… Regardless of what any given poll says, it’s likely that someone – a campaign, an interest group, a political party or a rival polling operation – will argue that the survey is invalid at the same time someone else argues that it’s significant. Polls have become political tools and […] Read more »
The Dark Art of Political Polling
How could a Gallup Organization survey published a week before the election show Mitt Romney up by 5 percentage points, while a CBS/New York Times poll from the same period put him 1 point behind President Obama? Even professional poll watchers don’t know. [cont.] Peter Coy, Bloomberg Businessweek Read more »
Parties Wonder Which Side’s Polls Reflect Reality
… The two parties, the outside groups that are playing such a big role this year, and even some candidates themselves are so dubious about their own numbers that they are employing two pollsters for one race, using one to double-check the other. What flummoxes them even more is that […] Read more »
Examining the Effect of the Storm on Polling
In the final days of this intensely close election season, polling has taken on an added layer of uncertainty with millions of people stranded without electricity and without phones in several states. It may seem even silly or ridiculous to those experiencing the worst storm damage in their lives to […] Read more »
How the Exit Polls Misrepresent Latino Voters, and Badly
Did you know that, despite running exceedingly racialized anti-Latino advertisements in Nevada’s Senate race, Sharon Angle got 30% of the Latino vote? Jan Brewer also did well, attracting an above-average 28% share of Arizona’s Hispanic vote just months after signing SB1070 into law. Moreover, Meg Whitman received 21% of the […] Read more »
The other 2012 election contest: which pollster and polling method will win?
People like me are always looking into the polling data to see what has worked well in the past to correctly forecast election results for the future. The problem is that there are a number of polling methods and ideas that worked well in prior years, yet are in opposition […] Read more »