Story Archives of 'polls'

When it came to Republicans, polls released before the New Hampshire Presidential Primary were pretty much on target.

They predicted John McCain would win.

When it came to predictions on Hillary Clinton’s performance, most polls were dead wrong.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s David Darman has more on why polls may have missed the impending Clinton victory.

Voter opinion surveys are coming fast and thick these days, as the New Hampshire primary gets closer. Polls have long been used as a gauge of public opinion, on the issues and the candidates – but they're also criticized, for having too much influence on the way our elections are conducted and covered by the media.

Guests

• Andy Smith, Director of the UNH Survey Center and professor of Political Science at UNH
• James Pindell, Political Correspondent for the Boston Globe and author of the Primary Source blog at Boston.com
• David Moore, Senior Fellow for the Carsey Institute at UNH, founder of the UNH Survey Center, formerly Managing Editor and then Senior Editor of the Gallup Poll from 1993-2006 and author of several books, including the forthcoming book tentatively titled The Opinion Makers: When Media Polls Undermine Democracy.

A new polling outfit will join the myriad of pollsters and pundits at this evening's Democratic Presidential Primary debate at Dartmouth.

It's an on-line poll called Open-vote.

Former Democratic Party operative and current Dartmouth grad student Colin van Ostern is one of open-votes co-founders.

He describes how it works to NHPR's Mark Bevis.

Some say polls were the big losers on election day-largely failing to predict the strong republican showing. We'll look at how pollsters do their work, and why their job's gotten tougher lately. Also, how you can tell a good poll from a bad one. Laura speaks with Andy Smith, executive director of the UNH Survey Center www.unh.edu, and Dean Spiliotes, assistant professor of Government at Dartmouth College www.dartmouth.edu

We constantly see surveys cited in the news on everything from politics to soup. We'll look at how polls are developed and how they influence policy. Laura's guests are Andy Smith, Director of UNH's Survey Center www.unh.edu/ipssr/survey-center , and Lynn Vavreck, Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Civic Leadership www.dartmouth.edu/~rocky/TheCenter/nelson.html . This is a rebroadcast of an earlier program.