A deluge of cheap partisan polls has swamped a shrinking number of high-quality, nonpartisan surveys, making it hard to know who is really ahead in many political campaigns. The solution? More nonpartisan surveys. On Sunday, the research firm YouGov, in partnership with The New York Times and CBS News, released […] Read more »
Why We’re Likely to See More ‘Worst’ Presidents
How much do members of the opposite party dislike whomever happens to be president? A lot, and the feeling seems to be getting stronger. CONT. Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth), New York Times Read more »
Montana Senate: A Real Race or Simply Manufactured Buzz?
Maybe you believe in coincidences. I usually do — but not four months from an election. Almost simultaneously, two different memos appeared from Democratic pollsters insisting the Montana Senate race has closed and the outcome of the contest is very much in doubt. CONT. Stu Rothenberg, Roll Call Read more »
Governors’ Races Are Close, But There’s More Upside For Democrats
Early polls have historically done fairly well in predicting the the outcome of governors’ races. We can add bells and whistles to improve the forecast — and we will — but the polls are a good start and a good baseline. So, let’s check out what the early gubernatorial polls […] Read more »
Exclude the excluders
It’s long past time the press stopped publishing polls that do not sample cellphones. If an enterprising pollster offered a survey that, say, excluded everyone ages 30-44 or those over age 65, no one would pay any attention to it — and rightly so. Yet news outlets regularly publish polls […] Read more »
Democrats Are in a Perilous Position in 2014 Senate Races
Can you predict Senate elections more accurately than a basic polling average? It’s something we at FiveThirtyEight try to do. … But the basic polling average still does pretty well. So before we launch our official projections, let’s take a look at what the latest polling shows and how that […] Read more »