This question obviously has important implications for who wins this election. We can start by dismissing the blanket statement that “challengers break for the incumbent.” That is not true as a blanket statement. See Daron Shaw’s chapter on swing votes in Unconventional Wisdom as well as Mark Blumenthal and Nate ...
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During the Republican convention this year, Republican speakers made a point of asking whether Americans were better off now than they were four years ago. In some ways, that's a funny question to be asking. Obviously, it harkens back to Reagan's successful 1980 takedown of an incumbent president, but the answer is ...
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In this election season, amid all the chatter about candidates’ foibles and gaffes on the campaign trail, a question persists: how much does this criticism permeate through the minds of American voters and shape their vote choices? The first hurdle in gathering evidence that campaign events matter in voter behavior ...
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We are now less than 2 weeks away from when Americans go to the polls. As we approach November 6th, an already heated battle will get even more heated. We can expect a number of four letter words to be used by the presidential candidates in the coming days, such ...
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In deciding between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, we hope that voters are choosing between candidates based in part on candidates’ policy stances, such as their positions on taxes and war. In a book I have coming out this month, Follow the Leader (press release), I find surprisingly little evidence ...
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There are two versions of what has happened in the past three weeks in the battle to be US President. One is the version told by most nationwide polls and accepted by the media; the second, told by a minority of nationwide polls, including YouGov, and most polls in the ...
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With so much of this year’s campaign focusing on taxes and tax policy, it might seem unlikely that prospective voters could still be swayed by learning a basic fact about the U.S. tax system. However, last week’s YouGov survey found that 44% don’t know it—and that they are 6 points ...
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Under the budget proposed by Paul Ryan, federal spending on everything other than Medicare and Social Security would decline over the next 20 years … (a) from 22% of GDP to 18.5% of GDP (b) from 22% of GDP to 14.5% of GDP (c) from 14.5% of GDP to 11.5% ...
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I've already noted that, in the wake of last week's presidential debate, voters' perceptions of Romney and Obama's ideologies didn't change much, despite Romney's much ballyhooed pivot to the center. Now, I will show what did change: the impressions voters had of Obama and Romney as people. YouGov polls have ...
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Perhaps you've heard about Romney's pivot to the center in last week's debate -- what it means, whether it will work, how Obama is responding, etc. Yesterday, Bill Clinton described his reaction to Romney's performance thusly: "Wow, here's old moderate Mitt. Where ya been, boy?" New survey data suggests that ...
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