Is Hillary Rodham Clinton in trouble? You would think so from the coverage of recent polls showing that her unfavorable ratings have increased nationally and in key states. Multiple media outlets and pundits have suggested that her personal unpopularity 20 months before the presidential election is a major problem for […] Read more »
What Trump bump?
Judging from a spate of recent polls, Donald Trump is riding a wave of popular support. But if you ask Republican campaign pollsters and other political consultants, it’s just a mirage, nothing more than a reflection of faulty public polling about how actual Republican primary voters feel about Trump and […] Read more »
Why Donald Trump May Be Weaker Than a Recent Poll Suggests
No matter the subject, for surveys to make sense, they have to be sampling the correct population. … So, with Sunday’s NBC News/Marist University polls in Iowa and New Hampshire igniting a flood of news coverage highlighting Donald Trump’s “surge” (Politico) and “strong” showing (NBC and the New York Times), […] Read more »
Early polls don’t mean much. It’s still possible to report on them.
… We know from presidential general elections that polling this early is not correlated with outcomes in November. We know from presidential primary elections that poll surges are often ephemeral, in part because they reflect how the media covers primary candidates. For both reasons, we should discount where the candidates […] Read more »
Don’t Be Misled by the New Poll Results for Donald Trump
It has been more than a week since Donald Trump’s remarks about whether Senator John McCain should be considered a war hero, and many journalists and commentators have reached a conclusion: Mr. Trump has emerged unscathed. … It’s entirely possible that Mr. Trump’s poll numbers won’t take a beating in […] Read more »
The Polling Paradox: How to Read the Numbers
Do you believe, as the ABC News/Washington Post poll showed this week, that Hillary Clinton is beating Jeb Bush nationally by a margin of 10 percentage points (51 percent to 41 percent)? Do you believe, as the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday on a set of battleground states showed, that […] Read more »