The economy invariably ranks among the top issues on the minds of voters in presidential elections. At the moment, it appears to offer President Trump a meaningful tailwind. But how big is that tailwind? Fortunately, economists have worked hard to develop models for predicting election outcomes, and according to one […] Read more »
A Consumer Guide to Polls
… There is no such thing as a perfect poll. If there were, it would include only people who are going to vote in the election of interest, and the sample would match their demographics precisely, both overall and within subgroups. That won’t happen because there is no way of […] Read more »
How Abortion Could Threaten GOP Control of the Senate
Sometimes party control of a legislative chamber shouldn’t logically be in danger given the political fundamentals. But circumstances can and do change. … There was a time when the decisions to set up court tests of abortion laws were made carefully by antiabortion lawyers and strategists on the national level, […] Read more »
Notes on the State of the Senate
Republicans have to defend 22 Senate seats this cycle to the Democrats’ 12, yet the GOP remains favored to hold the chamber in large part because so many of the seats they are defending are in states that seem certain to vote Republican for president, and strongly so. Of the […] Read more »
Poll failure, again
The big news in polling this week: the Australian election! In our Netflix world, I’ve become a fan of Australian TV, but don’t recall anything from down under being big news in the U.S. since 2006, when “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was allegedly killed by a stingray that stabbed him […] Read more »
The mathematics does not lie: why polling got the Australian election wrong
… Since the election was called, there were 16 polls that published two-party preferred results ahead of Saturday’s vote. Every single one of them predicted the LNP winning 48% or 49% of the two-party preferred vote, with Labor winning 51% or 52%. These polls were central to the public’s perception […] Read more »