A group of political scientists and researchers, including Benjamin Knoll at Centre College, conducted an exit poll of the Kentucky governor’s race. They interviewed nearly 4,000 residents in the state. What they found was that Matt Bevin won overwhelmingly among evangelical and born-again Christians (62-36). He also won male voters […] 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 »
How an exit poll arms race could create election-night confusion
… The 2020 elections will feature two parallel polls of voters designed to measure who voted, for whom they cast their ballots and why. And both providers — the National Election Pool and its exit poll, along with The Associated Press’ new VoteCast project — claim they’ve solved many of […] Read more »
Three profoundly dangerous myths about the 2018 elections
In the days immediately after the 2018 elections the most widely circulated analysis held that along with high turnout among minority voters the significant Democratic gains in the House of Representatives and in a range of state level elections were the result of the significant defection from the GOP of […] Read more »
White Voters Without A Degree Remained Staunchly Republican In 2018
… In 2016, educational divides emerged as one of the top explanations of voters’ choices: White voters without a bachelor’s degree made up the Republican base, while a coalition of nonwhite voters and white college graduates formed the Democratic base. The 2018 midterms seemed to continue what we saw in […] Read more »
The foundation of Trump’s coalition is cracking
Cracks have emerged in Donald Trump’s hold on his core constituency of white working class voters, new data from the 2018 election reveal. Though Republican candidates almost everywhere registered large margins among white voters without a college degree, Democrats ran much more competitively among the roughly half of that group […] Read more »