<i>Polls and Elections</i> Accuracy and Bias in the 2020 U.S. General Election Polls

Panagopoulos, Costas

doi:10.1111/psq.12710

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Our results therefore point to a systematic bias in US pre-election polls that affects not only Trumpists but all Republican candidates who have run in recent contests. 1,3,5,9 Thus, whatever Trump has in common with the candidates he has endorsed, these characteristics do not appear to explain why support for Republican candidates has been underestimated by pre-election polls.…”

Section: What Are the Implications Of Our Results?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that Trump was no more underestimated by the polls than any other Republican candidate 1 . After the 2020 US presidential election, this general Republican bias was even more pronounced: when examining pre‐election polls for the presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections, not only was Trump substantially underestimated, but so were all Republican candidates – even those who were very different to Trump 5 …”

Section: The “Shy Trump” Theory and Unlikely Votersmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Did “Trumpists” Perform Worse in US Senate Election Polls?

Chen

Körtner

2022

Significance

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Section: What Are the Implications Of Our Results?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The “Shy Trump” Theory and Unlikely Votersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Did “Trumpists” Perform Worse in US Senate Election Polls?

Chen

Körtner

2022

Significance

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“…One of the most widely used measures asks respondents whom they plan to vote for. This question, or some flavor of it, is valuable in predicting the outcome of elections (though less so recently; see Panagopoulos, 2021). These types of measures, as valuable as they are, also come with limitations, namely, in their inability to access unprimed voters' opinions of the candidate or if the candidate is their actual preference versus a conditional preference.…”

Section: Traditional Measures Of Candidate Approvalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Presidential candidates nobody wants?

Fazekas,

Hatemi

2023

Pres Stud Q

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In a nationally representative study, we explore the public's views of the 2016 presidential nominees. Current measures generally focus on approval of given candidates with closed‐ended questions, but much can be learned by soliciting the public's unconstrained candidate preferences—not only in the direction of how they feel, but the depth of their views and who they really want to see in office. Employing open‐ended questions, we find that more than 75% of the voting public preferred an option other than what was offered. Even when constraining choices to politicians, the Democratic and Republican nominees were not preferred by the majority of the public, and this held true when restricting the analyses to partisans only. We further asked voters to express, in their own words, what they thought of the two candidates for president. The majority of the public described both candidates in negative terms. They spoke with deep disdain for the opposition's candidate, as well as their own party's candidate. The results add support to the view that US primary elections are failing to produce candidates who represent the public's interests and signal the potential for further instability in US government.

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“…However, this assumption does not hold when nonresponse is correlated with the variable of interest. Such survey bias may explain some of the 2020 preelection polling misses (Clinton et al 2021; Keeter, Kennedy, and Deane 2020; Panagopoulos 2021).…”

Section: Declining Response Rate and Survey Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey Nonresponse and Mass Polarization: The Consequences of Declining Contact and Cooperation Rates

Cavari¹,

Freedman

2022

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Recent studies question whether declining response rates in survey data overstate the level of polarization of Americans. At issue are the sources of declining response rates—declining contact rates, associated mostly with random polling mechanisms, or declining cooperation rates, associated with personal preferences, knowledge, and interest in politics—and their differing effects on measures of polarization. Assessing 158 surveys (2004–2018), we show that declining cooperation is the primary source of declining response rates and that it leads to survey overrepresentation of people who are more engaged in politics. Analyzing individual responses to 1,223 policy questions in those surveys, we further show that, conditional on the policy area, this survey bias overestimates or underestimates the partisan divide among Americans. Our findings question the perceived strength of mass polarization and move forward the discussion about the effect of declining survey response on generalizations from survey data.

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Polls and Elections Accuracy and Bias in the 2020 U.S. General Election Polls

Cited by 13 publications

References 19 publications

Did “Trumpists” Perform Worse in US Senate Election Polls?

Did “Trumpists” Perform Worse in US Senate Election Polls?

Presidential candidates nobody wants?

Survey Nonresponse and Mass Polarization: The Consequences of Declining Contact and Cooperation Rates

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