Tag Archives: commentary

Support for gay marriage is up by 20% in Utah? Not so fast.

It may be the case that the 20% “shift” in support was really a reflection of different question wordings and sample frames. A year and a half ago, my colleagues posted these polling results showing that 28% of Utah voters … Continue reading

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What caught people’s interest in 2012?

This blog has been live for a little over two years now. We published 69 new posts in 2012, for a total of 144 in the archive. Our most popular posts in 2012 generally fell into three categories: Posts about … Continue reading

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What the election shows: That social science works

Before any of the debates. Before SuperStorm Sandy. Before the last-minute barrage of campaign advertising. He predicted the result perfectly over a month ago. Over the past several months, political scientists have consistently forecasted an Obama victory–a relatively narrow one, … Continue reading

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Why pollsters should release their topline results

Polls can be done well or poorly. Releasing topline results aids the public in detecting poor polls. The Tribune reported a Mason-Dixon poll last week suggesting a wide Republican advantage in the race for Salt Lake County mayor. Yesterday, the … Continue reading

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Do statistics (like absentee rates) matter in reelection campaigns?

I encourage voters to use these statistics to supplement other information, not to supplant it. I calculate a lot of statistics about the Utah legislature. Lately, I’ve noticed various statistics being used in some of the nomination battles that are … Continue reading

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The Tea Party’s declining favorability

“Unfavorable” views of the Tea Party movement have jumped from 22% in February 2010 to 51% in March 2012, mostly at the expense of “don’t know” respondents. The Tribune ran an article over the weekend about the Tea Party’s (waning) … Continue reading

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Is the gender gap among Utah Mormons widening?

The 2010 exit poll suggests that 49.6%-52.0% of Utah Mormons are female. Meanwhile, the 2010 U.S. Census shows that 50.3% of voting-age Utahns are female. After fruitful discussion with one of the authors of the report discussed here, I have … Continue reading

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Redistricting backgrounders – What have we learned?

Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted a ridiculous amount of research about the redistricting process here in Utah. What have we learned? Here’s the Cliff Notes version. Looking back: How has Utah’s population grown since 2000? Utah’s population is … Continue reading

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Redistricting backgrounders

Over the next couple weeks, we will publish several posts looking at Utah’s ongoing redistricting process. We’ll begin by looking closely at the 2010 U.S. Census results and discussing what they might mean for redistricting. We’ll also take a look … Continue reading

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How do you interpret public opinion data?

As Adam pointed out in his post earlier, the Deseret News story seems to make a conflict out of two findings that probably do not conflict.  The seemingly different findings can be reconciled when a few basics about the nature … Continue reading

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