If a pollster isn't on our pollster ratings page, it could be for a few reasons, such as if it hasn't conducted enough polls in the past for us to rate it or it's brand new on the scene. In this case, we can't be certain how reliable the pollster is because it has little ...
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY FIVETHIRTYEIGHT / GETTY IMAGES We’re about to enter the thick of general-election season, which means we’re about to get aboatload of polls. Problem is, it can be hard to know which polls to trust or how to make sense of them all. But don’t worry — it doe...
Sure, but national primary polls conducted in the calendar year before the election are actually somewhat predictive of who the eventual nominee will be. Earlier this year, fellow FiveThirtyEight analyst Geoffrey Skelleylooked at early primary polling since 1972and found that candidates who polled bett...
Presidential polls are no more reliable than they were a century ago. So why do they consume our political lives? Can You Believe the Polls? It Depends A veteran of survey research explains why high-quality polling matters — and warns of the proliferation of shoddy gimmicks ...
Source ConfusionAfter a short period of time we tend to treat information — of both the reliable and unreliable sort — similarly since we forget where we learned it. And if it comes to mind quickly (Availability Bias) we are apt to conclude it’s reliable even though we picked it up ...
It is at this point that public trust in polling itself begins to break down. If an observer assumes that current polling as a science is basically reliable, one can look at rigorous probabilistic forecasts at sites likeFivethirtyeight.comorThe New York Times, both of which curre...
Extracting information from every source. While some analysts might cherry-pick data sources according to whether they were qualitatively "reliable" or "unbiased", Silver incorporated them all. And with good reason: there's still information in the presence of bias. For example, Rasmussen is a re...
If a pollster isn't on our pollster ratings page, it could be for a few reasons, such as if it hasn't conducted enough polls in the past for us to rate it or it's brand new on the scene. In this case, we can't be certain how reliable the pollster is because it has little ...
The Senate model uses almost all the same factors for incumbents, but there are some subtle differences given that senators face election once every six years instead of once every other year. For instance, previous victory margin is less reliable in Senate races; that’s because a longer time...
dolphins and turtles, most polls had Scott ahead of Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, even as other Republican candidates struggled in more safely Republican states. The prediction model at FiveThirtyEightnowgives Nelson a slight lead, a shift that seems to owe more to biological red tide than any...