The 5th Congressional District is located in Northeast Louisiana, although after reapportionment, additional territory in the Florida Parishes and in St Landry Parish was added. This is a Republican leaning district with a noticeable Democratic base, due to the 33% black voter registration. Mitt Romney carried this district 61-38%, while in the 2008 Senate race, […]
Archive | Polling
RSS feed for this sectionDecision 2014 – DefendLA poll on Obama approval, Landrieu re-elect, and gun legislation
One of the more closely watched US Senate races in 2014 will undoubtedly be in Louisiana, where three term Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu will face Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy – she has never been elected or re-elected with more than 52% of the vote.
Decision 2014 – GOP poll in West Virginia
Historically, West Virginia was a solidly Democratic state, with its rural and unionized industrial character. In fact, starting with the New Deal, the state only voted Republican in “landslide years” (1956, 1972, and 1984). Those voting habits changed in 2000, when Clinton administration policy regarding coal mining, as well as social/gun rights issues, enabled George […]
Decision 2012 – Grading the “major” pollsters
Earlier this year, we had evaluated the performance of the “major” pollsters during the 2010 elections. Now that the 2012 elections are largely behind us, we thought we would revisit that analysis.
Decision 2012 – Louisiana Supreme Court Poll
District 5 of the Louisiana Supreme Court is essentially the Baton Rouge, Louisiana media market (i.e., Baton Rouge, its suburbs, and surrounding parishes). This is an area that because of its white collar job base and innate conservatism can be counted on to vote Republican. However, there is also a formidable Democratic base comprising three […]
Decision 2012 – Can we trust the polls ?
Part I: Introduction In a political race (particularly the Presidential race), there is a “horse race” aspect to it: people (particularly influentials and campaign donors) are interested in knowing who’s ahead, who’s fallen behind, who has a chance, who is a lost cause, and so forth. One of the means this narrative can be shaped […]
Decision 2012 – Grading the pollster
One of the less publicized aspects of the work pollsters do is an evaluation of their work “after the fact”; in other words, how accurate was their polling?
JMCEL’s “Pulse of Louisiana” Poll – 2012 edition
Louisiana was one of the strongest states for John McCain in the 2008 election (in fact, it was one of three states that have steadily voted more Republican since the 1996 Presidential election). Even though Louisiana is not on anyone’s target list for the 2012 elections, we thought it would be worthwhile to poll the […]
Congressional (Republican Runoff) Poll in Oklahoma
The 2nd Congressional district of Oklahoma is the one Congressional district in the state that is more “southern” than “western.” For years, this orientation led to a solidly Democratic constituency even in top of the ballot races. That has changed, although Democrats still are formidable at the Congressional and local level. Recently, 8 year Democratic […]
Decision 2012 – The “A B Cs” of Polling (Part 2 of 3)
In the first installment, we had discussed the basics of polling and how to go about evaluating a poll. In this installment, we will “grade” the pollsters, using the 2010 midterm elections as our sample data.