There are a number of challenges facing the survey research industry, and every election offers the opportunity to continue to learn, change, and adapt. As a leader in the industry, we take every election, whether there are good election outcomes like 2010 or bad election outcomes like 2012, as a […] Read more »
The GOP polling debacle
For Republicans, one of the worst parts of the GOP’s 2012 trouncing was that they didn’t see it coming. Top party strategists and officials always knew there was a chance that President Barack Obama would get reelected, or that Republicans wouldn’t gain control of the Senate. But down to the […] Read more »
A Victory for the Pollsters and the Forecasters
Now that the Florida authorities have finally confirmed that President Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the Sunshine State by a margin of 50.0 per cent to 49.1 per cent, we have all the results and data we need to talk about what happened in the 2012 election, and who got […] Read more »
The Statisticians on the Bus
One of the strangest things about the final days of the 2012 presidential campaign was that the battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney became something of a sideshow, at least in the greenrooms of Manhattan and Washington, D.C., and on the Acela trains that shuttled the crème de la […] Read more »
Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race
As Americans’ modes of communication change, the techniques that produce the most accurate polls seems to be changing as well. In last Tuesday’s presidential election, a number of polling firms that conduct their surveys online had strong results. Some telephone polls also performed well. But others, especially those that called […] Read more »
Polling, Likely Voters, and the Law of the Commons
… We would always like to make a final poll estimate that is exactly on target with the final popular vote percentage for both candidates. That is the goal. But our estimate (and almost all other national polls at the end), gave a broadly accurate picture of what was, in […] Read more »