With President Biden reaching the 100-day mark, pollsters are back on the prowl attempting to discern public reaction to his performance. Assessments appear contradictory. Slate told us “Biden’s 100-Day Approval Rating Is Better Than Trump’s, but Third-Worst Since Truman.” Not sounding very strong. NBC sounded a rather different note, “At […] Read more »
Thoughts on ‘Revisiting Polling’
This week five major polling firms released a statement on “Revisiting Polling for 2021 and Beyond,” which you can find here. Friends, former clients, and readers of this blog have asked me what I thought of it. This post answers that question without going behind anyone’s back, especially since I […] Read more »
Revisiting Polling for 2021 and Beyond
… Together, we represent five survey research firms for Democratic political campaigns. During the 2020 election, we worked on the presidential campaign, every major Senate and gubernatorial race, and congressional races across the country. Our main job as pollsters is to provide campaigns with a strategic roadmap for winning, guide […] Read more »
Confronting 2016 and 2020 Polling Limitations
The 2016 and 2020 elections raised questions about the state of public opinion polling. Some of the criticism was premature or overheated, considering that polling ultimately got key contours of the 2020 election correct (e.g., the Electoral College and national popular vote winner; Democrats taking control of the Senate). But […] Read more »
First Takes on the Election #2: What About the Polls?
… Putting the major polls together, their miss in last year’s presidential election was, on average, 4 percentage points, mainly because they underestimated the Trump vote; they also underestimated the Republican down-ballot votes by about the same margin. (Fivethirtyeight.com’s final averages of polls gave Biden an 8.4-point lead; he ended […] Read more »
The Death Of Polling Is Greatly Exaggerated
Polls probably aren’t at the top of your mind right now. We’re more than four months removed from the 2020 election, and we still have almost 20 months to go until the midterms. That’s why it’s the perfect time to launch the latest update to our FiveThirtyEight pollster ratings, which […] Read more »