians’ incentives run the other way — there’s no political benefit to preparing for a nebulous future crisis, so they often don’t. And as anxiety about inflation mounts, there’s little appetite to pump more money into the country’s social safety net. “It would be a sweeping change, and it would look like a huge expenditure,” Sinclair said. “And it’s hard to tell people, ‘Hey, look, if we do this, it’ll look like a lot of money now, but the next time there’s a crisis, we won’t end up just spending a trillion or two, willy-nilly.’”

Depending on what happens with inflation, economists may end up concluding that the tradeoffs of the COVID-19 stimulus were worth it, but that won’t necessarily be the political takeaway. All of this underscores the fundamental tension of any response to an economic crisis — it will be designed by politicians, whose goals are shaped by the prevailing political winds. And at this point, it seems very likely that the political pain inflicted by rising prices will shape the way we remember the current response, regardless of whether economists agree.

When people talk about changes in work and office culture brought on by the pandemic — whether it’s returning to the office, working from home or a combination of remote and in-person work — they often overlook one very important group: people who were never able to work from home in the first place.

There are many reasons why some people continued to report to in-person jobs throughout the pandemic, and we’re interested in talking to people — particularly women — who were unable to work from home for at least some or all of the pandemic. We’d like to speak to you if you had or have the kind of job that requires in-person interactions, like in food service, retail or health care, or if you had or have the kind of job that may have been possible to do remotely but for whatever reason you were unable to do so.

We’d like to know how you handled it, how it affected your work and home life, why you weren’t able to work from home and how it’s changed your relationship with work going forward. We’d also like to know whether being unable to work from home made a difference in your decision to continue working, leave the workforce or search for a new job. 

Please fill out the form below if you’d like to tell us your story. No personal details will be shared without your permission.

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Imagine the federal government could lift millions of American children out of poverty with a single program. That program would help parents put nutritious meals on the table, pay for school expenses and even save for kids’ college — all with no negative impact on the economy.

You don’t have to imagine. We had it just last year … and now we don’t.

By nearly every empirical measure, the expanded child tax credit (CTC) — the policy passed in 2021 that gave parents a few hundred dollars per month for each child in their family — was a wild success, dramatically reducing child poverty and making it easier for families to buy food and pay for housing and utilities. In combination with other COVID-19 relief measures, particularly the stimulus payments that went out to Americans in April 2020, January 2021 and March 2021, the CTC helped buffer families against the economic upheaval of the pandemic.

It’s rare that researchers can say with certainty that a program like the CTC actually worked. Politicians usually consider policies in an abstract, hypothetical way, knowing that a piece of legislation might not accomplish their aims. But by the time Congress was thinking about extending the CTC, there was a mountain of cold, hard data showing that this program did a lot to help children and families. 

Yet that wasn’t enough to save it. The expanded tax credit ended in December 2021, and chances are low it will be renewed. That tells you all you need to know about which is more powerful in Washington — politicians’ biases or actual evidence.

By the time the pandemic hit, reformers had been pushing for years for the U.S. to establish a universal allowance for families with children. Many other rich countries give some kind of blanket financial support to parents and, not coincidentally, those countries also have lower rates of child poverty. 

But it took the ultimate upheaval — a global pandemic — to nudge American lawmakers into action. In the spring of 2021, Democrats in Congress transformed the CTC, an anti-poverty measure that’s been part of the tax code since 1997, into a kind of emergency child allowance. Unlike the original version, which parents received as a single lump sum when they filed their taxes, the expanded CTC was distributed in monthly payments. From July through December of last year, most parents of children under age 6 received $300 per month per child, and most parents of children between the ages of 6 and 17 received $250 per month per child. The new payment was more generous: Families received up to $3,600 per child per year under the expanded CTC, compared to only $2,000 under the original version. And while the original CTC was mostly available to middle-class families, many more parents were eligible under the expanded program.1

Government programs are often glitchy when they start, but the fact that most families were eligible for the payments meant that they were fairly easy to administer. The IRS already had all the information it needed for anyone who had claimed children on their previous year’s taxes — no additional applications or forms to fill out. The payments went straight into recipients’ bank accounts or they got a check in the mail, with minimal fuss.

And the money helped — a lot. Beginning July 15, the vast majority (88 percent) of families with children received a payment of either $300 or $250 per child. Researchers at the Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy found that the July payment kept around 3 million children out of poverty. At the end of 2021, the researchers estimated that the program was keeping 3.7 million children out of poverty.

