Fivethirtyeight founder Nate Silver posed a provocative question on Monday: Is the polling industry in stasis or in crisis? … Silver’s worries mirror those of other pollsters, media types and academics who have pointed to declining response rates as a harbinger of the end times for traditional polling methods (i.e., […] Read more »
No Diving: Research in the Shallow-End of the Public’s Policy Knowledge
… From my experience working on and helping craft research on complicated policy issues, I’ve realized something that at first glance may seem counter-intuitive: The simpler the subject, the more deep and complicated the research can be. More complicated subjects on the other hand are best served by simpler research […] Read more »
A New Reason to Question the Official Unemployment Rate
… The declining response rate to surveys of almost all kinds is among the biggest problems in the social sciences. It’s complicating our ability to understand how people live and what they believe. … The response rate of the Labor Department’s monthly jobs survey is far higher (about 89 percent) […] Read more »
Why polling is necessary
One of the most important questions facing any campaign is when and how often to conduct a survey. Doing a poll is a little like getting married: you shouldn’t rush into it, it needs to be well planned, you need to be committed about doing it right and you must […] Read more »
Is The Polling Industry In Stasis Or In Crisis?
… I’ve spent much of the past few weeks updating our polling database in preparation for the launch of our 2014 Senate forecasts. In conjunction with those forecasts, we’ll also release our first full set of pollster ratings since 2010. But for now, my aim will be to consider the […] Read more »
A question for Washington pollsters: How wrong must you be to never work again?
Just how wrong does someone have to be to lose their job in Washington, D.C.? … In theory, pollsters should be some of the most accountable people in politics. You can see exactly how right or wrong they are with each campaign. And yet . . . A pollster is one of those […] Read more »