Goodbye 2016. The journalists and analysts who work with numbers will not miss you. From the United States to the United Kingdom, the last 12 months will be remembered for missed calls, surprises and upsets that didn’t just beat the odds, but that shattered them – and not just in […] Read more »
From Trump to terrorism, the year in polls
An historic presidential campaign, the economy, race relations, and terrorism were some of the topics covered in CBS News Polls over the course of 2016. Here’s a look at back at what was on the minds of Americans this year. CONT. Jennifer De Pinto, CBS News Read more »
State pollsters, pummeled by 2016, analyze what went wrong
… The 2016 election, which rewarded the media’s love of hyperbole, made fools of almost every prognosticator. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, which had given Hillary Clinton a 71.4 percent chance of victory, came out better than most; Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Election Consortium, blew it so badly that he […] Read more »
The 2016 national polls are looking less wrong after final election tallies
UPDATE: This post from shortly after the November election has been updated to reflect accuracy of polls after states certified their vote counts. National polls were more accurate than they appeared immediately after the election, as Hillary Clinton’s two percentage-point advantage in the popular vote was similar to her three-point […] Read more »
Can Donald Trump persuade Americans to support his agenda? It’s not likely.
Public support is a key resource that modern presidents have typically sought for themselves and their policies. They seek to leverage public opinion to garner support in Congress. New presidents, basking in the glow of victory, often assume that they can move the public. After all, they have just won […] Read more »
How Analytical Models Failed Clinton
… The reliance, or perhaps over-reliance on analytics, may be one of the factors contributing to Clinton’s surprise defeat. The Clinton team was so confident in its analytical models that it opted not to conduct tracking polls in a number of states during the last month of campaign. As a […] Read more »