“Families were living in very precarious economic circumstances,” said Megan Curran, one of the researchers on the Columbia team. “That $300 or $600 per month — it might not sound like much, but when you’re making very little, it can be enough to give you a financial cushion.”

The reduction in child poverty was the big, headline-making finding. But the payments helped in other ways, too. Multiple surveys found that most parents spent the money on essential things like food, rent and bills.

Low-income parents were especially likely to spend the money on basic needs. Several studies found that once the money started arriving, fewer families reported that they didn’t have enough to eat. “The most commonly reported expenditure was food,” Curran said. “After that, it was essential bills — these very basic things that households need.” But the money came in handy for other things, too. When the beginning of the school year rolled around, about one-third of parents who received a CTC payment spent at least some of it on school supplies. Another study found that most parents planned to save some of the money for a rainy day. Some said they would spend the money on tutors for their children — perhaps helping to offset some of the learning loss caused by over a year of school disruptions. The payments helped some families dig themselves out of debt or escape eviction.

The findings were especially striking because there were no strings attached to the money. Parents could spend the payments however they liked. And despite politicians’ longstanding suspicion that if we simply gave people money, they’d run out to buy drugs or cigarettes, families were overwhelmingly likely to spend it in ways that directly benefited their children.

Of course, it was possible that the expanded payments had drawbacks, too. For years, some economists had been concerned that a child allowance for all families — whether the parents had a job or not — would give some people a reason not to work. A study published a few months after the CTC expansion estimated that the move would prompt 1.5 million workers to quit their jobs and leave the labor force, canceling out some of the payments’ benefits. In an October opinion column, two co-authors of the study argued that based on their findings, extending the expanded CTC would do more harm than good.

That doesn’t seem to be what happened. When other economists looked at real life data from when the monthly payments were going out, they found that only a small share of parents said they left their jobs. And those people were balanced out by another group of parents who started working after the expanded CTC went into effect — perhaps because they suddenly had enough money to pay for child care. 

Researchers sliced and diced the data, looking for any negative effect on the economy. It wasn’t there. “​​Any way that we cut it, we just don’t see an impact on whether parents work,” said Elizabeth Ananat, an economics professor at Barnard College and a co-author of one of the studies. “And that’s in contrast with all the work on poverty and material hardship where we see huge, huge effects.”

But the evidence didn’t seem compelling to the one person who controlled the expanded CTC’s fate: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. By the fall of 2021, when Democrats were pondering a renewal of the payments as part of a sprawling social policy bill, it was clear that it wasn’t going to get bipartisan support. That meant if one moderate Democrat defected, the expanded payments would expire at the end of the year. Manchin thought the payments were too broad. He didn’t think parents should be eligible unless they had a job, and he wanted a much lower income cap for parents to qualify. 

There’s a certain logic to his reasoning — the payments shouldn’t discourage people from working, and it should only go to the neediest families. But experts told me that these changes wouldn’t actually translate into money better spent. A complicated formula for determining eligibility can keep the people who most need the money from getting it. And aside from the fact that parents weren’t leaving their jobs because of the payments, work requirements may be counterproductive. “It’s the equivalent of kicking someone when they’re down,” Ananat said. “You might have a sick kid and have to stay home for a day and lose your job. Then you can’t pay for child care to go out and interview for a bunch of new jobs.”

Manchin didn’t agree. By the end of 2021, he reportedly told other senators that without strict limitations, parents would spend the money on drugs — despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. The Democrats’ social policy bill died in the Senate in December, and the last round of the expanded payments went out to families that same month, with no sign of a renewal in sight.

The impact of losing the money was as dramatic as gaining it. In January and February, families with children were more likely to say they were struggling to cover household expenses. Child poverty rose. Parents reported struggling to pay for diapers and child care. A Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted in February found that 75 percent of people who had benefited from the expanded CTC said that losing the money would affect their financial security.

Meanwhile, researchers like Ananat were left standing in frustration on the sidelines, wondering how such a successful program had gone up in smoke. “The thing that’s so heartbreaking to me is that we were able to actually find out what the policy did,” Ananat said. “And now we have an answer. It just helps kids. That’s all it does. And then they just let it go.”

UPDATE (June 2, 2022, 5:15 p.m.): We are no longer accepting applications for this position.

