The past 12 months have not been kind to political pollsters. Opinion polls have been well wide of the mark in the U.S. midterms, the Israeli general election, the Greek and Scottish referendums, and the British general election. The U.K. election was perhaps the most embarrassing of all. … In […] Read more »
The challenges of polling when fewer people are available to be polled
… Cliff Zukin, past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and a Rutgers University political science professor, wrote recently that “two trends are driving the increasing unreliability of election and other polling in the United States: the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer […] Read more »
The Polls Were Bad in Greece. The Conventional Wisdom Was Worse.
Coming on the heels of the U.K. general election, the Israeli general election, the Scottish referendum and the U.S. midterms, Sunday’s Greek referendum looks like the latest in a series of bad outcomes for pre-election polls across the globe. While the last few polls before the vote showed “Oxi” (“no”) […] Read more »
Group pilots new polling venture in Maryland
… Figuring out how people actually feel when they respond to political polls — and separating those feelings from the hyper-partisanship that has come to define the nation’s politics — is at the heart of a new effort by a University of Maryland researcher and a longtime political operative. The […] Read more »
Mistaken memories
Last week ended with a momentous Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, while this week closes with the patriotism of the Fourth of July. I’m actually going to try to connect those disparate events in a way that’s relevant to survey research methodology. From another perspective, this piece is all […] Read more »
What’s the Matter With Polling?
… Election polling is in near crisis, and we pollsters know. Two trends are driving the increasing unreliability of election and other polling in the United States: the growth of cellphones and the decline in people willing to answer surveys. … We are less sure how to conduct good survey […] Read more »