Stung by their failure to accurately predict the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, pollsters collectively went off to figure out what went wrong. They have yet to figure out what or why.
Pollster Bud Roper once said of his field that “a good deal more than half is art and … less than half is science.” After the 2020 polls got a lot wrong, is it time for more candor from pollsters?
Polling is an imperfect attempt at providing insight and explanation. But the public’s desire for insight and explanation about elections never ends, so polls endure despite their flaws and failures.
A new poll from The Australia Institute shows 71% of Aussies want the country to be a global leader in climate action. Yet Australia lags behind the rest of the world.
Presidential pollsters in the US have had some embarrassing failures. Here’s a catalog of those miscalls, from the scholar who literally wrote the book on them.
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?
The polls are predicting a comfortable win for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. But if this election sees the same polling errors as in 2016, Trump’s chances of re-election are higher than we think.
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University