FiveThirtyEight is seeking a kind, collaborative and creative Senior Visual Journalist to join our Interactives and Graphics team. Senior Visual Journalists are design leaders in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom. Though they serve primarily as individual contributors, they also amplify the work of the team by mentoring more junior visual journalists, thoughtfully giving and receiving feedback and leading by example. We’re looking for a seasoned journalist who will exercise strong news judgment, bring a sharp eye for detail and hold our work to the highest standards.

The Senior Visual Journalist will report to either the Deputy Editor, Interactives and Graphics, or the Senior Editor for Interactives and work closely with the rest of the Interactives team as well as reporters and editors across the newsroom. This full-time role with benefits is a U.S.-based position. Full-time remote work may be considered, but because our offices are in New York City, we prefer candidates based in the area.

If you have questions, please email Deputy Editor Chris Groskopf. To apply, submit a cover letter and résumé through the Disney Careers portal.

Responsibilities:

Producing highly polished, visually impactful stories and projects that attract, excite and engage our readersLeading the design process for our larger projects, including by creating principles, specifications and other documentation that enable work to be delegated to the teamContributing to a rotation of daily charts production and “seconding” less experienced visual journalistsInspiring, mentoring and guiding teammates and colleagues in their visual workParticipating in larger strategic conversations about visual style, site design, branding, accessibility and moreGiving thoughtful, candid feedback to peers, colleagues and managers and openly receiving it in turn

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Three or more years of relevant experienceProficiency using design software, particularly Adobe IllustratorFluency in JavaScript and one or more libraries used for creating graphics, such as D3, along with a functional understanding of the “full stack” of web-development technologiesFluency in basic statistics — for example, a conversational understanding of concepts such as margin of error and regression analysisEagerness to collaborate with other visual journalists, computational journalists, reporters and editors across the newsroomExperience working on deadline

Preferred Qualifications:

Five or more years of relevant experienceA solid understanding of U.S. politics, particularly electoral politics, major U.S. sports and/or scienceExperience with statistical programming languages, such as RExperience with cartography and mapping tools, such as QGIS and TopoJSONExperience applying product-design techniques to large journalism projects, such as user research, rapid prototyping and user testing

Interested candidates are strongly encouraged to apply even if they don’t meet every qualification.

Qualified but ready for a new challenge? We’re also hiring a Senior Editor for Interactives.

ABC News and FiveThirtyEight are equal-opportunity employers. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.

FiveThirtyEight is seeking an intern to work with our video and social teams during the summer of 2022. We’re looking for a current student journalist or recent graduate who is enthusiastic about accuracy, clarity, video production and storytelling; who is adept at building and cultivating communities on platforms like TikTok or Instagram; and is interested in sharing our wonky, data-driven approach to sports and political journalism with those audiences.

The intern’s main role will be to build up FiveThirtyEight’s video presence, engagement and following on social platforms. This means pitching and executing short social videos while developing and refining FiveThirtyEight’s cross-platform voice and tone. Should they have interest, the intern might narrate or host videos. The intern will also help with general video audience strategy and work with our senior designer and video journalists to repurpose existing assets for distribution on our website and other platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

Journalism experience (whether from a journalism class, school paper, job or internship) is a must, as is some experience reporting on politics. But “politics” doesn’t just mean electoral politics — it could mean you have experience reporting on policy issues, social movements, how polarization affects your community or something else.

The social/video intern will report to the senior editor for social and audience and the senior video producer but will also have the opportunity to work with reporters across the newsroom.

Applicants should be able to commit to a full-time schedule from May or June through August. They must be a current student or have graduated in the past 18 months. This is a paid position and can be done remotely.

Basic qualifications:

Some journalism experienceA solid understanding of U.S. politics and a prolific consumption of newsEnthusiasm for FiveThirtyEight and the kind of journalism we createDemonstrated experience creating compelling social videosSome experience with Adobe Premiere. Applicants should be able to cut clips and add musicExperience writing scripts and storyboardingExperience behind a camera (a smartphone camera counts)

Preferred qualifications:

Experience writing social copyExperience using WordPress or a similar CMS to publish articles Experience in front of the camera (a smartphone camera counts)

Additional information:

If you don’t check every box, that’s OK — we’d still like to hear from you. Apply here with a résumé and brief cover letter. Please include links in your cover letter or résumé to three social videos you’ve produced. They can be personal projects and don’t necessarily need to be journalistic.

At the time of application, the applicant must be enrolled in an accredited college/university and taking at least one class in the semester/quarter prior to participation in the internship program, or the applicant must have graduated from a college/university within six months.

