What really happened in Michigan?
03/05/2024
Coverage of Michigan’s Democratic primary revealed a significant divergence between data journalists and those reporters who focus on storytelling. The data journalists were convinced the uncommitted vote was not terribly…
Any number in a storm — looking to predict elections
02/28/2024
We’re desperate to know who’ll win the presidency. We become like the sailor who’ll choose “any port in a storm” — a phrase that began life in the erotic 1749…
Playing numbers games with foreign aid
02/21/2024
Numbers can be seductive (though perhaps only a pollster or mathematician could think of them that way). Long considered the language of science, numbers appeal to those interested in truth.…
Will convictions hurt Trump?
02/14/2024
Some dear friends and valued colleagues recently took to the op-ed page of the New York Times to argue that Donald Trump could well become an electoral fatality if he…
Updating the GOP primary and holiday shopping
01/31/2024
Today I’m going to quickly update two previous columns. The first, published nearly a year ago, argued “Iowa and New Hampshire…will be critically important in sorting out the winner (of…
Why has Trump remained so popular with Republicans?
01/17/2024
With Donald Trump smacking down his Republican rivals in Iowa, it’s worth asking why a disgusting human being and incompetent former president, facing multiple indictments is faring so well in the…
The pitfalls of polling about a Gaza ceasefire
01/10/2024
If pollsters bothered to ask questions like, “Do you favor or oppose world peace?” I’d wager they’d find 90 percent in favor. Pollsters don’t waste time and budgets on such questions, though, in part because the…
Different questions, different projections
12/13/2023
Last week we warned about misleading crosstabs. This week’s warning is about different questions on the same topic producing different answers and divergent interpretations. Compared to forecasting elections you’d think…
The problem with interpreting poll crosstabs
12/06/2023
Last month, Gallup generated a great deal of attention for a startling finding: During the month of October, President Joe Biden’s approval rating apparently tumbled 11 points among Democrats — his core constituency. Presumably…
The three P’s of politics
11/29/2023
Like many Democrats I’m an inveterate CNN watcher, so I regularly encounter Jonathan Lawson pitching Colonial Penn Life Insurance. As other regular viewers may recall, he urges us to consider the three P’s of…