Early polling often doesn’t reflect who goes on to become president (think Howard Dean or Newt Gingrich). These days pollsters acknowledge they are wrestling with a sea change in polling methods that’s making it harder to collect a sample opinion of Americans. Judy Woodruff reports as part of a collaboration […] Read more »
When Will Iowa Republicans Make Up Their Minds?
… A key question I often get from the press these days is: When will Iowans finally make up their minds? Based on the astonishing number of candidates still under consideration in the Republican field, my answer is: Late, very late. History shows that even in an normal year, Iowans […] Read more »
60 Days Until Iowa: Are the Polls Predicting the Winners?
… Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump now hold comfortable leads in almost all the national polls and most state surveys, though Bernie Sanders is neck and neck with Clinton in the Granite State. What does history say about the predictive power of both the national polls and the state polls […] Read more »
Why horse race campaign polls are mostly worthless this far ahead of the voting
… Horse race polls have become the junk food of political journalism. We consume too many of them, too often. I’m as guilty as anyone else — and maybe more; I don’t just read about the polls, I write about them. (That makes me a pusher.) But here’s an inconvenient […] Read more »
The Future Of Polling May Depend On Donald Trump’s Fate
Does Donald Trump lead the race for the Republican presidential nomination? Or does he lead it by a “yuuuuuge” margin? Bloomberg recently released a poll that gave Trump 24 percent to Ben Carson’s 20 percent. On the same day, Ipsos released a poll that put Trump at 37 percent to […] Read more »
State of election markets: A relatively uneventful week
As we drifted from 71 to 64 days until voting starts in Iowa, the Republican primary was relatively uneventful this week. Polling front-runner Donald Trump held steady in the polls and markets, but a series of statements and actions made for a volatile week in the markets for their second […] Read more »