This internship is a paid, remote internship and will run May/June 2022 through January 2023. Candidate must be available to work 40 hours/week on Eastern Time for the duration of the internship.

ABC News and FiveThirtyEight are equal-opportunity employers. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.

FiveThirtyEight is hiring an Art and Design Intern for the summer and fall. Are you someone who loves using photography, illustration and design to tell a compelling story? Are you considering a career in visual journalism? The Art and Design Intern will work with FiveThirtyEight’s Senior Designer and story editors to make our stories as visually compelling as they are well-researched and written. It’s an exciting opportunity for someone with an interest in editorial design to have an outsize impact on a small team.

This paid internship will run from approximately May/June 2022 through January 2023 and can be fully remote if you live outside the New York City area. Current students at accredited colleges or universities are eligible, as are recent graduates who were enrolled in at least one course in the semester before the internship starts.

The Art and Design Intern may work up to 40 hours per week (with some flexibility in schedule, as needed).

To apply, please send a cover letter, résumé and link to your website or portfolio through the Disney Careers portal. Even if you don’t check all the boxes below, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible! If you have any questions about this role, please email Emily Scherer, Senior Designer. 

Responsibilities:

Researching, cropping and writing photo captions for storiesApplying stylistic treatments to photos to create visually consistent art elements for stories in a series (for example, World Cup updates)Thinking through the order and pacing of images within a story to find the best way to keep our readers engaged throughoutCreating custom illustrations to lead daily and feature storiesHelping assemble stories in WordPress and contributing ideas for headlines and other display text to make sure all elements of the piece work well togetherCollaborating with other FiveThirtyEight teams on video and interactive projects

Basic Qualifications:

Interest in pursuing a career in graphic design, art direction, photo editing and/or illustrationExperience in visual arts or photojournalism at the college levelProficiency in Adobe Photoshop and IllustratorKindness and enthusiasm for collaborating

Preferred Qualifications:

Familiarity and interest in U.S. politics, sports and/or scienceProficiency in Adobe InDesign, After Effects and/or WordPress

ABC News and FiveThirtyEight are equal-opportunity employers. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.

UPDATE (March 29, 2022, 10:01 a.m.): We are no longer accepting applications for this position.

FiveThirtyEight is seeking a kind and creative Associate Visual Journalist to join our Interactives and Graphics team. This entry-level position is ideal for recent graduates and career switchers, as it offers immediate access to the experience and mentorship necessary to become a thriving member of the Interactives team. Day-to-day work primarily involves creating static charts, but the Associate Visual Journalist will also have opportunities to work on interactives and occasionally pitch their own work.

The Associate Visual Journalist will report to either the Deputy Editor, Interactives and Graphics, or the Senior Editor, Interactives, and work closely with the rest of the Interactives team, as well as with reporters and editors across the newsroom. This full-time role with benefits is a U.S.-based position. As our offices are in New York, we prefer candidates based in the New York area, but full-time remote work may be considered.

If you have questions, please email Deputy Editor Chris Groskopf. To apply, please submit a cover letter and résumé through the Disney Careers portal. 

Responsibilities:

Crafting static and bespoke charts to accompany daily and feature stories under the supervision of editors or more senior visual journalistsContributing code and design to minor components of interactive projects as a sole contributor or to larger components when working in close collaboration with more senior visual journalistsProactively learning whatever new technical skills and domain knowledge are necessary to succeed on each projectCollaborating with the Interactives team and the rest of the newsroom by actively engaging in routine workflow, such as copy editing, story check-ins and project retrospectivesCommunicating project status, including unexpected roadblocks or delays, to collaborators and stakeholders in a timely fashionGiving and receiving candid feedback to peers, colleagues and managers

Basic Qualifications:

A passion for data visualization and crafting graphics that tell a clear storyProficiency in Adobe IllustratorSome experience using front-end web-development technologies, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScriptThe ability to balance deadlines with opportunities to experiment and create new ways to visualize sports and politics dataEnthusiasm for collaborating with other FiveThirtyEight journalists on their beats

Preferred Qualifications:

A solid understanding of U.S. politics, particularly electoral politics, major U.S. sports and/or scienceFluency in basic statisticsFluency in at least one programming language, ideally JavaScript

This is an entry-level position so if you don’t check every box but still feel like this would be a great role for you, please apply!

ABC News and FiveThirtyEight are equal-opportunity employers. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.