In the end, after all the unskewing, the re-weighting and the hand-wringing, the polls were right — for the most part. … But the election also showed the polling industry is still facing increasing challenges related to how the various polls are conducted. The demographics of the country are changing, […] Read more »
Election Reinforces Divide Between Millennials, Baby Boomers
There was no exit sign, no milepost. But in this week’s election, America unmistakably turned onto the road of sustained competition and conflict between the brown and the gray. … About two-fifths of millennials are nonwhite, and that number rises in the generation born after them. By contrast, the baby […] Read more »
More Evidence that Obama’s Victory Reflects the Economic Fundamentals
If you think the “fundamentals” (and by the “fundamentals,” I mean the economy) were stacked in Mitt Romney’s favor in the 2012 presidential election, you’re not alone. You share the prevailing beliefs of many political observers. … Most versions of their explanations go something like this: the fundamentals were in […] Read more »
Hurricane Sandy may have cost Obama 800,000 votes
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour asserted this morning on NBC’s TODAY that “Hurricane Sandy saved Barack Obama’s presidency.” But did the president’s perceived leadership during the immediate aftermath of the storm really move 2.9 million votes? That’s highly unlikely. In fact, Sandy may have actually cost the president 800,000 votes. [cont.] […] Read more »
YouGov Poll Performance In The 2012 U.S. Elections
YouGov conducted a three wave “megapoll” during the recent U.S. national elections, providing detailed estimates for the national popular vote and Presidential and Senate races in 27 states (a total of 51 contests). As in the 2008 Presidential and 2010 midterm elections, YouGov hit the national vote split with almost […] Read more »
Aggregating the Aggregates
… All told, the forecasts did quite well. But look at what worked better: averaging over the forecasts. This makes good statistical sense: as Alex points out with a fun Netflix example, it makes more sense to keep as much information as possible. In a Bayesian framework, why pick just […] Read more »