… Thinking about the change from 2016 to 2018, it is clear that both mobilization and persuasion were critically important in producing this scale of victory for Democrats. When it comes to turnout, the composition of the electorate roughly “broke even” with 2016, much different than the past two midterms. […] Read more »
Creating the new standard in election research
Election polling is unlike any other kind of public opinion research, because you can measure your work against a known result – the actual tally of ballots cast. It means that when The Associated Press debuted AP VoteCast in the 2018 midterm elections, we’d know by the end of Election […] Read more »
Does Anyone Actually Want Joe Biden to Be President?
In a field crowded with nearly two dozen candidates, no answer to the electability question is offered more regularly and with more conviction than “Joe Biden.” … The case that people make for Mr. Biden’s electability is not that any one group of people is particularly excited by him, but […] Read more »
Why possible Democratic Senate candidates shouldn’t necessarily balk at running in red states
… A number of Democratic voters appear to be frustrated by the fact that candidates who would enter contested Senate races as strong contenders are deciding not to run (at least for Senate). … There’s one theory about why these candidates might balk at running for the Senate in red […] Read more »
2020 polls lay out an ominous pattern for Trump
It’s way too early to know who is going to win the 2020 presidential race. We don’t know who the Democratic nominee will be, and we don’t know what President Donald Trump’s approval rating will be. Still, we can look for patterns in the early polling to see what is […] Read more »
In year of record midterm turnout, women continued to vote at higher rates than men
Both men and women turned out at record rates in the 2018 midterm election – mirroring historic turnout increases among other segments of the eligible voting population. Compared with 2014, voter turnout increased by double digits among both men (11 percentage points) and women (12 points). As has been the […] Read more »