… The lack of scholarly consensus on mass-level religious polarization is, at least in part, a product of poor measures of issue polarization. In our recent and upcoming research to be published in Political Behavior, we introduce a new way of measuring issue polarization and then analyze how religious identities […] Read more »
Democrats Lost Ground With Non-College Voters of Color In 2020
Every election forces us to re-examine many of the assumptions we’ve been making about voting behavior. The 2016 election brought a recognition of the ‘education gap’ among white voters — those with a college degree preferring Democrats and those without voting overwhelming Republican. But, even as pollsters and pundits admitted […] Read more »
Measuring the Risks of Panel Conditioning in Survey Research
As public opinion polling increasingly moves toward the use of online panels, one threat that pollsters face is the possibility that their data could be damaged by interviewing the same set of people over and over again. The concern is that repetitive interviewing may introduce panel conditioning, a state in […] Read more »
Polling is Leaving Out Poor People
Those who follow such matters already know that pollsters under-sampled white, non-college voters in 2016. Then, in 2020, Trump voters exhibited greater than average response bias as they were less likely than others in their demographic to respond to polls. The problems with polling are not only about Trump voters, […] Read more »
Survey experts have yet to figure out what caused the most significant polling error in 40 years in Trump-Biden race
Biden supporters in Philadelphia celebrate when his win – with a much smaller margin than predicted by polls – was projected by news outlets on Nov. 7, 2020. Chris McGrath/Getty Images W. Joseph Campbell, American University School of Communication More than six months after the astonishing polling embarrassment in the […] Read more »
Ahead of 2022, House Democrats Aim to Fix Their Polling Problem
… For the second presidential cycle in a row, Democrats were stunned by the number of voters who came out in support of Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies down the ballot. This week, the House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, presented the results of an […] Read more »