Election analysts and forecasters depend on accurate polling. Unfortunately, there’s not much of it so far this cycle. Many of the surveys to date have been conducted by firms that use automated phone surveys and combine deficient sampling with baffling weighting practices. Nowhere is this more evident than in recent […] Read more »
An Indirect Path to Accuracy in Election Polling
Representative Charles Rangel of New York has a nine-point lead over his nearest primary challenger, in a new New York Times/NY1/Siena College poll of likely voters. … In addition to asking residents of the state’s 13th Congressional District which candidate they planned to vote for, the poll also asked them […] Read more »
‘Mischievous Responders’ Confound Research On Teens
Teenagers face some serious issues: drugs, bullying, sexual violence, depression, gangs. They don’t always like to talk about these things with adults. One way that researchers and educators can get around that is to give teens a survey — a simple, anonymous questionnaire they can fill out by themselves without […] Read more »
The Particular Challenges of Polling Hispanics
One of the thorniest issues in polling today is how to capture an accurate picture of the opinions of Latinos. Traditional telephone surveys have obvious limitations. Nearly 3 in 10 Hispanics in the United States do not speak English well, creating the need for Spanish-speaking interviewers and translators, and not […] Read more »
The changing nature of who produces and owns data: How will it impact survey research?
Survey researchers have become interested in big data because it offers potential solutions to problems we’re experiencing with traditional methods. Much of the focus so far has been on social media (e.g., Tweets), but sensors (wearable tech) and the internet Cloud Photoof things (IoT) are producing an increasingly rich, complex, […] Read more »
Among Polling Firms, Only One Got the Indian Elections Right
After the final vote was cast on May 12, exit polls pointed to a win by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party led by its candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi. But only one polling firm, Today’s Chanakya, predicted the magnitude of both the B.J.P.’s victory and the governing Indian National […] Read more »