Following Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election, there was a lot of talk how the Democrats lived in a bubble. They failed to see President Donald Trump’s win coming and nominated someone who lost to the least-liked candidate of all time. Well, now it is clear that the shoe […] Read more »
Trumpism After Trump? How Fox News Structures Republican Attitudes
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2020 electoral loss, one key question is what kind of future the unique style of politics he carved out has in the Republican Party. Colloquially, this question is often put this way: What becomes of Trumpism after Trump? To answer that question, it […] Read more »
What Pollsters Want You to Know About What Went Wrong
… Public opinion research is a thankless job in the best of times. There are no congratulations for charting the nation’s changing preferences toward a wide range of issues, or for basically predicting the future, as pollsters did, for the most part, prior to the 2018 midterms. But there’s no […] Read more »
Political Polling Is Still Terrible … and Might Get Worse
Is the polling industry in crisis? And, perhaps more importantly, what does it mean for our democracy if we can’t trust information telling us what our fellow citizens think? Bloomberg The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack Read more »
2020 Post Election Poll Analysis of an Election Like No Other
As we have done, every two years in federal elections, since 1994, we once again conducted a post-election poll of 1,000 actual voters online who either voted early or on election day. The survey had an accuracy of +/- 3.1% at a 95% confidence interval. The voters were interviewed on […] Read more »
Confessions of a pollster: Time to put the election forecasting industry out of its misery
… Because they focused so much on campaigns and candidates, much of the election forecasting industry missed what was happening in America. In May, 23% of voters believed their personal finances were getting better. That grew to 27% by mid-October and 29% right before the election. That’s the same trend […] Read more »