Donald Trump led almost all of the polls leading up to Monday night’s Iowa caucuses – just ask him. … So why did the public polls – including the gold-standard Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll – miss Cruz’s victory? There are some clues buried in the election results and […] Read more »
Can We Trust the Opinion Polls? cont.
… In the final part of a series examining the role of opinion polling in British politics, David Cowling asks if polling will be more reliable in future and if the industry can restore its reputation in the wake of its errors at the last general election. CONT. BBC Radio […] Read more »
Why This Is the Iowa Poll That Everyone Was Waiting For
Perhaps no political poll is more eagerly anticipated and receives more attention than the last Des Moines Register poll before the Iowa caucuses. … The hype ahead of the survey is easy to understand. Conducted by Ann Selzer, it has one of the most impressive track records in polling — […] Read more »
Ann Selzer Is The Best Pollster In Politics
… When Homer wrote of his hero Odysseus, he was “that godlike man.” The D.C. poets use the same laudatory epithet-style when they sing of Selzer; she is uniformly “the great” or “most respected” or, as I saw on a book jacket recently while walking through the Des Moines airport, […] Read more »
Learning from poll autopsies
As polls pour out of early primary states, it’s worth examining just how complex and fragile those instruments are. Recently we’ve been treated to three polling autopsies that illustrate potential pitfalls: two about Britain’s elections and one regarding our own 2014 midterms. CONT. Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill Read more »
Voters vote, non-voters don’t. Why is this so hard for pollsters?
Pollsters aren’t very sophisticated when deciding who is and isn’t going to vote on Election Day. You’d think they would have research-backed strategies for assessing who is likely to vote. They don’t. Pollsters usually just ask respondents if they plan to vote and take respondents at their word. … But […] Read more »