How we know the drop in Trump’s approval rating in January reflected a real shift in public opinion
The 9-point fall in approval was the largest change between two Pew Research Center polls since Donald Trump took office.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The 9-point fall in approval was the largest change between two Pew Research Center polls since Donald Trump took office.
Many who follow polls are asking how these errors could happen. Here, we’ll take a preliminary shot at answering that question.
Polls can’t predict the future. But they are the best tool to reveal the public’s priorities and values, and why people vote the way they do.
The real environment in which polls are conducted bears little resemblance to the idealized settings presented in textbooks.
The difference in support for the death penalty by survey mode has important consequences for understanding trends on the issue.
Response rates to telephone public opinion polls conducted by Pew Research Center have resumed their decline, to 7% in 2017 and 6% in 2018.
The way polling questions are asked can influence people’s answers. Survey experiments are one way to measure the degree to which different questions elicit different answers.
On election night 2018, besides the exit polls there will be an additional source of data on who voted and why, developed by The Associated Press, Fox News and NORC at the University of Chicago and based on a very different methodology. That means that depending on where you go for election news, you may get a somewhat different portrait of this year’s electorate.
Given the wide range of people we speak to for our polls – and the issues we ask them about – it’s important to be as clear as possible about exactly who says what. In research circles, this practice is sometimes called “defining the universe.”
Read a Q&A with Michael Dimock, president of Pew Research Center, on recent developments in public opinion polling and what lies ahead.
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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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