In this last Resurgent Republic survey before the election, taken October 23-25, Mitt Romney has caught up with President Obama, and now leads the national ballot by 48 to 47 percent. The Romney advance has been driven by Independent voters who have moved toward Romney in the wake of the […] Read more »
Obama win would sink markets
… Investment advisers have not been able to count on pollsters or pundits thus far to clearly predict winners and losers in next Tuesday’s elections, so some have lapsed back to their own political prejudices and preferences to chart a post-election course for their clients. [cont.] David Hill Read more »
Returning to the fundamentals
With Election Day fast approaching, let’s toss the confusing welter of polls for a moment and return to the fundamentals I have been emphasizing here for years. First is the economy. It’s not good, but that’s not the key point. We are, as calculus geeks would say, a first-derivative nation; […] Read more »
Health Care Issues Remain in the Mix For Likely Voters
One week before the 2012 presidential election, health policy issues including Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) remain a factor in voters’ views of the race, though they continue to be eclipsed by the economy as the primary concern on voters’ minds. The October Kaiser Health Tracking survey also […] Read more »
What Too Close to Call Really Means
I am a political statistician, or, perhaps I should say, a statistical political scientist. Announcing this to someone can elicit diminished eye contact, but every four years I experience a temporary surge in popularity. For months now people I know have been stopping me on the street to ask who […] Read more »
The Polling Bias Debate
When the term “unskewed polls” entered the political lexicon this fall, courtesy of a conservative blogger convinced that national pollsters were missing a looming Romney landslide, there was a lot of talk about how the right’s polling skepticism was ushering in a landscape in which every observer would become a […] Read more »