New from us:

Americans’ discontent with the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade remains as potent as a year ago, with record-high share saying they’re likely to take a candidate’s position on abortion into consideration when voting.

cnn.com/2023/08/08/pol… There's a lot in the piece, but I do just want to pull out this slightly wonky crosstab on "cross-pressured" voters, which demonstrates nicely why any attempt to measure an issue's electoral impact is so complicated.

https://t.co/9l3EQS9e2Wcnn.com/2023/08/08/pol…

oh, wow, nearly half of registered voters say they're not satisfied with the two major presidential candidates and want other choices!

also, did I mention it is the year 2008 and the candidates are John McCain and Barack Obama same story in May 2000 with Bush/Gore

General polling rule of thumb: the degree to which public opinion on an issue is responsive to framing tweaks tells you a lot about how stable/deeply held those opinions are.

https://twitter.com/nielslesniewski/status/1661121244085858307

(Obviously, this is one of the high variance cases. A good counter example: there have been a ton of polls asking about striking down Roe in various ways that all produce basically similar results to the effect of its being highly unpopular.)

From our new poll: "Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump...About three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the decision to indict Trump."

cnn.com/2023/04/03/pol… "A scant 10% overall see Trump as blameless regarding payments made to Daniels...About 4 in 10 say he acted illegally (37%), 33% unethically but not illegally, and another 20% say they aren’t sure."

cnn.com/2023/04/03/pol…

inbox: national association of republican crossword constructors endorses ASA (3) hutchinson

(this is, should it need to be said, a joke about crossword fill) help

i can't be the first person to make this joke but it would be so great if an orchestra hall rolled out a "high wind advisory" right before every piccolo solo tbh it's eminently possibly that this is also not the first time I have made this joke

"Please write a methodology statement for a poll. The methodology statement should sound very convincingly technical but not actually answer any questions about how the poll was conducted or weighted." the use of "proprietary and highly advanced" here is absolutely chef's-kiss

My pre-election attempt to round up what all the latest polling shows about voters' "top issues" -- and what "top issues" actually mean in an election:

cnn.com/2022/11/05/pol… "Voters...say they care about a lot of different issues [but doesn't mean they're decisive] either by motivating people to vote when they wouldn’t have otherwise, or by convincing them to vote for a different candidate than they would have otherwise."

cnn.com/2022/11/05/pol…

I'm always a little wary of hypothetical poll qs - there's a difference between having a view in theory and in practice.

That said, "losing candidates should concede" is one of those questions where one might want to start w/ broad theoretical agreement.

s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2325… Earlier this year, despite concerns about the state of the economy, Americans' ratings of their own finances were positive. Those are now underwater.

(There's a partisan component, of course, but that in itself wouldn't explain the shift since spring)

this would be higher than the share of US adults who are a fan of any sports team (63%), ever drink alcohol (65%), ever use Facebook (69%) or ever use YouTube (81%)

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1579842002317111296

I Can't Believe It's Not An Accurate Butter Stat™

We spend a lot of time talking about top election issues. Here's my attempt to take a step back to look at the different ways pollsters ask about voters' priorities — and what the results can actually tell us.

cnn.com/2022/07/16/pol… Whether voters care about a topic is important for understanding public opinion, but it doesn't necessarily indicate whether that issue will change who they vote for or convince them to turn out when they wouldn't otherwise.

cnn.com/2022/07/16/pol…

Here's a story I've been working on for a bit -- it's on a hard-to-measure polling phenomenon ("expressive responding") that's complicating attempts to measure Americans' beliefs and experiences on everything from the economy to political violence.

cnn.com/2022/06/25/pol… Some people's answers are less literal statements than a way of figuratively expressing support for their "side," which can lead to results like massive partisan gaps on whether people say they've changed vacation plans due to gas prices.

cnn.com/2022/06/25/pol…

In a May CNN poll, Americans said, 66% to 34%, that they did not want the Supreme Court to completely overturn its decision. In CNN's polling dating back to 1989, the share of the public in favor of completely overturning Roe has never risen above 36%.

cnn.com/2022/05/06/pol… Just 17% of Americans in the May CNN poll said they'd be happy to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, with 12% saying they'd be satisfied, 21% that they'd be dissatisfied, 36% that they'd be angry, and 14% that they wouldn't care.

apparently my pastime for today is going to be "getting mad at questionnaire design from 1999" this seems like a fun summer (these were not the questions I was mad at)

Another edition of "what we can learn from variation in surveys": polls find that Americans value ideas of diversity and representation in SCOTUS, but appear at times less comfortable with explicit efforts to further those goals.

cnn.com/2022/03/23/pol… Think this explains a bit about how you get most Americans saying that SCOTUS should look like US and that Jackson's nomination is historic, while also maintaining that Biden should have "considered all possible nominees" rather than focusing his search on Black female candidates

this should be the dek for every story, regardless of content

washingtonian.com/2021/10/19/new… FDA planning to allow mix-and-match Covid-19 vaccine boosters
With two new ungulates in a corral, it's like a zebra honeypot

The Economic Rebound Is Still Waiting for Workers
With two new ungulates in a corral, it's like a zebra honeypot

Whether people are willing to tell strangers their vaccine status over the phone is actually one of the things that we have an excellent way of testing -- there's CDC data to compare it to!

So far, many public polls tracking this look pretty accurate.

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…

https://twitter.com/PeterHamby/status/1448001919109136384

good morning, this week I am obsessed with the spycraft of the peanut butter sandwich

cnn.com/2021/10/10/pol… what if the foreign agent was allergic!!

survey research is so weird department of aggressive quotation marks

no better way to realize that you are an Old than the sinking feeling of looking through 2008 polling and realizing that it really was an entirely different political era file under:
1. wow, that's a sea change
2. "gravel clear winner"
3. ok!
4. sports jacket

This is a really, really good paragraph on how to think about What It Means For The Midterms.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… Also, this: "[T]he problem isn’t really polling. Rather, it’s the use of polls to center everything that happens in politics around those November 2022 swing voters in Wisconsin."

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…