One of the benefits of having a large daily sample of U.S. voters at our fingertips is that we are able to track voting trends.
Daily events, news cycles, and yes, even natural disasters, all influence voter preference. Even after weighting for volatility as we did in part 2 of our presidential poll tracker series, we still see sharp shifts in voting trends.
Here are the standout moments from the past 3 weeks—they may not be what you expect…
**A Final Note: Every good statistician knows that correlation is not causation. These bump explanations are simply our best guesses at the thrust behind each shift we observe in our data. For example, there is a whole lot of other news going on around Hurricane Sandy. Nevertheless, the observed shift in voting preference did not occur on 10/28, the day after Sandy hit the east coast (10/27) or on 10/31, the day after Romney’s past statements about slashing FEMA’s budget hit the media (10/30)–although this revelation might have sent the numbers into an even deeper dive. It occurred on 10/30, exactly one day after Chris Christie reached out to all the news networks to gush about Obama’s support. Coincidence? We think not.
Stay tuned for more results in our presidential poll tracker series.
Pingback: Understanding Shifts in Voting Trends | NotSoCrazyNews
America4Americans, Nov 3, 2012
I love how much Liberal Polling plays up less than a 1.5 points. Look at those lines lol! Don’t get comfortable liberals, Voter ID alone will cure you of any “advantage” you -think- you may have.
Arjun Mallik, Nov 8, 2012
PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS POPULAR SINCE THE DAYS HE WAS CANDIDATE OBAMA. HE IS HONEST, STRAIGHT FORWARD, AND SIMPLE.
HIS MAIN TOOL WAS HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY.
I WAS SOLD ON DAY ONE, EVEN THOUGH MY FAMILY AND I WERE ALL FOR HILLARY CLINTON. HIS SUCCESS WAS NATURAL AND WITHOUT ANY EXCEPT IN SOME NARROW MINDED CIRCLES.
THAT IS MY STORY.
ARJUN MALLIK
Adrian, Nov 3, 2012
Nice. We need more fact-based statistical analyses. We’re drowning in a sea of spin.
How about an RSS button so people can easily subscribe to your great output?
Tim CH, Nov 5, 2012
Adrian, you can subscribe here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SurveyMonkeyBlog