Pollsters are again staring down a familiar nemesis: Donald Trump. The polling industry whiffed every year Trump has been on the ballot. … And now, with Trump expanding his lead over his GOP primary rivals, pollsters are fretting about a bloc of the electorate that has made his support nearly […] Read more »
Asking Inclusive Questions About Gender: Phase 1
Gender is an important piece of demographic information that Gallup collects in its polls worldwide. Attitudes and experiences often differ in important ways by gender, and collecting this information is crucial to understanding people’s experiences. … Generational changes in gender identity may fundamentally change how sex and gender are measured […] Read more »
How polls can mislead about polarization
By definition, a political pollster is not a “normal” or “average” person. Political pollsters, like most political creatures, are usually deeply embedded in the divisive partisan atmosphere. We take in all the information, and then we try to design questions to probe the “normal” people about this atmosphere, of which […] Read more »
How to read a poll
As readers of this blog know, I am not wild about public polls – they tend to focus people on the “horse race” at the expense of other areas of the campaign and way too often their read of the horse race or of changes in it are misleading. Nonetheless, […] Read more »
Pew’s methods report and the polling dot-com bubble
This week, Pew Research Center released an analysis of national pollsters and the methods they have used since 2000. I knew this project was in progress because I had confirmed their information for PRRI in my former role as director of research, and I am very happy to see these […] Read more »
How Public Polling Has Changed in the 21st Century
The 2016 and 2020 presidential elections left many Americans wondering whether polling was broken and what, if anything, pollsters might do about it. A new Pew Research Center study finds that most national pollsters have changed their approach since 2016, and in some cases dramatically. Most (61%) of the pollsters […] Read more »