FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, August 28, 2022 [1. What To Watch For In Each WNBA Semifinals Matchup]( [Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm watches her shot next to A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces]( The WNBA semifinals are set, and it is hard to argue that anything less than the true cream of the league has risen to the top. [Read more]( [2. Americans Don’t Want Books Banned, But They’re Divided Over What Schools Teach]( [0826_POLLA-4×3]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [3. Election Denying Primary Candidates Are Crying Fraud, Win Or Lose]( [Kari Lake raises her hand in the air at a election night party]( In the days leading up to the Arizona Republican primary for governor, candidate Kari Lake warned that something was going very wrong. “We’re already detecting some stealing going on,” Lake said at a campaign stop the week before the election. Hours before the polls closed, she hadn’t changed her tune. “If we don’t win, there’s some cheating going on. And we already know that.” But when the race was over, Lake was the new Republican nominee for governor in Arizona. This created a bit of a logical pickle for Lake: How did she win an election that was rigged? [Read more]( [4. Does Spending Big Save Newly Promoted Premier League Teams From Relegation?]( [Everton FC v Nottingham Forest – Premier League]( The English Football League Championship’s playoff final is often referred to as the “richest game in soccer” because of the substantial windfall its winner receives upon joining the Premier League. Through a mix of guaranteed shareholder profits and broadcast money, newly promoted teams stand to make hundreds of millions more per season in the Premier League than they otherwise would in the Championship. It’s not a bad incentive for clubs grinding it out in the second tier of the English pyramid — arguably the most physically demanding league in the world — especially since most of them operate on razor-thin margins even in the best of times. (And these are certainly not the best of times.) [Read more]( [5. Where Should The Big Ten Expand Next? We Crunched The Numbers.]( [ACC Championship – Clemson v Notre Dame]( If it were up to me — and I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, where you could literally hear the roar of the crowd from Spartan Stadium in my backyard on game days — the Big Ten would have stopped expanding after 12 teams. Penn State, added in 1990, and Nebraska, in 2011, were natural-enough fits: big, public Midwestern research universities with good academics and excellent sports. [Read more]( [6. Yes, Special Elections Really Are Signaling A Better-Than-Expected Midterm For Democrats]( [New York 19th Congressional District Special Election]( In your typical midterm election with an unpopular Democratic president, you’d expect Republicans to be flying high. But the evidence is mounting that the national political environment right now actually leans toward Democrats. [Read more]( [7. The Datasets We’re Looking At This Week]( [The words "data Is plural" written in red on a white background]( You’re reading Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. Below you’ll find the Aug. 24, 2022, edition, reprinted with permission at FiveThirtyEight. [Read more]( [8. Who Should Get Tested For A New Disease?]( [Monkeypox and Covid Tests Processing at AEGIS Labs]( Between May 6 and July 20, doctors in the United Kingdom confirmed 2,162 cases of monkeypox. Ninety-nine percent of those cases were men. That could be most reflective of who is contracting the virus. But it could also be partly because 80 percent of the people tested were men. [Read more]( [9. The NFL Preseason Is Not Predictive — But It Can Often Seem That Way]( [Seattle Seahawks v Pittsburgh Steelers]( This time last year, Cincinnati Bengals wideout Ja’Marr Chase was being labeled a ‘bust’. With just one catch — on an unremarkable bubble screen — and plenty of drops, Chase’s first preseason didn’t seem to bode well for his professional reunion with college quarterback Joe Burrow. All Chase went on to do was break rookie receiving records, be named the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year and help the Bengals make the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Justin Fields’s preseason debut had fans and analysts alike calling for him to start Week 1. But after putting up a 90.2 preseason passer rating — seventh among qualified QBs — he finished the regular season rated 30th out of 33 qualifiers. [Read more]( [10. 13 Races To Watch In Florida And Oklahoma]( [Elections Florida]( What happens when redistricting produces big changes in the third- and fourth-most populous states in the country? You get a bunch of fascinating primaries. Florida and New York have a huge number on tap today, along with a couple primary runoffs of interest in Oklahoma. My colleague Nathaniel Rakich covered the Empire State’s multitude of high-profile races yesterday, so now we’ll run through the 11 primaries to watch in Florida and two runoffs in Oklahoma. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: If The Midterms Were Tomorrow, Republicans Might Be In Trouble]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.