The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll always makes news and with good reason: The pollster that conducts it, Selzer & Company, is among the best in the country, according to FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings. On Saturday evening, the poll had an especially interesting result in Iowa’s Senate race. It put the […] Read more »
Did the polls lose in Scotland?
Many are looking at Scotland’s independence referendum as a referendum on poll accuracy as well. And the general consensus is that polls failed the test. One analyst called it “a loss not only for the pro-independence movement … but also for the pollsters.” A Guardian column blamed “systematic error across […] Read more »
And Then There Were Four: The Senate Field Narrows
With six weeks to go before the midterm elections, the playing field has started to narrow. Increasingly, it appears that control of the Senate will hinge on as few as four key races. Based on the past two Senate elections, polling in September is highly predictive of the final outcome. […] Read more »
The secret truths of election forecasting
In case you missed it, election forecasting can be fractious. There is a “war” among various forecasting models of the Senate elections, we are told. I’m here to tell you: no, there’s not. Or at least, much less of a war than a grabby headline would suggest. And so, in […] Read more »
In Scotland, the polls got it wrong. Or did they?
As the U.S. blogosphere swirls with the arguments about the best ways to go about (or not) predicting election results, Justin Wolfers make a provocative argument today over at The Upshot in the wake of Thursday’s Scottish referendum. Wolfers claims that while the outcome was a “loss” for polling, the […] Read more »
Scotland’s No Vote: A Loss for Pollsters and a Win for Betting Markets
Thursday’s Scottish referendum was interesting not just for what it said about Britain, but also for what it said about the state of political forecasting. I’m calling it a loss not only for the pro-independence movement — the BBC is projecting a 55 percent vote for No — but also […] Read more »