A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49% of U.S. […] Read more »
Trump is a symptom of the decline of American institutions
… How are Trump and Sanders doing so well? Part of the answer is that there has been a long-term crisis of confidence in America’s leaders. Trump and Sanders’s success is a symptom of that crisis. … The General Social Survey (GSS) has asked Americans about their confidence in Congress, […] Read more »
How the Media Fails the Public in Reporting Election Polling
… Many years ago, before network news and the big newspapers poured most of their resources into garnering clicks, reporters and writers tended to focus on what was happening in the presidential race, and not what they hoped would happen. All that has changed in the past 10 years or […] Read more »
In Defense of the Reuters/Ipsos Poll
To the Editor: In “Stop the Polling Insanity” (Op-Ed, May 20), Norman Ornstein and Alan I. Abramowitz cited the Reuters/Ipsos poll as Exhibit A in an indictment of “cringeworthy” polling-based articles. Their swipe at us is based on a flawed argument. CONT. Maurice Tamman (Reuters), New York Times Read more »
Stop the Polling Insanity
Over the past few weeks, cable news networks and other media sites have trumpeted wild fluctuations and surprising results in polling on the presumed general-election matchup between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton. … In this highly charged election, it’s no surprise that the news media see every poll like […] Read more »
Every latest shift in the polls is news. But it shouldn’t be.
Preelection polls jump all over the place. … Polls fluctuate, and when the latest poll is much different from what came before, we’re likely to see a bounce back — not because of any deep political forces, but just because what we’re seeing is a sequence of noisy measurements. We […] Read more »