Tuesday’s victories for Democrats in the U.S. House and Republicans in the Senate made for a much less surprising election night than President Trump’s election two years ago, but that didn’t prevent a rerun of the debate over whether pollsters had missed the trends that became clear late Tuesday. Against […] Read more »
As Americans wake up to a divided Congress, pollsters breathe a sigh of relief
THE MORNING AFTER THE MIDTERMS, journalists are working through the complicated picture that emerged from yesterday’s elections. With Democrats gaining in some states and Republicans in others, the results defied easy generalization. As Cook Political Report National Editor and sometime WNYC host Amy Walter tweeted, the midterms have turned out […] Read more »
Pollsters tried to learn from 2016 mistakes. Will the 2018 midterms be different?
The polling industry has a lot on the line heading into Tuesday’s midterm election. Critics blamed pollsters when voters were caught off guard by Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Old cries of “don’t believe the polls” became fevered shouts. And the president has encouraged distrust by calling certain polls “fake” […] Read more »
A spate of House polls reinforces good news for the Democratic Party
As the midterm elections approached, the New York Times undertook an interesting experiment: It would conduct polling in dozens of House districts, showing users the results in real time. Partnering with Siena College’s polling team, the idea was that users would gain a better understanding of how poll results are […] Read more »
The polling miss that defines 2018 might not be the one from 2016. It may be the one from 2017.
… In 2016, one of the problems in state polls was that Trump voters turned out more heavily than many pollsters expected. In 2017, one of the problems with the polls in Virginia was that Democrats turned out more heavily than many pollsters expected. Those Democrats elected not only Northam […] Read more »
Republicans Need A Systematic Polling Error To Win The House
As I wrote earlier this week, Democrats almost certainly need a systematic polling error to win the Senate. By that I mean: They need for the polls to be off everywhere, or at least in certain key clusters of states, to win the Senate. … What might be more surprising […] Read more »