Following E. E. Schattschneider’s observation that “a new policy creates a new politics,” scholars of “policy feedback” have theorized that policies influence subsequent political behavior and public opinion. Recent studies observe, however, that policy feedback does not always occur and the form it takes varies considerably. To explain such variation, […] Read more »
Book Review: ‘News, Numbers and Public Opinion in a Data-Driven World’
In 1954, Darrell Huff published How to Lie with Statistics, a tongue-in-cheek guide for those wanting to use numbers to deceive. The book, now widely distributed to first-year university statistics students, outlines how statistics can confuse and muddle both writers and readers. The upshot? Huff suggests that: ‘without writers who […] Read more »
There’s a surprising lack of good polling in this year’s key Senate races
Calling balls and strikes is difficult when you’re partially blind. That’s the situation Senate prognosticators are in when it comes to this year’s races. In the early going, there just isn’t a lot of good polling data out there to understand the playing field. Democrats need a net gain of […] Read more »
Associated Press And Fox News Launch Project To Replace Exit Polls
Fox News and AP say they’ll conduct an election voter survey designed to replace the traditional in-person exit poll. This follows the 2016 election in which pollsters were criticized for inaccuracy. Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR Read more »
Australia is obsessed with opinion polls. Why do we take them so seriously?
The only thing more dispiriting than opinion polls may be writing about how dispiriting, even corrupting, they are to our politics, but let’s give it a go. Monday morning was a heart-sinking moment. Two front pages of daily newspapers, two opinion polls, multiple earnest columns interpreting what these single surveys […] Read more »
Poll Hub: Online Best Behavior
The 73rd annual conference of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) is underway in Denver, Colorado. In this episode of Poll Hub, special guest Randy Brown joined us from the conference to discuss the focus of his latest research. Brown, Vice President of Edison Research, explained how Edison’s […] Read more »