Category: Data and Methods

State of the German polls: The AfD is stable. Also: kein Schulz, nirgends

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13 new polls show some movement in April It is four and half months until the September election, and things are getting a little more interesting. Everyone around here is happy that Macron saved the EU and defeated populism in one fell swoop (or maybe not), but I still love a nice parochial state election. And we…

Is INSA overreporting support for the AfD?

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The other day, someone on twitter suggested that the polls on the upper margins of my latest model-based estimates of AfD support were conducted by the “notoriously AfD-friendly INSA company”. https://twitter.com/freifrauvonitze/status/845565084290158593 This view is not uncommon in Germany. INSA, who do polling for Germany’s premier tabloid Bild, want to prop up support for the AfD…

State of the German polls: The Schulz effect was real

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With just under seven months to go until the German federal election, I have recently begun once more to pool the pre-election polls from seven major survey firms. Since January, when the date for the election was set and the Spitzenkandidaten were selected, results from 35 polls with a median sample size of about 1900…

Political Science’s Not Dead. Nor is forecasting

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With the vote mostly counted in the US, PS have posted a useful summary of the Political Science Forecasting Models for that infamous election. [contentcards url="http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/how-accurate-were-the-political-science-forecasts-of-the-2016-presidential-election/"] By and large, and in neat contrast to the current fad for self-flagellation, the augurs of the discipline have done well. Eight of the ten predictions that were published in…