All of the major Senate forecasting models, including ours at Election Lab, now rely heavily on averages of public polls. This raises the question of whether those averages will be correct on Election Day, and whether any misses could affect which party manages to retain control of the Senate. In […] Read more »
Republican Pollster, Looking to Senate Races, Reflects on Lessons of 2012
Neil Newhouse had felt the thrill and the agony many times in three decades as a Republican pollster. Nothing matched the hurt of November 2012. Many Republican analysts failed to foresee the success of the Democrats’ 2012 voter ID and mobilization push as a bruised, less-popular Mr. Obama sought a […] Read more »
What to Expect From Senate Polls in the Final Days
A few weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver released a dataset of over 6,000 polls, all conducted within 21 days of the election. This trove of data dates back to 1998, and covers all manner of races: Senate, House, gubernatorial, and presidential. This allows us to build some expectations for what […] Read more »
No, Republicans Aren’t Guaranteed to Win the Senate. Here’s Why.
On Monday, the Libertarian candidate for Senate in Iowa, Doug Butzier, died in a plane crash. Butzier, an emergency room physician, was polling at only two percent. But Republican candidate Joni Ernst leads the Democratic candidate, Bruce Braley, by an even narrower margin. How Butzier’s supporters eventually vote is a […] Read more »
The Polls Might Be Skewed Against Democrats — Or Republicans
… Nonetheless, we’ve reached a stage in campaign season when Democrats have begun to complain that the polls are biased against them. There’s a long tradition of this sort of “unskewing.” The trailing party will say that its internal polls tell a different story or that its turnout operation will […] Read more »
Michael Dimock Named President of Pew Research Center
The Pew Charitable Trusts announced today that veteran survey researcher and political scientist Michael Dimock has been selected as president of the Pew Research Center, effective Oct. 15. CONT. Pew Read more »