People around the world were shocked when Hillary Clinton, ahead in many polls, didn’t end up the U.S.‘ president-elect. But that doesn’t mean the polls themselves were wrong.
Survey findings are typically considered in isolation in the media, with no understanding of context, of what is within and what is beyond the expected.
While pre-election polls got their sums wrong, and seemed to ignore biases in the rush to publish, a far more accurate call was being made in the betting shops of Britain.
Recent polls have put Labour and the Conservatives in what seems to be an unshakable dead heat. The latest Ashcroft poll puts them both on 33%. This takes the parties back to exactly where they were in…
Coal seam gas has proved a hot topic ahead of the NSW election, not only on the campaign trail but also on social media, where a ‘social mood reader’ can reveal the depth of community feeling.
NewZulu/Tony Markham/AAP
Beyond polls and betting markets, how else can we gauge how people feel ahead of future elections? Social media is a goldmine, and one of the newer ways to tap into it is with a “social mood reader”.
After defeat in the 2012 election, it is back to the drawing board for the Republican Party. But will they address the true concerns of the electorate?
EPA/STEPHAN SAVOIA/POOL
Tuesday, November 6 was a game changer. The Republican Party in the United States has come to understand that the political environment has been altered. White males can no longer dictate the results of…
More pressing matters: people can be “concerned’ about many things, but what really matters to them are problems close to daily life.
AAP/April Fonti
New polls frequently announce that a significant proportion of the population is concerned about an issue or willing to sacrifice for a cause, from environmental sustainability to Third World debt. These…
Professor of Economics and Finance. Director of the Betting Research Unit and the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University