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Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application

Volume 5, 2018

Election Polls—A Survey, A Critique, and Proposals

Abstract

Election polls, also called election surveys, have been under severe criticism because of apparent gaps between their outcomes and election results. In this article, we survey election poll performance in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel and discuss the current state of the art. We list the main data collection methods used in election surveys, describe a wide range of analysis techniques that can be applied to such data, and expand on the relatively new application of predictive models used in this context. A special section considers sources of error in election surveys followed by an introduction and a general discussion of an information quality framework for studying them. We conclude with a section on outlooks and proposals that require more research.

Keyword(s): data collection methods, election polls, election surveys, information quality, predictive analytics, survey analysis
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100204
2018-03-07
2024-06-18
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/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100204
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Election Polls—A Survey, A Critique, and Proposals
Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application 5, 1 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100204
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100204
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100204
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