'polling' Category
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May172009
Italian polling for EP elections (2)
The campaign for the European parliament elections continues to lack lustre. There’s been no noticeable decline in the electoral fortunes of the PdL, despite Silvio Berlusconi’s unclear relationship with an 18-year old Neapolitan girl, although the PD continues its (very slight) uptick.
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May072009
Italian polling for EP elections
Last year I aggregated the polling data for the general election.
That was fun.
This year, I’m aggregating the polling data for the European Parliament election — the Italian part, anyway.
This is less fun.
As everyone knows, European Parliament elections are second-order elections. Voters use them not to vote on the issues — they don’t know about the [...] -
Jul062008
French voters opposed to presidential nomination of PSB chief
Poll shows that 71% of respondents are opposed to presidential nomination of the head of France Télévisions. 11% have no opinion; 18% agree with Sarkozy that it is “logical” that the state should name the head of a corporation it owns.
Unfortunately Le Parisien does not provide the text of the questions asked; Le Monde is [...] -
Apr152008
Election post-mortem #1
Now that the final results are (almost) in, let’s take a look at what happened. Easing gently in, let’s start by comparing the poll averages with the final results for each party:
Party
Last point on the trend line
Actual vote-share, Camera
DifferenceSinistra Arcobaleno
6.863%
3.084%
-3.779Partito Democratico
34.040%
33.174%
-0.876Lega Nord
5.060%
8.297%
3.237%Italia dei Valori
3.350%
4.371%
1.02%Popolo delle Libertà
38.974%
37.388%
-1.58%UDC
5.917%
5.624%
-0.294%If there was no movement over the last two weeks [...]
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Apr042008
Comments on polling methodology
Thanks to Mario Callegaro (whose paper I too hastily criticised!), an excellent criticism of polling in Italy available at Sociologica.
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Apr042008
But I thought there were no more polls?
According to the law on electoral polling, no opinion polls are to be published (or rather, “disseminated”) within the last fifteen days of the campaign. I presume the intent is so that voters aren’t influenced by polling and bounced into one of the two main effects (the band-wagon and under-dog effects respectively).
Of course, this only [...] -
Mar312008
Welcome to FT and Repubblica readers
Un benvenuto ai lettori della Repubblica, and welcome to readers of the FT. You might find the following posts interesting:
Polling accuracy: what happened last time.
Where the battleground regions are
A post on methodologyFurther notes on methodology are available in the last polling round-up, available here.
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Mar312008
Italian poll accuracy: what happened last time?
UPDATE: There’s a reason academics shouldn’t blog so much. I’ve now realised that the analysis below is mistaken; I had calculated the variance of Callegaro and Gasperoni’s measure incorrectly. The revised picture – which I’m still working on – consequently looks a lot flatter, with little or no change over the last fifteen days of [...]
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Mar292008
Italy polling update, 29-03-08: gap as it was
Now that polls can no longer be published, we can take a final look at our trend line, and see where it is:
How exciting: the trend is exactly where it was before the polls were added, with a gap of 7.3%. And, indeed, before the previous batch of polls was added.
If you believe that there [...] -
Mar272008
Italian polling update, 27-03-08: gap 7.3%
The penultimate day in which polls can be publicised, and a number of new polls mean – surprise surprise! – little change to the gap between the PdL and the PD, which remains at 7.3%.
I’m still projecting a majority for the PdL, but I’m less confident of this judgement for reasons noted in the last [...]