Pew’s Scott Keeter describes how polls are conducted, and discusses challenges facing the polling industry. Read more »
The Nate Silver backlash
It seems to happen every few weeks. The race tightens or widens or simply continues on exactly as it’s been and some pundit or reporter declares it a staggering humiliation for the burgeoning world of election quants. [cont.] Ezra Klein, Washington Post Read more »
How To Read The Post-Sandy Polls
… Cliff Zukin tells us that the presidential election survey world now needs to be divided: there’s pre-Sandy and post-Sandy. Any polls taken after the storm, and while millions of Americans’ lives remain disrupted, he says, carry with them a very real potential for accuracy problems. “We’re into a really […] Read more »
Nate Silver, Artist of Uncertainty
… One of the biggest problems we have in separating signal from noise is that when we look too hard for certainty that isn’t there, we often end up attracted to noise, either because it is more prominent or because it confirms what we would like to believe. This is […] Read more »
The Track Record of Pre-Election Polls (in 2 Graphs)
How trustworthy are this year’s presidential polls? On Monday, November 5, will they be able to tell us who is likely to win the election? We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime the historical record provides some important context. This record suggests three things: [cont.] John Sides, George Washington […] Read more »
In Swing States, a Predictable Election?
The conventional wisdom about this year’s presidential race is that it has broken out of stasis to become wildly unpredictable. And yet, after a period of polling turmoil following President Obama’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., and Mitt Romney’s sharp rebound after the first presidential debate in Denver, the polling in […] Read more »