NYT: Why Can’t Pollsters Agree?
As a companion piece to their poll story, the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg weighs in this morning on why the polls disagree. It touches on much of wRead More…
Author: Mark Blumenthal
Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.
Poll of Polls
Alert reader JM tipped me off to the fact that Bill Schneider has reprised his “poll of polls” summary on CNN’s Inside Politics. According to the traRead More…
Military Absentees?
And speaking of uncovered voters… Several readers asked about active duty military personnel stationed overseas who will vote by absentee ballot. Read More…
More on Mobile Phones
I want to clarify a few points from Friday’s post on mobile phones, based on some of the very thoughtful reader comments. First, it is temptingRead More…
Mobile Phones
Arianna Huffington, a frequent critic of political polling, is weighing in once again with an indictment of the "downright dangerous impact that Read More…
Debate III
Here are the links to the post debate survey results. ABC and Gallup once again re-interviewed previously contacted respondents immediately after theRead More…
Where I’m headed
I made a list tonight of the topics I would like to cover over the next three weeks. A series on how pollsters define and identify likely voters
WirRead More…
Dissenting View
Not surprisingly, Alan Abramowitz took exception to my comments earlier today. In the interest of fairness, I am posting a portion of his email replyRead More…
Why & How Pollsters Weight, Part IV
In Part I of this thread, I listed pollsters that weight by demographics but not by party identification, including the ABC News/Washington Post poll.Read More…
Why & How Pollsters Weight, Part III
I have so far discussed two different philosophies of weighting by party. The purist model — still the choice of most media pollsters — weights samRead More…