… Over the last decade, almost entirely out of view, campaigns have modernized their techniques in such a way that nearly every member of the political press now lacks the specialized expertise to interpret what’s going on. Campaign professionals have developed a new conceptual framework for understanding what moves votes. […] Read more »
Obama Takes Page From Surprise Win in Colorado
… Desperate to win Colorado and its nine electoral votes, the Obama campaign is trying to assemble the same coalition that Senator Michael Bennet built in 2010, when he managed to win a full term against a conservative Republican in a year in which Democrats struggled both in Colorado and […] Read more »
The Romney Whopper Watch
… When Mitt Romney said this was the first time a majority of Americans were pessimistic about the future, I was startled. I devised an important measure to address this topic in 1984 as a consultant working with Warren Mitofsky at CBS. … This might have been a minor whopper […] Read more »
TV Ratings May Be Leading Indicator of Convention Bounce
It remains too early to tell exactly what effect the Republican National Convention has had on the polls. But television ratings are one measure that come in almost instantaneously. … In the chart below, I’ve compared the historical TV ratings for the challenging party’s convention against the bounce that its […] Read more »
Final Night of Republican National Convention Draws 30.3 million Viewers
An estimated 30.3 million people watched the fourth and final night of the 2012 Republican National Convention on Thursday, August 30. … In 2008, more than 38.9 million people watched the comparable closing night of the RNC when John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination— about 8.6 million more people […] Read more »
Persuadable Voters
One in four registered voters may be persuadable in the 2012 presidential election – rich pickings if either Barack Obama or newly minted GOP nominee Mitt Romney can win their support. … This evaluation uses a method of identifying persuadable voters based on a model of anxiety and information-gathering developed […] Read more »