Monday night was a thriller, no doubt about it. Of course, the outcome of the Republican caucuses was not identical to the final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll published Saturday night. We had the top four candidates identified, all right. But we had Donald Trump with the win over […] Read more »
How Ted Cruz Engineered His Iowa Triumph
… As he staffed the campaign, [campaign manager Jeff] Roe made the unusual decision to make Cruz’s director of analytics and his pollster the same person. … Roe has granted [Chris] Wilson the most expansive brief of any pollster in either party’s 2016 field: his surveys not only guide Cruz’s […] Read more »
Bernie Sanders’s Big Turnout Problem: He’s Reliant on Infrequent Voters
It’s common to talk about the turnout challenge facing Donald Trump, who clearly fares well among those who don’t vote regularly. But the candidate with the biggest turnout challenge in this cycle is probably Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders appears to be extraordinarily dependent on turnout from infrequent voters, even more […] Read more »
Voters vote, non-voters don’t. Why is this so hard for pollsters?
Pollsters aren’t very sophisticated when deciding who is and isn’t going to vote on Election Day. You’d think they would have research-backed strategies for assessing who is likely to vote. They don’t. Pollsters usually just ask respondents if they plan to vote and take respondents at their word. … But […] Read more »
Why the ‘likely voter’ is the holy grail of polling
What are the chances you will vote in the 2016 general election? Did you vote in the 2012 presidential election? These are the questions pollsters often use to identify “likely voters,” perhaps the most ubiquitous and least-understood phrase in election news — and for two big reasons: CONT. Scott Clement, […] Read more »
Why Polls Have Been Wrong Recently
The polling industry has been hit hard by high-profile misfires in recent years. … But exactly why the polls err often remains a mystery. Potential sources for error abound: The initial samples could be biased, the likely-voter models may not reflect the actual electorate, or voters could make last-minute decisions that […] Read more »