… Before Election Day, Republicans confidently predicted they would pick up seats in both chambers of Congress, and that Mitt Romney would win the White House. The results shattered those predictions, and with them any sense of security in the numbers coming out of some of the best-regarded polling firms […] Read more »
Video: Sampling and Weighting
Darrell Bricker, Global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, explains the science of sampling and weighting, including margin of error. Read more »
The Extraordinary Delusions of the 2012 Election
… There are two striking things to observe about this moment. The first is how good a job professional pollsters did, and the second is how robust the social consensus was on the right that Romney was going to win. … What is important is how well pollsters did in […] Read more »
Polling and the 2012 Election
There are a number of challenges facing the survey research industry, and every election offers the opportunity to continue to learn, change, and adapt. As a leader in the industry, we take every election, whether there are good election outcomes like 2010 or bad election outcomes like 2012, as a […] Read more »
The GOP polling debacle
For Republicans, one of the worst parts of the GOP’s 2012 trouncing was that they didn’t see it coming. Top party strategists and officials always knew there was a chance that President Barack Obama would get reelected, or that Republicans wouldn’t gain control of the Senate. But down to the […] Read more »
Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race
As Americans’ modes of communication change, the techniques that produce the most accurate polls seems to be changing as well. In last Tuesday’s presidential election, a number of polling firms that conduct their surveys online had strong results. Some telephone polls also performed well. But others, especially those that called […] Read more »