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A prominent GOP poll said Democratic U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire would lose her re-election bid to a Republican. Hassan won by 9 percentage points. AP Photo/Charles Krupa

Some midterm polls were on-target – but finding which pollsters and poll aggregators to believe can be challenging

Polling for the 2022 midterms was more accurate than the dramatically wrong predictions of 2016 and 2020, leading one pollster to boast, ‘The death of polling has been greatly exaggerated.’
Legendary New York City columnist Jimmy Breslin, right, ready to do shoe-leather journalistic research in a bar, said preelection polls were “monstrous frauds.” Michael Brennan/Getty Images

When noted journalists bashed political polls as nothing more than ‘a fragmentary snapshot’ of a moment in time

There was a time when well-known journalists resented preelection polls and didn’t mind saying so. One even said he felt “secret glee and relief when the polls go wrong.” Why did they feel this way?
Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election defied almost all predictions. EPA/Jim Lo Scalzo

How did we get the result of the US election so wrong?

Swinburne political scientist Bryan Cranton looks at why so many experts got the US Election so wrong
The UK general election could go either way. The one certainty is that the numbers of seats won won’t match the votes for each party. AAP/Newzulu/Stephen Chung

UK election prediction: this week’s result won’t reflect the voters’ will

This week the “mother of parliaments” faces a general election in the UK. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system means we can’t predict the result with certainty, nor expect it to match the vote.
In a digital world dominated by a few media conglomerates, start-up initiatives like The Charta and First Look in the US should be welcomed. Andy Piper

Inform, not notify: the birth of participatory, ‘slow journalism’

The digital era has led to increasing challenges for western and traditional news media business models. Media outlets are facing steady declines in revenue, while the migration of advertising online has…

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