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 »
Inside the 2012 Latino Electorate
A record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the 2012 presidential election, but Latinos’ voter turnout rate continues to lag other groups significantly, according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center. [cont.] Mark Hugo Lopez & Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Pew Read more »
Obama’s Data Team Totally Schooled Gallup
… But given the collaborative effort and many moving parts of a modern presidential campaign, it can be difficult to isolate the data team’s contribution. One great example, though, is the intricate mathematical models of swing states that [Dan] Wagner and colleagues built that were meant to offer an alternative […] Read more »
Google’s Eric Schmidt Invests in Obama’s Big Data Brains
… For all its acclaim, the analytics team’s main achievement is often misunderstood as “microtargeting” or some variant on wooing voters. This reverses the relationship between campaign and voter at the heart of [Dan] Wagner’s method. Recent campaigns have employed a top-down approach to identify what they thought were vital […] Read more »
Democrats and the White House: From Losing to Winning
Accurately or not, Barack Obama has been compared to a number of famous politicians: FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan, even Jimmy Carter. But no one as yet has compared him to Michael Dukakis. Yet as a reference point, Dukakis might be as good as anyone. A look at his vote-getting performance […] Read more »