Preliminary results from the July–December 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that the number of American homes with only wireless telephones continues to grow. Nearly two in every five American homes (38.2%) had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) during the second [...] Read more »
How 16 Words Move Immigration Poll
From gun control to taxation to the environment, you can be sure most polls will show a familiar Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative split. That’s what makes the responses on immigration in this week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll so noteworthy. According to the poll, there is broad consensus across many groups to [...] Read more »
Gallup’s Open Book
It isn’t unusual for individuals, organizations, or even political parties to make mistakes, but it is unusual, certainly in Washington, to see anyone own up to them. What is truly extraordinary is for any person or group to conduct, release, and publicize an exhaustive research project detailing what went wrong [...] Read more »
Gallup blew the 2012 election. Can the polling firm bounce back?
If Nate Silver was the winner of last year’s presidential election, then Gallup was the loser. The long-time leader in polling consistently showed Mitt Romney ahead, sometimes by a decisive margin. And then President Barack Obama won by 3.9 points—5 points off of Gallup’s final margin. In response, Gallup launched [...] Read more »
Gallup’s 2012 election polling errors were only part of the problem
We all know that Gallup screwed the pooch in the 2012 presidential election. It had Mitt Romney leading through most of October and in its final poll by a point – a 5pt error. … It’s worth the time, though, to point out, as I have and Gallup did on [...] Read more »
Gallup explains what went wrong in 2012
The Gallup Poll’s misfire in the 2012 election was caused by a variety of defects in the way the firm conducts surveys, according to the organization’s top pollster, who provided the most detailed explanation to date of how the firm plans to improve their polling accuracy in future elections. Flanked [...] Read more »
The Survey Monkey on Our Back: Where Our Addiction to Polls May Take Us
Gallup’s mea culpa this week and yet another release of 2016 trial heats reminds us that the biggest threat to the health of public opinion polling may not be shrinking response rates or the rising cost of dialing cellphones, but our growing addiction to its results. … Velocity and critical [...] Read more »
The American public wants money spent on disasters — cost be damned
Nearly six in 10 Americans believe that the federal government should provide funds to states affected by natural disasters without having to cut spending in other areas to do so, according to a new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. [cont.] Chris Cillizza & Sean Sullivan, Washington Post Maybe – but [...] Read more »
No, it’s not a push poll
Republicans are crying foul over a Public Policy Polling survey that finds Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes tied in a hypothetical 2014 Senate matchup. Two things are true: 1. McConnell is probably not as vulnerable as this poll might suggest. 2. [...] Read more »
When Numbers Mislead
… Averages are useful because many traits, behaviors and outcomes are distributed in a bell-shaped curve, with most results clustered around the middle and a much smaller group of outliers at the high and low ends. … But averages can be misleading when a distribution is heavily skewed at one [...] Read more »