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We often hear a candidate is leading, trailing, or the race is tied. This is based on “horse race” polling, which estimates how much support candidates have, based on how people answer surveys leading up to an election. But accurately measuring the horse race is wicked hard for a few reasons.
This report explains how political weighting works, how Pew Research Center does it, and some of its limitations.
How do polls work? What are the different kinds of polls? And what should you look for in a high-quality opinion poll? A Pew Research Center survey methodologist answers these questions and more in six short, easy to read lessons.
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A new study examining online opt-in polling finds that while removing bogus respondents generally improves data quality, no single method reliably solves the problem.
NPORS is an annual survey of U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center used to to produce benchmark estimates for several topics.
Anyone can ask a survey question online – but does that make it a good poll? They might call themselves a pollster, but their methods aren’t exactly best practice — and the internet is flooded with these low-quality polls. Here are a few simple things you can look for to tell whether a poll is legit or sketchy.
Courtney Kennedy, vice president of methods and innovation, answers some common questions about the current polling landscape in the U.S.
Ever wonder how we collect our data? Today, most polls are conducted online. But, most pollsters reject the idea that “one size fits all” when it comes to polling, so we still use phone calls or mail to reach people.
We’re in an era where the people most likely to respond to a poll are also the most likely to vote Democratic for president. Pew Research Center’s head methodologist Courtney Kennedy explains how pollsters are tackling this challenge to make samples as representative as possible.
In 2020, Pew Research Center launched a new project called the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS). NPORS is an annual, cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults. Respondents can answer either by paper or online, and they are selected using address-based sampling from the United States Postal Service’s computerized delivery sequence file.
Pew Research Center’s in-depth study of its survey respondents who voted in the 2024 election examines turnout, voting patterns and demographics.
Detailed information on Pew Research Center international survey methodology, such as mode of interview, sampling design, margin of error, and design effect, for each country we survey, organized by survey, country and year.
In this Q&A, we speak with Brian Kennedy, a senior researcher at the Center, on why and how we conducted the survey of AI experts.
