… For the second straight presidential election, the polling industry missed the mark. The miss was not as blatant as in 2016, when polls suggested Mr. Trump would lose, nor was the miss as large as it appeared it might be on election night. Once all the votes are counted, […] Read more »
‘I Don’t Have a Happy Ending’: A Pollster on What Went Wrong
Over the past few days, there’s been much consternation over this year’s polling of the presidential race. How did we end up with a close election in key swing states after months of surveys that suggested there could be a Democratic landslide? It’s a familiar crisis: After the 2016 election, […] Read more »
The 2020 Election Was A Good One For Republicans Not Named Trump
Republicans outperformed the polls up and down the ballot in the 2020 election, to the surprise even of many Republican political operatives and survey researchers. To be clear, Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Trump; Democrats will still control the House and still have a chance of picking up the Senate. […] Read more »
Inquiry into the Performance of the Opinion Polls at the 2019 Australian Federal Election
The Association of Market and Social Research Organisations (AMSRO) today announced that the Inquiry into the Performance of the Opinion Polls at the 2019 Australian Federal Election (AMSRO Polling Inquiry) has released its final report, including recommendations for how to improve political polling in Australia. … The independent inquiry report […] Read more »
Don’t trust the exit polls
… Biden didn’t do as well as public polls projected. Some groups unexpectedly appeared to have shifted toward Trump, such as Latinos. In rushing to understand what happened, some have relied on the National Exit Poll (NEP) conducted by Edison Research to form narratives about what happened and why. But […] Read more »
What Went Wrong With Polling? Some Early Theories
Asking for a polling post-mortem at this stage is a little bit like asking a coroner for the cause of death while the body is still at the crime scene. You’re going to have to wait to conduct a full autopsy. But make no mistake: It’s not too early to […] Read more »