… In the 2012 presidential election, there was a long stretch of the campaign when the national and state polls disagreed. State-level surveys showed President Obama in better shape than national polls. The state polls ended up being more accurate, but it’s always best to have a check on the […] Read more »
Microsoft Begins a Push Into the Polling World
… On Monday, Microsoft is starting a relatively straightforward survey website called Microsoft Prediction Lab, where users can submit their views and predictions regarding politics, sports and other subjects. The more novel part of Microsoft’s plan will come later, though, when Cortana — Microsoft’s answer to Siri — could start […] Read more »
Senate Update: When Should Democrats Panic?
The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll always makes news and with good reason: The pollster that conducts it, Selzer & Company, is among the best in the country, according to FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings. On Saturday evening, the poll had an especially interesting result in Iowa’s Senate race. It put the […] Read more »
Why Bad Polls Are Good for Business
… At-risk Democrats are trying to tell two different stories to two separate audiences this cycle. Call it playing an outside and inside game—galvanizing the base while assuring the press that everything’s under control. Along with panic-stricken emails about negative polls, voters’ email boxes have been cluttered with ominous warnings […] Read more »
How FiveThirtyEight Calculates Pollster Ratings
… Naturally, we hope the pollster ratings can give you a better basis for understanding the polls as a news consumer. However, discussions about individual polling firms — there are now more than 300 of them in our database — can sometimes miss the point. I’m more interested in the […] Read more »
Why likely voter polls may be misleading
Those who follow the generic congressional ballot polls may have noticed a certain shift toward the Republicans in recent weeks. … But chances are there was little to no change at all in public sentiment about the upcoming election. The shift in the poll results coincided with a shift in […] Read more »