Political polling is under scrutiny once again. While pre-election surveys set expectations of a Democratic landslide, the presidential contest and many Senate and House races came down to the wire instead. In fact, Republicans gained ground in the House. To understand what went wrong, Judy Woodruff talks to pollsters J. […] Read more »
Why Were The Polls Off? Pollsters Have Some Early Theories
… Yes, Joe Biden ended up winning, as forecasters predicted. But polls overestimated his support in multiple swing states — not to mention the fact that Democrats both lost House seats and didn’t win the Senate outright, despite being favored to do the opposite. It will likely be months until […] Read more »
The dirty little secret pollsters need to own up to
There’s a dirty little secret that we pollsters need to own up to: People don’t talk to us anymore, and it’s making polling less reliable. … For a while, most polls conducted most of the time in most places seemed reasonably accurate, so we kept at it, claiming random sample […] Read more »
What Pollsters Want You to Know About What Went Wrong
… Public opinion research is a thankless job in the best of times. There are no congratulations for charting the nation’s changing preferences toward a wide range of issues, or for basically predicting the future, as pollsters did, for the most part, prior to the 2018 midterms. But there’s no […] Read more »
Election polls are more accurate if they ask participants how others will vote
People have information on how they’ll vote, but also about how others in their community may vote. AP Photo/Wong Maye-E Mirta Galesic, University of Potsdam and Wändi Bruine de Bruin, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Most public opinion polls correctly predicted the winning candidate in the 2020 […] Read more »
Political Polling Is Still Terrible … and Might Get Worse
Is the polling industry in crisis? And, perhaps more importantly, what does it mean for our democracy if we can’t trust information telling us what our fellow citizens think? Bloomberg The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack Read more »