The entire political world is watching Alabama’s Senate race, but what happens Tuesday is anybody’s guess. The highly unusual nature of the election, along with the difficulty faced by pollsters, has made the race murkier than a cypress swamp. Recent polls show Republican Roy Moore leading Democrat Doug Jones by […] Read more »
Pollsters throw predictions out the window in Alabama race
Who’s leading in Tuesday’s special Senate election in Alabama? The race is so peculiar and has so many variables that some pollsters are reluctant to say. Rather than put out a single result that could be viewed as a projection in the race between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy […] Read more »
What The Hell Is Happening With These Alabama Polls?
Somebody’s going to be wrong in Alabama. We’ve already urged caution when interpreting polls of Alabama’s special election to the U.S. Senate, which will be held on Tuesday. Some of that is because of the media’s usual tendency to demand certainty from the polls when the polls can’t provide it. […] Read more »
Poll Hub: The Future of Public Opinion Polls
With trust in the U.S. electoral system waning and indications of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election looming, could public opinion polls assume a new role in American democracy? … Could public opinion polls be used, as in emerging democracies, to validate election outcomes? Poll Hub picks up that […] Read more »
Is this the beginning of the end of the exit poll?
After another perceived, high-profile miss in last year’s presidential election, the Election Day exit poll is on life support. The Associated Press confirmed Friday it has joined Fox News in abandoning the so-called National Election Pool — the election surveying instrument that the news media, campaign operatives and political junkies […] Read more »
The Effects of Probing in Survey Research
Probing is a common technique that researchers use in interviewer-administered surveys when respondents initially refuse to answer a question or say they “don’t know.” … However, some researchers have suggested that probing can lead to poor data quality because respondents may guess at an answer when they are asked a […] Read more »