… In a perfect world, polls sample from the population of voters, who would state their political preference perfectly clearly and then vote accordingly. However, results from small random samples can be quite unreliable due to extremely narrow electoral margins. To calculate the probability of winning the 2016 US presidential […] Read more »
Much ado about nothing in Alabama ‘fraud’ charges
At the risk of being lost down a rabbit hole and subject to endless trolling, I just have to weigh in on the so-called evidence of vote fraud that was contained in Roy Moore’s court filing, in which he tried to get a delay in having the vote certified. (The […] Read more »
An Economist Explains: How to Sort Facts From Fictions
In public debates about economic policy, it can be hard to separate real insights from political posturing. But a few simple rules of thumb can help. … The government statistical agencies typically offer only a dry recitation of the numbers. But for people with a partisan perspective, the latest economic […] Read more »
The ‘Nate Silver Effect’ Is Changing Journalism. Is That Good?
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 »
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 »
Most of the bounces in Trump’s approval ratings aren’t real
Donald Trump’s approval rating is one of the key news stories of 2017. That’s true not just for political junkies. Approval — or the lack of it — can give the president more or less power as he negotiates with Congress. How do we know a president’s approval rating? From […] Read more »