Recently NPR reported on the results of two different national polls on the American public’s views toward the new Common Core curriculum. A PDK/Gallup poll, conducted in May and June of this year, showed opposition by almost two-to-one, 60 percent to 33 percent. A poll for a Harvard journal, Education […] Read more »
Time and chance
… Models are, by definition, simplifications of reality and are necessarily incomplete. If they were complete descriptions of reality, they would be reality itself and too complex for us to understand. Critiques focused on the fact that models are sometimes wrong and don’t include all possible sources of human behavior […] Read more »
Two Polls That Highlight the Challenges of Polling
On Monday, SurveyUSA did something unusual for a pollster: It released two polls of Colorado voters on the same day. Despite the similarity in the overall result — both showed the Republican, Cory Gardner, ahead by a slight margin — the differences in how the polls were conducted reveal the […] Read more »
Dems: Don’t trust the polls
Democrats have a new message in the 2014 race for the Senate: Don’t trust the polls. The party is stoking skepticism in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, providing a mirror image of conservative complaints in 2012 about “skewed” polls in the presidential race between President Obama and Republican […] Read more »
Who Will Lead the Senate? Follow the Prediction Markets
How would commentary on the midterm election look if economists, rather than Beltway pundits, were calling the race? You would read a lot less about personalities, gaffes and gossip, and a lot more about fundamentals like the state of the economy. And you would certainly get a more sophisticated reading […] Read more »
A consumer’s guide to the final weeks of Campaign 2014
For months, voters have been barraged by claims and counterclaims from Republicans and Democrats about the degree to which the landscape is shifting in the race for control of the Senate, which polls are correct and who has the best voter turnout operation. Get ready for more, and be wary […] Read more »