OK, we can all agree that the November election result was a shocker. According to news reports, even the Trump campaign team was stunned to come up a winner. So now seemed like a good time to go over various theories floating around in political science and political reporting and […] Read more »
Which was the most accurate national poll in the 2016 presidential election?
An underappreciated fact about last month’s presidential election: the national polls were pretty accurate, on average. (The state polls are a different story.) … But this begs another question: which pollster or pollsters were the most accurate in 2016? As he did in 2008 and 2012, Fordham University political scientist […] Read more »
The truth behind House Democrats’ 2016 polling
Though the results on Election Night up and down the ticket were ultimately different than the predictions from experts, pundits and analysts, a factual look back shows that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) internal polling clearly and accurately predicted the rise, fall, and ultimate landing for House Democratic candidates. […] Read more »
Survey weighting and that 2% swing
Nate Silver agrees with me that much of that shocking 2% swing can be explained by systematic differences between sample and population: survey respondents included too many Clinton supporters, even after corrections from existing survey adjustments. In Nate’s words, “Pollsters Probably Didn’t Talk To Enough White Voters Without College Degrees.” […] Read more »
Campaign for President 2016: Interview with Nate Silver
Nancy Cordes, Congressional Correspondent for CBS News, spoke with Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight about polling during the 2016 election. Institute of Politics, Harvard University Read more »
Pollsters Probably Didn’t Talk To Enough White Voters Without College Degrees
… With Clinton’s lead in the popular vote still expanding, the national polls are going to wind up having been pretty good (they showed her winning by 3 to 4 percentage points, and she’ll eventually win by about 2 points). The state polls? Not so hot. What matters, though, is […] Read more »