The House took a shot Wednesday at slowing down a dirty campaign tactic called “push polling” that is aimed at swaying — not measuring — public opinion. … The House voted 64-8 to pass his bill to require all polls to identify who paid for them. Hughes said that would […] Read more »
Dick Morris exits Fox News: even he might have predicted this correctly
I’m not a big one for schadenfreude but I confess to feeling a little frisson on hearing the news that Dick Morris was not getting his contract renewed by Fox News. It’s not that I wish Morris ill tidings; it’s that I want pundits to be held accountable for their […] Read more »
Ed Koch, polling pioneer
Ed Koch wasn’t just a quote-machine — he was also a campaign innovator. His 1977 New York City mayoral campaign was the first (or one of the first) to use overnight polling. Pollster Mark Penn was still in college when he and prep school friend Douglas Schoen were hired by […] Read more »
Gallup’s Ongoing Review of Presidential Election Polling
There has certainly been a great deal of discussion about election polling after last November’s presidential election, more than I recall seeing over the last five presidential elections. Some of that focused on our Gallup Daily tracking program. From our perspective, the goal is to be as accurate as possible […] Read more »
Study Casts Light on Political Robo-Polls
A study recently accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal makes a startling suggestion about so-called ”robo-polls” in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, raising the question of whether these automated surveys may have been adjusted to match live-interviewer polls. The paper, produced last spring, says its findings mean that aggregated […] Read more »
For Second-Term Presidents, a Shorter Honeymoon
… All recent second-term presidents began their new terms with approval ratings above 50 percent (although barely so in the case of Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush). This ought not to be surprising: after all, each of these presidents had just been elected or re-elected, and it is hard to […] Read more »