New research techniques have recently been developed to gather measures of public opinion that is better informed or more deliberative than that recorded in typical mass opinion surveys. These techniques include deliberative polls, educational surveys, and citizen planning cells. In view of what they set out to accomplish, what can we say from a scientific perspective about the utility of these...

The recent failures of traditional poll models, like the predictions in United Kingdom with the Brexit, or in United States presidential election with the victory of Donald Trump, have been noteworthy. With the decline of traditional poll models and the growth of the social networks, automatic tools are gaining popularity to make predictions in this context. In this paper we present our approxi...

Spatially or temporally dense polling remains both difficult and expensive using existing survey methods. In response, there have been increasing efforts to approximate various survey measures using social media, but most of these approaches remain methodologically flawed. To remedy these flaws, this paper combines 1200 state-level polls during the 2012 presidential campaign with over 100 milli...

The electoral cycle has become an established feature of voting behaviour, both in Britain and in other European countries. After an initial `honeymoon' between the new Government and the electorate, disillusion often sets in and Government popularityÐwhether measured by opinion polls, by-elections or mid-term elections such as the European and local electionsÐ tends to decline. In most cases, ...

Polls examining public opinion on the subject of climate change are now commonplace, and one-off public opinion polls provide a snapshot of citizen's opinions that can inform policy and communication strategies. However, cross-sectional polls do not track opinions over time, thus making it impossible to ascertain whether key climate change beliefs held by the same group of individuals are chang...

THE PARADOX At one point during the 1988 campaign, Michael Dukakis was ahead in the public opinion polls by 17 percentage points, but he eventually lost the election by 8 percent. Walter Mondale was ahead in the polls by 4 percent during the 1984 campaign but lost the election in a landslide. During June and July of 1992, Clinton, Bush, and Perot each had turns in the public opinion poll lead. ...

Political stock markets (PSM) are sometimes seen as substitutes for opinion polls. On the bases of a behavioral model, specific preconditions were drawn out under which manipulation in PSM can weaken this argument. Evidence for manipulation is reported from the data of two separate PSM during the Berlin 99 state elections. JEL Classification: C93, D4, G1