… The Oscars are tricky to predict for a number of reasons, the main one being that — compared to election forecasting or sports prognostications — it’s very difficult to get relevant data; the awards are determined by the views of a small, tight-knit group of voters. No one polls […] Read more »
Nate Silver sounds off on 2014, 2016 & FiveThirtyEight’s haters
… Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Silver, discussing lessons from 2014, the latest bits of suspect conventional wisdom emanating from D.C., what Silver thinks of his critics, and which GOP governor may be flying under the radar when it comes to nabbing the party’s nomination in 2016. CONT. […] Read more »
Fight the Temptation to Pay Attention to Polls
Public service announcement: For now, you should ignore surveys testing potential Democrat/Republican matchups for the 2016 presidential election. … I realize it’s tempting to believe that these head-to-head polls have at least a little bit of meaningful information in them. Poll numbers are irresistible to political obsessives like me, but […] Read more »
There is danger at the margin
Pollsters and pundits spend lots of time studying margins — how far ahead or behind a given candidate is relative to his or her opponent. Focusing on margins is a dangerous game, however, and one of the reasons polls appeared off the mark this past year. Surveys are designed to […] Read more »
Revisiting the bias in the midterm polls
I recently wrote a piece that argued there is an anti-winner bias in polling. For races expected to be competitive, I noted that the predicted poll margin underestimated the actual vote share for the winner. I’ve thought more about this issue and talked with some people about it (including the […] Read more »
What if election polls are biased against winners?
It seems like every election, some observers suggest that the polls are biased against one party. They’re often wrong. In 2012, many thought the polls were biased against Republicans, but they ended up being biased against Democrats. In 2014, many argued that the polls could be biased against Democrats, but […] Read more »