Unlikely Voter

Conservative views on polls, science, technology, and policy

Donald Trump Hits Legitimate Poll Breakthrough

We all expect Donald Trump to get good poll results from Rasmussen Reports. They’ve been giving him good results even when everyone else was showing him far behind. But what if they’re not the only ones now?

 

Read More | May 7, 2018
PPP says Brownback trails Davis for re-election

Take it or leave it, but PPP polled Kansas, and while I’m sure most of the attention will be on the heated Republican primary for Senate between Pat Roberts and Milton Wolf, the race for governor was actually polled.

That got my attention because it shows Republican Sam Brownback to be losing to Democrat Paul Davis.

 

Read More | February 25, 2014
Let’s not poll the general election before anyone campaigns

People love general election matchup polling. For some it’s the ultimate way to decide which candidate is the best choice to win a primary. But even if that’s true, it is possible to run such polls too soon.

Right now, it’s too soon to poll the 2016 Presidential race.

 

Read More | February 21, 2014
Unskew the polls! Michigan Edition

One thing Barack Obama has done very, very well for Democrats is turn out voters. Some Democrats have also learned winning models from his campaigns, including Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.

Michigan Democrats want to do the same, but so far the polls aren’t agreeing with them.

 

Read More | February 20, 2014
Poll Survey for February 13

This is a new feature I’m going to start here at Unlikely Voter. When I see a few polls that aren’t really a whole post in themselves, I’ll throw a post out wrapping them all up into one post.

 

Read More | February 13, 2014
The Obama 2012 vote and religion

Gallup did a poll of religion in America, by state. I thought it would be interesting to chart that against Barack Obama’s 2012 vote share.

Here are the results.

 

Read More | February 12, 2014
Matt Bevin is not following the Marco Rubio pattern

One of the first posts I ever made at UnlikelyVoter charted Marco Rubio’s steady rise against Charlie Crist in his Senate primary.

Matt Bevin is not following that pattern against Mitch McConnell.

 

Read More | February 11, 2014
Turnout and the Sarvis factor in Virginia

The question always asked about third parties is: did they steal the election? It gets very easy to assume that Libertarians would vote Republican, Greens would vote Democrat, and so third parties flip the results.

Turnout suggests that may not be the case for Robert Sarvis in Virginia.

 

Read More | November 7, 2013
The state of the race in Virginia

Normally at Unlikely Voter I’ll look at individual polls, synthesize them into the trend, and go from there. But I’ve been behind, so we’re just going to recap all the recent polling in Virginia and go from there.

Long story short, Terry McAuliffe is ahead, and looks to be the beneficiary of trends entirely out of control of either himself or of Ken Cuccinelli.

 

Read More | October 17, 2013
Is the New Jersey Senate race getting competitive?

There’s an old saying, that if a headline asks a question, then the answer is no. Well, in the case of this headline, that’s probably true

Quinnipiac’s latest on the race still shows a huge Cory Booker lead. It’s only the movement that Steve Lonegan welcomes.

 

Read More | September 30, 2013
Pew and USA Today find no tipping point for PPACA

Sometimes, as in the case of Roe v. Wade, a change in the law of the land will result in a large change of public opinion in favor of the new change. Once the change is made, certain levels of resistance go away, and others just come to accept it.

Not so in the case of PPACA, Pew finds.

 

Read More | September 16, 2013
It’s now socially acceptable to question PPP

For a long time, I was placing myself in the fringe for coming out and questioning Public Policy Polling. Having picked Obama when Obama managed to win was supposed to make them untouchable, no matter how many red flags I saw.

But as with Zogby in 1992, coincidentally being right does not make bad polling fundamentally sound. So I guess it’s now become acceptable, in the post-Obama political age, to begin questioning PPP.

 

Read More | September 12, 2013
PPP totally nailed the recall of Angela Giron. Trust them.

According to Public Policy Polling, their polling predicted the recall of Angela Giron in Colorado Senate District 3. They then chose not to release the results.

Whether we believe them or not, this doesn’t speak well of the firm.

 

Read More | September 11, 2013