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On 22 January 2013, the Israelis held the early legislative elections that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wished for. While hitherto enjoying a stable political majority (66 MPs out of 120), he decided to make use of his relatively widespread popularity to strengthen his party's parliamentary presence, particularly before difficult budget decisions. Ultimately, he only partially succeeded in this aim (.).

On 22 January 2013, the Israelis held the early legislative elections that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had wished for. While hitherto enjoying a stable political majority (66 MPs out of 120), he decided to make use of his relatively widespread popularity to strengthen his party's parliamentary presence, particularly before difficult budget decisions. Ultimately, he only partially succeeded in this aim (.).

AbstractPublic opinion polls have become vital and increasingly visible parts of election campaigns. Previous research has frequently demonstrated that polls can influence both citizens' voting intentions and political parties' campaign strategies. However, they are also fraught with uncertainty. Margins of error can reflect (parts of) this uncertainty. This paper investigates how citizens' voting intentions change due to whether polling estimates are presented with or without margins of error.Using a vignette experiment (N=3224), we examine this question based on a real‐world example in which different election polls were shown to nationally representative respondents ahead of the 2021 federal election in Germany. We manipulated the display of the margins of error, the interpretation of polls and the closeness of the electoral race.The results indicate that margins of error can influence citizens' voting intentions. This effect is dependent on the actual closeness of the race and additional interpretative guidance provided to voters. More concretely, the results consistently show that margins of error increase citizens' inclination to vote for one of the two largest contesting parties if the polling gap between these parties is small, and an interpretation underlines this closeness.The findings of this study are important for three reasons. First, they help to determine whether margins of error can assist citizens in making more informed (strategic) vote decisions. They shed light on whether depicting opinion‐poll uncertainty affects the key features of representative democracy, such as democratic accountability. Second, the results stress the responsibility of the media. The way polls are interpreted and contextualized influences the effect of margins of error on voting behaviour. Third, the findings of this paper underscore the significance of including methodological details when communicating scientific research findings to the broader public.

Amman, Jordan – A new nationwide public opinion poll in Jordan released by the International Republican Institute's (IRI) Center for Insights in Survey Research (CISR) shows a lack of certainty over equal application of the law, satisfaction with services, and belief that the government lacks accountability. The poll found that fifty-nine percent of Jordanians do not believe that everyone has equality under the law […]
The post IRI Jordan Poll Shows Uncertainty over Rights, Satisfaction with Services, Desire for Government Accountability appeared first on International Republican Institute.

Crowd-sourcing is increasingly being used to provide answers to online polls and surveys. However, existing systems, while taking care of the mechanics of attracting crowd workers, poll building, and payment, provide little to help the survey-maker or pollster in obtaining statistically significant results devoid of even the obvious selection biases. This paper proposes InterPoll, a platform for programming of crowd-sourced polls. Pollsters express polls as embedded LINQ queries and the runtime correctly reasons about uncertainty in those polls, only polling as many people as required to meet statistical guarantees. To optimize the cost of polls, InterPoll performs query optimization, as well as bias correction and power analysis. The goal of InterPoll is to provide a system that can be reliably used for research into marketing, social and political science questions. This paper highlights some of the existing challenges and how InterPoll is designed to address most of them. In this paper we summarize some of the work we have already done and give an outline for future work.

So, in a straw poll of Twitter users organised by the new Chief Twit, Elon Musk, Donald Trump has been 'elected' back onto the platform after being banned in 2020 for reasons we all know. "The people have spoken," tweeted Mr Musk. Haven't we heard that phrase before, ad nauseam, since 24 June 2016? Musk's […]
The post 52% to 48% = uncertainty appeared first on EU ROPE.

Given the uncertainty of the use of genetic engineering in production of genetically modified (GM) foods, it remains the subject of one of the most vitriolic scientific debates throughout the globe. Newer facets of the debate include regulation of GM seed labeling as well as liability pertaining to GM pollen spread to non-GM plants. This study analyzes Vermonter Poll data of 656 respondents for relationships between demographics and opinions about seed labeling and GM pollen drift legislation. Preliminary results demonstrate general trends that the majority of respondents are in support of labeling for GM seeds, and opine that the US government, GM seed producers and GM farmers should be held liable for GM pollen spread, but also reflect some incongruity in attitudes. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results and how they can best inform policy formation regarding this controversial issue. ; Includes bibliographical references

A wide range of potentially useful data are available for election forecasting: the results of previous elections, a multitude of preelection polls, and predictors such as measures of national and statewide economic performance. How accurate are different forecasts? We estimate predictive uncertainty via analysis of data collected from past elections (actual outcomes, preelection polls, and model estimates). With these estimated uncertainties, we use Bayesian inference to integrate the various sources of data to form posterior distributions for the state and national two-party Democratic vote shares for the 2008 election. Our key idea is to separately forecast the national popular vote shares and the relative positions of the states. More generally, such an approach could be applied to study changes in public opinion and other phenomena with wide national swings and fairly stable spatial distributions relative to the national average.

A wide range of potentially useful data are available for election forecasting: the results of previous elections, a multitude of pre-election polls, and predictors such as measures of national and statewide economic performance. How accurate are different forecasts? We estimate predictive uncertainty via analysis of data collected from past elections (actual outcomes, pre-election polls, and model estimates). With these estimated uncertainties, we use Bayesian inference to integrate the various sources of data to form posterior distributions for the state and national two-party Democratic vote shares for the 2008 election. Our key idea is to separately forecast the national popular vote shares and the relative positions of the states. More generally, such an approach could be applied to study changes in public opinion and other phenomena with wide national swings and fairly stable spatial distributions relative to the national average.