The near-year since Donald Trump’s surprise electoral victory has been filled with soul-searching and recriminations among those who research public opinion and those who write about it. A conversation around whether polls failed has hardened into two main camps: one blaming the data, the other blaming the media. But this […] Read more »
Fake polls — just a Trump put-down or a real problem?
At a recent press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders brushed back a question from a CNN reporter about a Fox News poll that showed 56 percent of the American people saw President Trump as “tearing the county apart.” She used Trump’s favorite put-downs: “A lot of those same polls told you […] Read more »
2017 Special Elections Look Like a Wave
Pundits and campaign professionals have wrestled with whether 2018 will be a wave election or not, using metrics like President Trump’s job rating, candidate recruitment, fundraising and the four Congressional special elections in the last six months. A deeper more-local look at 2017 elections, though, show an already-building wave. Over […] Read more »
When the Out Party Runs Out of Luck
The dominant theme in next year’s Senate elections is the confluence of two competing forces: The huge number of seats the Democrats are defending versus the usual boost that the non-presidential party, in this case the Democrats, enjoys in midterm elections. On one hand, Democrats are defending 25 of 33 […] Read more »
The Media Has A Probability Problem
… In recent elections, the media has often overestimated the precision of polling, cherry-picked data and portrayed elections as sure things when that conclusion very much wasn’t supported by polls or other empirical evidence. … Probably the most important problem with 2016 coverage was confirmation bias — coupled with what […] Read more »
Clues for a Wave? A Look at the Generic Ballots of 2006 & 2010
Given President Donald Trump’s controversial start, it’s no wonder friends and foes alike are already buzzing about his impact on the 2018 midterm elections. It’s still early in the cycle, but not too early to look at what various indicators say about the two parties’ prospects. Presidential job approval and […] Read more »