Survey Savvy: Strengths and Shortcomings
With election polling currently at a fever pitch, we’ve developed a three-part series designed to aid in understanding, interpreting, and utilizing survey data. This post is the first in this series. Surveys are like the Swiss Army knives of research: versatile, handy, and useful in a wide variety of situations. But, just like you wouldn’t…
Read MoreHow media coverage fuels the China nuclear threat narrative
As China’s nuclear buildup continues amid rising US-China tensions and as bilateral arms control diplomacy stalls, nuclear weapons are becoming an increasingly salient and volatile piece of the already fraught US-China relationship. For the US national security establishment, China and its nuclear program are also increasingly driving US defense strategy and nuclear posture. To better…
Read MoreCan you speak Gen Z: Messaging to Younger and More Diverse Audiences
Every four years, tens of millions of Americans head to the polls to cast their ballot for president, but not before they’ve been inundated by a wave of public polling and electoral predictions. Candidate popularity, voter surveys on key issues, and turnout forecasts—you name it and it’s probably been polled. It’s enough to make anyone’s…
Read MoreRepairing Your Relationship With the Polls Post-2020
Few Americans made any conclusions on Election Night this year, having been forewarned by various experts, pundits, and candidates themselves that the election would likely take days to resolve. But one conclusion popped immediately: the polls were wrong. As more votes are counted, that conclusion has held, although the size of the miss gets smaller…
Read More2020 Has Changed A Lot of Things, and Exit Polling is No Exception
What do TV pundits, advocates, election data geeks, and politicians all have in common? They all want to know who voted, how they voted, and why they voted! Who wouldn’t? For years, the go-to way to do this has been through the national Exit Poll, the mythical deep-dive into the minds of the voters conducted…
Read MoreCelebrate National Voter Registration Day by Telling a Friend (or Two!)
We know that you are registered to vote because you’ve never missed an election and wouldn’t dream of not making your voice heard in this upcoming election. But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook today, National Voter Registration Day. Take a moment or two to spread the word to your networks about the need…
Read MoreHow to Understand Polling of Underrepresented Communities (June 2020 Update)
Following the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and other Black Americans, hundreds of thousands have been agitating for overdue change in the United States and around the world. Unlike prior moments of protest around police brutality and racial injustice in recent memory, public opinion appears to be shifting very quickly…
Read MoreUsing polls in your media work: Making Polling Work for You
Throughout this series, we’ve been looking at a lot of polls. And let me tell you from my own experience as not-a-data person, after a certain point, polls tend to become just another series of numbers—either bereft of meaning, or confusing and contradictory. One of our challenges as media professionals is figuring out how to…
Read MoreUsing Polls to Inform your Media Strategy
Earlier this week, we covered how to assess the public opinion landscape of the issues we work on. Having an understanding of this big picture, now we are ready to use polling data to inform our media strategy. Developing an informed strategy is all about audience: defining who they are, learning as much as you…
Read MoreUsing Polls in your Media Work: Assessing the Public Opinion Landscape
In the last two weeks, we discussed how the polls performed during the midterms, putting into practice our recommendations on what to pay attention to when evaluating a new poll and how to interpret polling of underrepresented communities. With that foundational understanding of polling under our belt, we now turn to actually using public opinion…
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