OK, let’s talk early polls in presidential elections. What exactly do they tell us? They tell us what people are hearing, and sometimes that will matter. While nomination surveys can’t successfully predict what will happen in next year’s primaries and caucuses, let alone the general election next November, they can […] Read more »
How to Read the Ups and Downs of Polling in the G.O.P. Race
… The wave of candidate announcements that began late last month has set off a new phase of volatile polling, when voters will rally behind news-making candidates and move on as soon as the next arrives. Republican voters are just starting to tune in, and they start with few allegiances […] Read more »
Focus on the Fundamentals, Not the Scooby Van
Almost every hour, it seems, someone is either announcing for President or announcing they are thinking about running for President. There are dozens of stories a day about new hires at SuperPAC’s, “Scooby Van” road trips, horse race polls in battleground states, and GOP cattle calls in New Hampshire and […] Read more »
Walker Has (Sorta) Broken Through In Iowa, And He Has Room To Grow
It’s time to acknowledge a milestone in the 2016 GOP primary. No, it’s not that Jeb Bush has broken his paleo diet. Rather, it’s that the leader in the Iowa polls is no longer the weakest frontrunner in caucus history! CONT. Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight Read more »
What polls say about Medicaid expansion in Florida
… Several polls over the years have looked at whether Floridians favor making the program larger. In 2013, three polls showed support for expansion as high as 62 or 63 percent, although one from the James Madison Institute was as low as 30 percent. One 2014 University of Florida poll […] Read more »
Living by numbers: YouGov and the power of the pollsters
The last time Peter Kellner forecast the result on the eve of a major British vote he was accused of costing UK taxpayers tens of billions of pounds. For much of the Scottish referendum campaign, the outcome had seemed a foregone conclusion. Yet on 7 September – 11 days before […] Read more »