A data-driven controversy has erupted over a finding in the entrance poll of Nevada’s Democratic caucusgoers Saturday, with the results of the poll among Latinos seemingly at odds with widely held expectations that the group was a strong one for Hillary Clinton. The results of the Nevada entrance poll Saturday […] Read more »
Polling Latinos has Always Been Controversial
The recent controversy over Latino voting in Nevada has brought out a contentious back and forth over whether Hillary Clinton lost Latino voters to Bernie Sanders. … The latest out of Nevada is part of a long line of controversies over Hispanic voters. When the media was claiming that Hillary […] Read more »
More Reason to Doubt Claim That Sanders Won Hispanic Vote in Nevada
The debate over who really won the Hispanic vote in Nevada, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, continues today. As I wrote Sunday, I think the balance of evidence points to Mrs. Clinton: Her strength in the heavily Hispanic areas of Las Vegas and among Hispanic voters in most national polls […] Read more »
Why Clinton, Not Sanders, Probably Won the Hispanic Vote in Nevada
One of Saturday’s biggest election surprises was the entrance and exit polling measuring Hispanic voters in the Nevada caucus. It found that Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points among Hispanic voters, overturning months of conventional wisdom about Mrs. Clinton’s strength among nonwhites. But there are a lot […] Read more »
Why Nevada Polls Are Bad
… In the lead-up to Iowa and New Hampshire’s contests, scores of polls were conducted. In Nevada, where Democrats will caucus on Saturday and Republicans on Tuesday, only five surveys have been published this year. So why, when American political junkies are used to binging on statistics, are there so […] Read more »
Polling can be useful, even when imprecise
… A National Academy of Sciences panel warned in 2013 that declining response rates “threaten to undermine the potential of household surveys to elicit information that assists in understanding social and economic issues.” … Accurate surveys matter for a lot more than handicapping elections, marketing potato chips, or even conducting […] Read more »