With only a few weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, Americans are facing the potential for a long and protracted period of uncertainty about the outcome. Will Donald Trump be elected for four more years or will the American voters make a change and elect Joe Biden? In this webinar, North American and International pollsters will share their views on where the race stands, what seem to be the central issues, and how - and when - it's all likely to end.Voter Priorities, Battleground States, and Other Assorted Things to Keep Your Eye On The 2020 US Presidential Electionby Clifford Young, President, Public Affairs, Ipsos USAPollsters confront new challenges in every election, but perhaps never as many as they do in 2020. This presentation summarizes those challenges, with new data and warnings for analysts.Who gets the ballot box bonus?by Jean-Marc Leger, President, Leger Market Research and AnalyticsIt will all come down to voter enthusiasm. Assessing voter turnout is a key factor in allowing polls to be close to the election's results, especially in battleground states. Jean-Marc Leger will present his innovative techniques to better evaluate voter turnout and improve the accuracy of election polling.Identifying Voters and Reporting the Votes Before, On, and Even After Election DayBy Joe Lenski, Co-founder and Executive Vice President, Edison ResearchThe election isn't over until we know the winner. This year increases in vote by mail, the coronavirus pandemic and campaign attacks on the process may make reporting the results more difficult than ever. What tools- old and new- are being used to know the voting outcome? From The Red Wall To The Rust Belt - How Forgotten Communities In The UK and The US Flexed Their Political MuscleBy Deborah Mattinson, Founding Partner, BritainThinks.A view from across the pond; the lessons Americans can learn from recent British elections.
Why did Labour lose? Why the Conservatives won? What happens next? What does this tell us about the likely outcome in the US election?
We are now less than 100 days before U.S. voters go to the polls to decide whether to stick with Donald Trump for four more years or make a change and elect Joe Biden. In this webinar, five North American pollsters will share their views on where the race stands, what seems to be the central issues, and how it's all likely to turn out.
This paper describes the methodology, and outlines some of the findings, of an ongoing programme of political research. The focus is the recently formed UK Social Democratic Party. The SDP, in collaboration with its Alliance partner, the Liberal Party, achieved a 50% voting intention figure within 6 months of its formation early in 1981. This support slumped to 20% during 1982. However, the Alliance attained 26% of the votes cast at the June 1983 UK General Election, compared to 44% for the Conservative Party and 28% for the Labour Party. The research programme has been based upon creativity and projective techniques. In the research reported here they have been used to explore the values, motives and attitudes underlying voting behaviour and intention. The findings to date illustrate both the diagnostic and also the predictive value of creative qualitative research approaches.
Due to the potential impact and significance of the undecideds and the widespread use of telephone surveys, it became imperative that an improved technique be developed which would result in a reliable forecast of the likely voting patterns of respondents who claimed to be undecided. Such a technique, which can be used with any method of data collection, was developed by the authors. This paper will discuss:-1. the new technique -2. a specific application of the technique in the 1980 US presidential election and -3. the results of a validation study in which post-election follow-up interviews were conducted with previously undecided voters. In this validation, a comparison of the technique's predictions and reported voting behavior revealed that the model correctly classified approximately 80% of the undecided respondents in the three-way race for President. In addition, we will also discuss potential uses and applications of the procedure within the European political scene.
Statistics show that political participation in Switzerland, as in many other Western countries, is constantly decreasing. A first analysis has shown, that certain segments of the population are much less participating in polls than others, especially women, young people and the lower social class. Our own research has let us to distinguish between "good", "occasional" and "bad" voters.
9 out of 10 voters can position themselves on a left / right semantic differential scale. Some 30% choose for the center position. The scale-positions largely explain party-choice in elections as well as perceptions of political entities such as parties and political leaders. The frequency distributions between left and right are highly stable over time. The tendency to shift in either direction (if forced to do so) changes slightly more in successive surveys. On the whole polarisation-simulation favours the right, both over all and in the political center. The middle-of-the readers are being further analysed. They show both scepticism and low political interest but also a relatively open mind. Since many of them go and vote they do decide about parliamentary stalemate or workable majorities. They tend to attribute authority to politically less involved leaders and there appear to be political program items that appeal to the political center more than to other voters.
Observation of the behaviour, attitudes and opinions, among other things, of a population can be done to achieve many objectives. Much of such studies belong to the field of market research, and much to social research. Opinion polling is included in the social research field, but is distinguished as a sub-category by its direct relevance to a national or other political process. The distinction is not always clear; for instance a survey on attitudes to abortion need or need not fall into the opinion polling category according to whether or not abortion is currently a matter of political debate. But it can also be said that like genius, or sex appeal, an opinion poll is difficult to define but easy to recognise when you see it. Typically, opinion polls relate to possible voting behaviour, attitudes to political personalities and issues. As such their existence round the world, so say nothing of what they do, reveals interesting patterns.
The outcome of the Austrian national referendum against the operation of the nuclear power plant in Zwentendorf did not only turn out as a surprise for the Austrian political scene but has also been referred to, as a remarkable event on the international level. The nuclear power issue in Austria gained special actuality due to the fact that the referendum took place only a few months prior to the general election. The present paper presents the development of the climate of opinion before the national referendum, further demonstrates and analyzes the influence of the nuclear power issue on the attitudes and actual voting behaviour of the Austrian electorate during the national election using data of political survey research. In addition to content-specific and socio-psychological aspects methodological problems connected with public opinion polling are also taken into consideration.
In the weeks just prior to the British general election of May 1979 Research Services Ltd. conducted a series of four surveys for a London Sunday newspaper, the Observer. In some ways, there was nothing unusual about the four surveys. They were of a kind often conducted by polling organisations for newspapers and television networks during election campaigns; the samples were not especially large, and nothing new was attempted in the way of interviewing techniques. In other ways, however, the RSL/Observer undertaking was unusual, possibly unique.
The objective of this paper is to investigate what can be learnt about comparative politics from an examination of public opinion poll data across country. The two countries selected are Germany and Britain: and the data compared is mainly taken from political polls conducted by Marplan in both countries between April and June 1979.
This paper describes how a set of simulation programmes, grouped under the acronym WANDA, can be used to increase the contribution of sample survey data to forward planning. The problem taken as an example is the construction of a model of voting behaviour and how this could be used by a political party to plan an effective electoral strategy. The WANDA programmes are particularly applicable in the area of persuasion; in the development and testing of 'best' persuasion strategies.