Is there now a clear leader in the race for control of the Senate? I think so, but it really depends on whether you’re listening to the polls or the prediction markets. CONT. Justin Wolfers, New York Times Read more »
Hate your candidates this year? You’re not alone
What do you get when you combine a dysfunctional Congress, a divided American public, and several hundred million dollars worth of negative ads? A whole bunch of unpopular candidates, that’s what. In top-tier races around the country, voters are struggling to decide between politicians that they fell lukewarm about at […] Read more »
Crunching the Numbers: When The Personal is Political – Women Voters and the Midterms
It’s become conventional wisdom to say “women voters” are a key this year. But if the “women’s vote” sounds like a very big group, that’s because it is; in fact, more than half the electorate. So we’ve got to dive deeper. Which groups of women, in particular, may be up […] Read more »
Complexity makes errors more likely
… The more complex any process is, the more vulnerable it is to error, and over the years, polling has become much more complex. The rise of mobile phones, low turnouts, greater minority participation and a host of other factors have pushed quality pollsters toward ever more sophisticated and complex […] Read more »
Pollsters Say They Follow Ethical Standards, But They Aren’t So Sure About Their Peers
For our second poll of leading U.S. political pollsters, we asked about ethics. The pollsters who answered, even those who asked for anonymity, said they follow basic ethical principles such as not copying others’ work or letting campaigns dictate results. But many held doubts about their peers’ ethics, and about […] Read more »
Senate v. Electoral College
The race for the control of the U.S. senate feels a lot like the race for control of the Electoral College (i.e., president), but there are a few crucial differences. First, the only thing that matters after the Electoral College convenes is who won the Electoral College, but minority party […] Read more »