At The American Prospect: Tweet In the home stretch, I wrote that midterm polling is far less accurate than in Presidential years. Today, in The American Prospect, I detail how this year’s polling errors are correlated with voter turnout, which was the lowest since 1942, as based on Michael McDonald’s tabulation so far. In 2014, […]
Entries from November 10th, 2014
Exceptionally Low Turnout Can Account For Polling Errors
November 10th, 2014, 9:26am by Sam Wang
Tags: 2014 Election · governors · Senate
The Midterm Polling Curse (Morning-after edition)
November 5th, 2014, 11:41am by Sam Wang
Pre-election PEC Senate aggregate: 52 Republican seats. Outcome: 52 or more Republican seats (Alaska is not called, and Louisiana goes to a runoff). As I wrote in The New Republic, last night’s performance by the GOP was remarkable. In close Senate races, Republicans outperformed polls by an average of 5.3 percentage points. Prime examples of […]
Tags: 2014 Election · governors · Senate
Election night liveblogging, 9:00PM
November 4th, 2014, 9:23pm by Sam Wang
See below the fold for older commentary. The most recent comment will appear up top. 12:10am: Tonight’s performance by the GOP has been quite remarkable. In close Senate races, Republicans seem to be outperforming polls by around 5 percentage points. That goes a long way toward explaining what is happening in Virginia. In close gubernatorial […]
Tags: 2014 Election
Election Night liveblogging, 7:00PM
November 4th, 2014, 7:09pm by Sam Wang
See below the fold for older commentary. The most recent comment will appear up top. 8:40pm: The Upshot has projected counts. For now, use those for your Geek’s Guide. Shaheen (D-NH) around +5% and McConnell (R-KY) around +13%, both ahead of their pre-election polls. Ambiguous for estimating Delta. 8:27pm: Reader Forrest asked me how The […]
Tags: 2014 Election
Errors Are Inevitable – But Who Will Benefit?
November 4th, 2014, 2:00pm by Sam Wang
Tweet Despite the certainty of pundits, we actually don’t know who will win the Senate! In The New Yorker, I explain. From 2004 to 2012, only thirteen Senate races have had margins of less than three percentage points in the week before the election. Of these, four were won by the trailing candidate. One more, […]
Tags: 2014 Election · governors · Senate
Geek’s Guide To The Election, 2014 edition
November 4th, 2014, 12:00pm by Sam Wang
Download it! It includes instructions for estimating Delta. Liveblogging will start around 8:00pm. Useful links (will add as day goes on): HuffPollster: Senate Election Live-Tracker. DailyKos Elections, hour-by-hour guide. New York Times, The Upshot, Senate tracker.
Tags: 2014 Election · governors · Senate
Senate and House final snapshots, 2014
November 4th, 2014, 1:54am by Sam Wang
Tweet Here are final polling snapshots for Senate races: Put your own predictions in comments! Some more notes…
Tags: 2014 Election · Senate
Gubernatorial final snapshots, 2014
November 4th, 2014, 12:54am by Sam Wang
Tweet Here are final polling snapshots for gubernatorial races that are either close or likely to switch party control: Put your own predictions in comments! Some more notes…
Tags: 2014 Election · governors
Grading policies
November 3rd, 2014, 8:33pm by Sam Wang
How should PEC be graded? As the last few polls trickle in, let me give a suggestion for how to evaluate predictions after the election. Late tonight I’ll give actual predictions (and give you a chance to record your own predictions). My preferred measure is the Brier score. As I explain this concept, I’ll refer […]
Tags: 2014 Election
Reality check: Obama net approval/disapproval
November 3rd, 2014, 7:00pm by Sam Wang
Coming into the home stretch, President Obama’s net approval/disapproval rating is at minus 8%. Not good…but 4% better than June. This is what candidates face as in-person voting starts tomorrow morning.
Tags: 2014 Election · House · Senate
