FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, January 15, 2023 [1. How Americans’ Support For Aiding Ukraine Has Evolved]( [0113_POLLA-4×3]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [2. Brock Purdy Was Mr. Irrelevant. Now He’s Mr. Impossible.]( [Arizona Cardinals v San Francisco 49ers]( Joe Montana. Steve Young. Yelberton Abraham Tittle. Some of the best quarterbacks to ever set foot on an NFL field played for the San Francisco 49ers, but none did what Brock Purdy has done this season. [Read more]( [3. Jaren Jackson Jr. Is The Defensive Player Of The Year Front-Runner — But He Wouldn’t Be A Typical Winner]( [NBA: San Antonio Spurs at Memphis Grizzlies]( Now in his fifth NBA season, Memphis Grizzlies forward Jaren Jackson Jr. has fully blossomed into the player the team envisioned he would be when it selected him with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2018 NBA draft. He’s averaging career highs in points and rebounds per minute, and setting new marks in scoring efficiency as well, with one of the league’s best true shooting percentages (.618). [Read more]( [4. The Chalky AFC Is Stronger Than The Schlocky NFC]( [New England Patriots v Buffalo Bills]( NFL watchers have been talking about how stacked the AFC is all season — not just that its top teams, like the Buffalo Bills, are better than the NFC’s best, but that second- and third-tier AFC squads would dominate some NFC divisions. [Read more]( [5. What Will New Leadership In Congress Mean For Democrats?]( [Speaker Vote]( House Democrats officially elected New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries to be their leader this past weekend, coalescing around a fresher face as the new Republican majority took control. The new top three leaders will consist of Jeffries, Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, who will serve as the new minority whip, and California Rep. Pete Aguilar, who will chair the Democratic caucus. [Read more]( [6. Why The Angels’ Small Moves Might (Finally) Add Up To Big Success]( [Los Angeles Angels v Toronto Blue Jays – 4×3]( As team-building tactics go, having the two best players in a particular sport on the same roster would seem to be a pretty good one. Surely you’d expect that lucky team to, at the very least, have some winning seasons under its belt — or perhaps even win a championship or two. [Read more]( [7. TCU’s Fairy Tale Was No Match For Georgia’s Tour De Force]( [2023 CFP National Championship – TCU v Georgia – 4×3]( A feel-good story doesn’t always conclude on a high note. In the shadow of Los Angeles, a city internationally renowned for its fervent love of storytelling, the nobody-saw-it-coming, 200-1 tale of the TCU Horned Frogs stumbled around Sofi Stadium like Buster Keaton on a broken projector screen — with the help of a Georgia Bulldogs team that can fairly be described as a college football dynasty. [Read more]( [8. DeSantis Is Polling Well Against Trump — As Long As No One Else Runs]( [TRUMP-DESANTIS-POLLS-4×3]( I’m not happy about it, and you’re not happy about it, but it’s time to talk about polls of the 2024 Republican presidential primary. We’re still (probably) more than a year away from the Iowa caucuses, yet pollsters have already asked about the Republican primary at least 96 times since the 2022 midterm elections. [Read more]( [9. Will Wild-Card Weekend Give Us The Upsets We Crave?]( [SportsChat-0109-4×3]( maya (Maya Sweedler, editor):  After 18 weeks of football — of thrilling comebacks, electric plays, baffling coaching decisions and disappointing quarterbacking (and all this just from the Minnesota Vikings!) — the 2022 NFL regular season has come to an end, and we’re staring ahead at three days of wild-card play next weekend. [Read more]( [10. Rents Are Still Higher Than Before The Pandemic — And Assistance Programs Are Drying Up]( [US-ECONOMY-HOUSING-RENT]( Cleveland is one of the poorest cities in the country. It’s far from the expensive coastal cities like New York City and San Francisco, where astronomically high rents are common. Cleveland doesn’t fit the stereotype of a city people want to move to; in fact, it has been losing population since the 1950s. But since 2020, there have been some wild fluctuations in the rental market. Even in many cities that had previously been affordable, rents keep getting higher, stretching more families’ budgets and spreading a largely coastal problem to nearly every part of the country. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: What The Speakership Vote Tells Us About The GOP]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.