Political polls can make for dramatic headlines. But they are a snapshot of when they were taken, not a predictor of election outcomes. Follow these expert tips to make sense of the stats.
Though public opinion surveys offer some hope, there are several concerns for democracy’s consolidation in West Africa.
Arizona election officials released this image as one example of armed people watching ballot drop boxes.
Maricopa County Recorder's Office via CBS News
Most Russians get their news from government-controlled television. But those who look to Telegram, an online platform, are more likely to have views that break from the official position.
Can political prediction models pick the election winner better than the polls, the weather or Washington’s football team?
Better opinions polls are more expensive because pollsters need to spend more effort getting a representative and honest sample of voters.
Shutterstock
You could compare election opinion polls to penalty shoot-outs at a World Cup final: there’s huge pressure to get it right and we remember the big misses most of all.
Malcolm Turnbull’s days were numbered as the Newspoll losses continued to mount.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Policymaking is no longer based solely on what a party stands for. Now, it also matters how a decision is going to play in the opinion polls – and that’s a problem for our political system.
Professor, Future Fellow and Head of Statistics at UNSW, and a Deputy Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS), UNSW Sydney