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Video: Can polls tell us who will win on Election Day?

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.

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How Pew Research Center Uses Its National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS)

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.

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Public Opinion Polling Basics

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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  • report

    Assessing the Cell Phone Challenge

    With fully a quarter of the U.S. adult population now relying solely on cell phone service, pollsters and other survey researchers face a difficult decision as to whether to include cell phones in their samples. A joint study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project takes an up-to-date look at the potential biases in findings based on landline-only surveys.

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    Is caller ID is increasing non-response rates in your surveys?

    Senior research staff answer questions from readers relating to all the areas covered by our seven projects, ranging from polling techniques and findings, to media, technology, religious, demographic and global attitudes trends.

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    Can I volunteer to be picked for a survey?

    Senior research staff answer questions from readers relating to all the areas covered by our seven projects, ranging from polling techniques and findings, to media, technology, religious, demographic and global attitudes trends.

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    How do you decide how to word your survey questions?

    Senior research staff answer questions from readers relating to all the areas covered by our seven projects, ranging from polling techniques and findings, to media, technology, religious, demographic and global attitudes trends.

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    Are adults with only a cell phone represented in your polls?

    Senior research staff answer questions from readers relating to all the areas covered by our seven projects, ranging from polling techniques and findings, to media, technology, religious, demographic and global attitudes trends.

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    But What Do the Polls Show?

    Perhaps the best way to think about public opinion and its relationship to politics and policymaking is that the American public is typically short on facts, but often long on judgment.

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    Perils of Polling in Election ’08

    Despite such challenges as a growing wireless-only population, possible racially-related response bias and greater-than-usual difficulties in forecasting turnout, polllsters’ methods were evidently adequate to the task.

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