… For two years, Republicans had been working to correct one of the party’s greatest embarrassments of recent years: the flawed polling that led so many in the party to believe Mitt Romney was on the cusp of victory in 2012. But after dramatically underestimating Democratic turnout in 2012, it […] Read more »
Why data-driven campaigning matters in the 2014 US elections and beyond
… Profiling voters isn’t novel, nor is the use of demographic data. What’s new is the explosion of data collection around other activities that can inform those profiles and models of behaviors: what you buy, what you watch, what you “like,” what you share, or which people or brands you […] Read more »
New Voter Guide Follows the Money
… One problem with voter guides, despite their worthy intentions and the seriousness of their approach, is that there is rarely a common baseline from which to evaluate two or more candidates. A 30-year incumbent’s record usually dwarfs that of a first-time challenger who has never held office. But those […] Read more »
The New Political Rating System That Shows the Stakes This Year
… Until now, it has been nearly impossible to compare the ideological gap in Senate and House campaigns systematically. But an online service making its debut on Tuesday, known as Crowdpac, aims to change that. Using the work of a Stanford political scientist, it gives an ideological score to all […] Read more »
The fault is not in their models
I was a modeler before it was cool. Our firm brought modeling to Democratic poll data in the early 1980s, created the first micro-targeting models in the middle and late 1980s, developed the first state-level Senate forecasting model for use in resource allocation in the 1990s and built state-level presidential […] Read more »
Conversation with Nate Cohn
Nate Cohn, who covers polling for The Upshot/New York Times, joins us for a great discussion of their new forecasting model, LEO, and which party might win control of the U.S. Senate. CONT. Political Wire Read more »