Politics: Sept. 18

Politics A monthly digest of research on public attitudes on politics and major policy issues · Subscribe ↗ From our research The share of those with bachelor’s degrees who say “working class” describes them extremely or very well, compared with 66% of those without bachelor’s degrees. Read more.

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FAQs about political weighting in polling and its limitations

There are good arguments against weighting surveys to match how people voted in past elections or an independent estimate of political party affiliation. We know because we’ve made many of those arguments over the years! However, the steep decline in survey response rates and the rise in differential partisan nonresponse have made those arguments less…

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Why many polls need to weight on party affiliation or past vote

There are two big reasons why many pollsters now weight their surveys on political characteristics such as party affiliation or past vote, when this wasn’t common practice a decade ago: to correct for a systematic bias that emerged around 2016 and to protect against poll-to-poll volatility driven by who participates rather than real changes in…

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