Category: Polling
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America and the Affirmative Action Debate
Last month, the Supreme Court decided Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, holding that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision, which also covered… Read More
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The DeSantis Decline
After former President Donald Trump led a hand-picked slate of candidates to defeat in 2022, many Republicans sought a fresh face to lead the conservative movement. For some members of the GOP establishment, the ideal candidate was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. In him they saw a younger, sharper version of… Read More
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How Much Does Early Presidential Polling Matter?
Donald Trump’s “MAGA” movement is arguably more unpopular than ever before, with only 24% of the electorate (and 12% of independents) viewing it favorably. But if you looked at the 2024 presidential polls for a Biden-Trump rematch, you probably wouldn’t be able to figure that out. Virtually every polling aggregation… Read More
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Does Trump’s Indictment Change Anything?
Last week, the Department of Justice indicted former President Donald Trump on 37 counts relating to his illegal retention of classified documents. Despite the possibility of conviction and his unpopularity among the general electorate, Trump remains the favorite to win the Republican nomination, and polls suggest that his latest scandal… Read More
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Examining Ross Perot’s Impact on the 1992 Presidential Election Results
Many political scientists now recognize that Ross Perot’s independent candidacy did not spoil the 1992 presidential election for Republican President George H.W. Bush, yet few comprehensive quantitative analyses exist to prove such conventional wisdom correct. While exit polls are by no means perfect measures of electoral preferences, they are often… Read More
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Struggling to Attract Single Women? So are Republicans
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the narrative of the 2022 midterms had already cemented: Republicans’ celebration of a promised majority had turned to dejection and finger-pointing. There will be no shortage of post-hoc analysis for this “asterisk” election, but with more data available, there’s one voting block bucking… Read More
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What’s Going On With Trafalgar’s Polls?
Over the last two presidential cycles, the Trafalgar Group rose to fame for its polling, which yielded better-than-average results for Republicans and indicated closer races for Donald Trump than many other outlets predicted. Trafalgar partly attributes those numbers to its “social desirability metric”, which the firm claims adjusts for respondents,… Read More
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Has The Supreme Court Ruling On Abortion Changed The Electoral Picture?
On June 24, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson declaring that the right to an abortion was not constitutionally protected and could be blocked by states. The ruling, which was deeply unpopular across the nation, set off a firestorm of debate on both sides regarding legislation… Read More
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Independents Hold The Key To Any Biden Rebound
One of the most heavily debated topics in politics is just what, exactly, is the cause behind Joe Biden’s dismal approval ratings. It isn’t clear that his approvals should be mired in the low-40s, either, if history is to serve as any indicator; in fact, a recent Gallup poll found… Read More