The Labour leader Ed Miliband may have stumbled badly in the British election, but there was another big loser on Thursday night: the pollsters who were far off the mark and failed to see the outright majority won by Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party. … Professor Leighton […] Read more »
What We Got Wrong In Our 2015 U.K. General Election Model
No calculations are necessary to see that we missed badly in our forecast of the U.K. election. … The most obvious problem for all forecasters was that the polling average had Labour and the Conservatives even on the night before the election. This was not just the average of the […] Read more »
Germany and the United States: Reliable Allies
Seven decades after the end of World War II and a quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, roughly seven-in-ten Americans see Germany as a reliable ally, and about six-in-ten Germans trust the United States, according to a Pew Research Center survey. A majority of Germans believe it is […] Read more »
UK: Into the zone of uncertainty
No pollster or political soothsayer can guarantee what will happen on Thursday. All we can really promise is to raise uncertainty to a higher level of sophistication. The closeness of the Labour-Conservative race is plainly one reason. If today’s polls are slightly out, or there is a last-minute swing, the […] Read more »
Tale of Two Presidents: Obama and Putin
… Today, a median of 45% of the world approves of the job performance of the leadership of the U.S., giving it the highest approval ratings out of the five world powers measured for the second consecutive year. Although the U.S. has the highest global leadership approval ratings in the […] Read more »
Russia Receives Lowest Approval in World; U.S. Highest
Russia in 2014 earned the lowest approval ratings globally for the eighth consecutive year and posted the highest disapproval ratings it has received to date. U.S. leadership received the highest approval rating in the world, with the median 45% approval topping ratings of the leadership of the European Union, Germany, […] Read more »