FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, September 19, 2021 [1. An Older, Wiser Pac-12 Is No Longer A College Football Laughingstock]( [UCLA LSU football]( The transition to the College Football Playoff era has not been a pleasant one for the Pac-12 Conference. With just two appearances in eight seasons and zero titles to show, the “Conference of Champions” has been anything but in an environment that caters to the richest and most powerful conferences — in other words, conferences like the Pac-12. Last season was the fourth consecutive that the Pac-12 was couch-bound for the playoff. To make matters worse, the final AP Top 25 poll featured half as many Pac-12 teams as it did teams from each of the Mid-American and Sun Belt conferences. [Read more]( [2. How The Fight Over Abortion Access Might Affect The 2022 Midterms]( [A photo illustration of a woman holding a sign that reads "Abortion is Healthcare", against a gridded background]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [3. The 49ers Believe In The Magic Of Pre-Snap Motion]( [San Francisco 49ers vs Detroit Lions]( Anyone who follows football and can fog a mirror knows that winning the turnover battle is important. Games often hinge on a team getting an extra possession, and when analysts have tried to quantify the edge, they’ve found that it’s large: Teams win around 78 percent of the games in which they have a positive turnover differential. [Read more]( [4. The First Week Of The NFL Season Was Pure Chaos. What Does That Mean For The Rest Of It?]( [Derek Watt #44, Miles Killebrew #28, and Jamir Jones #40 of the Pittsburgh Steelers celebrate]( Week 1 of the 2021 NFL season was deeply strange. Whether it was the Saints thrashing the Packers to start the post-Drew Brees era, the Steelers upending the ballyhooed Bills in Buffalo or the Cardinals stomping the Titans on the road, there were a lot of season-opening results that had us furiously adjusting what we thought we knew about each team in preseason. [Read more]( [5. Two WNBA Supersubs Are Recording Historic Sixth Woman Seasons — And They’re Teammates]( [A photo illustration of Las Vegas Aces teammates Dearica Hamby and Kelsey Plum]( Dearica Hamby and Kelsey Plum have created a problem. [Read more]( [6. Our Best Tool For Predicting Midterm Elections Doesn’t Show A Republican Wave — But History Is On The GOP’s Side]( [GENERIC-BALLOT-2021-story-4×3]( As it is every two years, control of the House and Senate will once again be at stake in the November 2022 midterm elections, and one of the best tools we have for predicting those election results is polling of the generic congressional ballot. The generic congressional ballot question typically asks respondents which party they intend to vote for in the upcoming congressional election, without naming specific candidates — allowing the question to be asked nationally to gauge the overall political environment. And for several years now, we at FiveThirtyEight have been collecting these polls and calculating a weighted average for them, and we’re excited today to publish our generic ballot average for the 2022 election cycle. [Read more]( [7. This Green Bay Quarterback Just Played The Worst Game Of His Career]( [Green Bay Packers v New Orleans Saints]( After Aaron Rodgers spent much of the offseason in a power struggle with Green Bay Packers management, he suggested his play this fall would make all the drama worthwhile. Packers fans had many clues indicating he could skip OTAs (or organized team activities), sit all preseason and still make big plays while avoiding mistakes: For the past 16 seasons, he’s been in a category by himself. [Read more]( [8. The Dodgers Are So Deep That They Don’t Need All Their Stars]( [Los Angeles Dodgers v San Francisco Giants]( After sweeping the San Diego Padres over the weekend, the Los Angeles Dodgers are on pace to win 103 games this season — the fourth time in the past five seasons that they have produced at least 100 wins per 162 games. If that trend holds steady over the next few weeks, L.A. would become only the 28th franchise in NL or AL history to pull off that kind of five-year run — and just the second since the 1954-58 New York Yankees did it. (The Atlanta Braves also accomplished the feat from 1995 to 1999.) [Read more]( [9. Why A Republican Might Win In Virginia’s Governor Race, And How New Jersey’s Race Could Get Tighter]( [President Joe Biden and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe]( California’s recall election has understandably dominated headlines, but there are two other gubernatorial elections this November that might tell us more about the national environment: Virginia and New Jersey. [Read more]( [10. Does The Census Not Adequately Capture Your Racial Identity? We Want To Hear Your Story.]( [A photo illustration of a person standing across several overlapping boxes]( The U.S. Census Bureau released a surprising finding in their August announcement of 2020 census results: The number of Americans who identify as multiracial jumped 276 percent over the last decade. Then again, depending on how you count, the share of Americans that identify as white either rose 2 percent — or dropped 9 percent. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Actually, Week 1 Does Matter (To Our NFL Playoff Odds)]( Lastly, The Riddler By [Zach Wissner-Gross]( [riddler_4x3_default]( I recently came across a rather peculiar recipe for something called Babylonian radish pie. Intrigued, I began to follow the directions, which said I could start with any number of cups of flour. Any number? I mean, I had to start with some flour, so zero cups wasn’t an option. But according to the recipe, any positive value was fair game. Next, I needed a second amount of flour that was 3 divided by my original number. For example, if I had started with two cups of flour, then the recipe told me I now needed 3 divided by 2, or 1.5, cups at this point. I was then instructed to combine these amounts of flour and discard half. Apparently, this was my new starting amount of flour. I was to repeat the process, combining this amount with 3 divided by it and then discarding half. The recipe told me to keep doing this, over and over. Eventually, I’d have the proper number of cups of flour for my radish pie. How many cups of flour does the recipe ultimately call for? [Solve it!]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.