Our poll is a decent result for Democrats. But remember: It’s just one poll, and we talked to only 501 people. Each candidate’s total could easily be five points different if we polled everyone in the district. And having a small sample is only one possible source of error.

Can a Democrat prevail in deep red Kansas? We made 15509 calls, and 501 people spoke to us.

This survey was conducted by The New York Times Upshot and Siena College.

Hey, I’m Alex Burns, a politics correspondent for The Times. I’ll give you the latest reporting and intel on the midterms and take your questions from the campaign trail.

It’s generally best to look at a single poll in the context of other polls:

Mr. Davis was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014, and he carried this district while losing statewide to the incumbent Republican, Sam Brownback.

Mr. Davis, who faced no primary opposition, has emphasized his community ties and willingness to work across the aisle. A lawyer, he served in the Kansas State House from 2002 to 2015.

Mr. Watkins, a newcomer to politics who has spent much of his adult life outside Kansas, prevailed in a seven-way Republican primary over more established candidates, some of whom criticized his skimpy voting record and reliance on a PAC financed by his father.

This district includes most of eastern Kansas except for the core of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Like the rest of the state, it is strongly Republican-leaning, but the retirement of the incumbent, with no obvious G.O.P. successor, and a strong Democratic candidate have thrown the outcome into doubt.

is the former minority leader in the State House. 48% favorable rating; 31% unfavorable; 21% don’t know

If sampling error were the only type of error in a poll, we would expect candidates who trail by four points in a poll of 501 people to win about one out of every seven races. But this probably understates the total error by a factor of two .

One reason we’re doing these surveys live is so you can see the uncertainty for yourself.

As we reach more people, our poll will become more stable and the margin of sampling error will shrink. The changes in the timeline below reflect that sampling error, not real changes in the race.

Our turnout model There’s a big question on top of the standard margin of error in a poll: Who is going to vote? It’s a particularly challenging question this year, since special elections have shown Democrats voting in large numbers. To estimate the likely electorate, we combine what people say about how likely they are to vote with information about how often they have voted in the past. In previous races, this approach has been more accurate than simply taking people at their word. But there are many other ways to do it. Our poll under different turnout scenarios Who will vote? Est. turnout Our poll result The types of people who voted in 2014 228k Davis +3 People whose voting history suggests they will vote, regardless of what they say 238k Davis +6 Our estimate 240k Davis +4 People who say they will vote, adjusted for past levels of truthfulness 253k Davis +2 People who say they are almost certain to vote, and no one else 269k Davis +1 The types of people who voted in 2016 273k Davis +3 Every active registered voter 393k Davis +3 Just because one candidate leads in all of these different turnout scenarios doesn’t mean much by itself. They don’t represent the full range of possible turnout scenarios, let alone the full range of possible election results.

The types of people we reached Even if we got turnout exactly right, the margin of error wouldn’t capture all of the error in a poll. The simplest version assumes we have a perfect random sample of the voting population. We do not. People who respond to surveys are almost always too old, too white, too educated and too politically engaged to accurately represent everyone. How successful we were in reaching different kinds of voters Called Inter-

viewed Success

rate Our

respon­ses Goal 18 to 29 7 4 1 2 6 1 in 29 5% 8% 30 to 64 7 6 1 5 2 7 4 1 in 28 55% 57% 65 and older 3 8 8 7 2 0 1 1 in 19 40% 35% Male 5 1 3 0 2 3 4 1 in 22 47% 47% Female 7 1 1 7 2 6 7 1 in 27 53% 53% White 1 0 3 9 3 4 4 0 1 in 24 88% 85% Nonwhite 8 0 2 1 8 1 in 45 4% 6% Cell 8 8 7 2 3 3 2 1 in 27 66% — Landline 3 3 7 5 1 6 9 1 in 20 34% — Pollsters compensate by giving more weight to respondents from under-represented groups. Here, we’re weighting by age, party registration, gender, likelihood of voting, race, education and region, mainly using data from voting records files compiled by L2, a nonpartisan voter file vendor. But weighting works only if you weight by the right categories and you know what the composition of the electorate will be. In 2016, many pollsters didn’t weight by education and overestimated Hillary Clinton’s standing as a result. Here are other common ways to weight a poll: Our poll under different weighting schemes Our poll result Don’t weight by party registration, like most public polls Davis +6 Don’t weight by education, like many polls in 2016 Davis +5 Our estimate Davis +4 Weight using census data instead of voting records, like most public polls Davis +3 Just because one candidate leads in all of these different weighting scenarios doesn’t mean much by itself. They don’t represent the full range of possible weighting scenarios, let alone the full range of possible election results.