There are three things that matter about the US election result, seen from my pollster’s point of view. What do we learn about the role of demographics against attitudes in determining outcome? What might the result mean for the next UK general election? And why did we get that Mitt ...
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As argued in a classic article, the role of campaigns in democracy is to inform voters about the candidates, especially about their policy stances. In a book I recently published, Follow the Leader (press release), I find considerable evidence that campaigns fulfill this role: voters often do learn about candidates’ ...
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Barack Obama secured re-election by maintaining the coalition that gave him victory four years ago: black and Hispanic voters, young Americans, women and Americans with post-graduate degrees. These outnumbered Mitt Romney’s supporters among white men, older Americans and people who have not been to college. This emerges clearly from analysis ...
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In the final hours of the 2012 Presidential Campaign, both candidates executed a record-breaking eleventh-hour ad blitz -- more money was spent on more political ads than ever before. Voters in crucial swing states (Ohio) experienced an avalanche of political ads – an average of 333 ads per day were ...
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When the September jobs report showed that unemployment had dropped to an unexpectedly low 7.8%, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch helped launch a new conspiracy theory when he tweeted: "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers." Even though the unemployment statistics are produced by ...
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YouGov’s final survey in America shows a favorable electoral landscape for Obama, one which I believe suggests an Obama victory tomorrow, though a narrower one than he enjoyed in 2012. In one of the most extensive polls ever conducted, YouGov questioned more than 36,000 Americans in 27 states, between last ...
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There’s been a lot of speculation recently about how the remaining undecided voters will break over the next few days. My co-author on THE GAMBLE, John Sides, writes that his analyses of currently undecided voters using our Cooperative Campaign Analysis Data (C.C.A.P.) from the last 3 weeks predicts a break ...
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This question obviously has important implications for who wins this election. We can start by dismissing the blanket statement that “challengers break for the incumbent.” That is not true as a blanket statement. See Daron Shaw’s chapter on swing votes in Unconventional Wisdom as well as Mark Blumenthal and Nate ...
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During the Republican convention this year, Republican speakers made a point of asking whether Americans were better off now than they were four years ago. In some ways, that's a funny question to be asking. Obviously, it harkens back to Reagan's successful 1980 takedown of an incumbent president, but the answer is ...
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In this election season, amid all the chatter about candidates’ foibles and gaffes on the campaign trail, a question persists: how much does this criticism permeate through the minds of American voters and shape their vote choices? The first hurdle in gathering evidence that campaign events matter in voter behavior ...
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