There is a 19-year-old black man in Illinois who has no idea of the role he is playing in this election. He is sure he is going to vote for Donald J. Trump. … He’s a panelist on the U.S.C. Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll, which has emerged as the […] Read more »
When You Hear the Margin of Error Is Plus or Minus 3 Percent, Think 7 Instead
As anyone who follows election polling can tell you, when you survey 1,000 people, the margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points. This roughly means that 95 percent of the time, the survey estimate should be within three percentage points of the true answer. If 54 percent […] Read more »
Campaign Says Trump ‘Did Win the Debate Polls’
Jason Miller, the Trump campaign’s senior communications adviser, and Chuck Todd discuss the validity of snap online polls that showed Donald Trump won Monday’s debate vs. scientific polls that indicate he lost to Hillary Clinton. NBC News Read more »
Memo: Fox News VP reminds staff that online debate polls ‘do not meet our editorial standards’
A Fox News executive sent a memo to television producers and the politics team on Tuesday afternoon reminding employees that unscientific online polls “do not meet our editorial standards.” Dana Blanton, the vice president of public-opinion research at Fox News, explained in the memo obtained by Business Insider that “online […] Read more »
Why You Shouldn’t Trust ‘Polls’ Conducted Online
On Tuesday morning, Donald J. Trump boasted of what he described as widespread approval of his performance in the first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. Those so-called “final debate polls” consisted of readers on news sites who were asked for their opinion of who had won. While it looked good […] Read more »
No matter how garbage the poll, if it shows that Donald Trump won the debate, he’ll endorse it
Before the first presidential debate was over, my colleague Aaron Blake noticed an unusual ad on The Washington Post’s website. “Trump won,” it declared in large type. “Contribute.” The timing was awkward, but this wasn’t necessarily an abnormal response from a campaign: Our guy did great, ignore the haters. Trump […] Read more »