One of the trickiest aspects of assessing American public opinion is measuring views on a new or complex issue that has not been thoroughly considered by the public. In these situations, there are no historical trends to provide context, and the public is more likely to respond in terms of […] Read more »
Trump Supporters Probably Aren’t Lying To Pollsters
Could the polls be underestimating Donald Trump’s support? That’s the conclusion of what I’ll call the “shy Trump-ers” theory, which holds that public opinion surveys undersell Trump because some of his supporters are unwilling to admit they’re backing The Donald. CONT. Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight Read more »
Stop the Polling Insanity
Over the past few weeks, cable news networks and other media sites have trumpeted wild fluctuations and surprising results in polling on the presumed general-election matchup between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton. … In this highly charged election, it’s no surprise that the news media see every poll like […] Read more »
Every latest shift in the polls is news. But it shouldn’t be.
Preelection polls jump all over the place. … Polls fluctuate, and when the latest poll is much different from what came before, we’re likely to see a bounce back — not because of any deep political forces, but just because what we’re seeing is a sequence of noisy measurements. We […] Read more »
Oregon: Why The Presidential Primary Poll Was Off
Last week, a poll commissioned by OPB and Fox 12 suggested very different results in the Oregon presidential primary than what actually happened when ballots were counted Tuesday. … John Horvick of the polling firm, DHM Research, joined Think Out Loud Wednesday to discuss the poll and the actual results […] Read more »
How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump
… Trump is one of the most astonishing stories in American political history. If you really expected the Republican front-runner to be bragging about the size of his anatomy in a debate, or to be spending his first week as the presumptive nominee feuding with the Republican speaker of the […] Read more »