• Public opinion polling is a powerful tool for accountability in the democratic process, creating transparency between policymakers and the people they represent and amplifying the voices of the governed.…
Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics highlights a key problem for presidential election polling. In 2016, as I was preparing to write my “Why Hillary Will Win” piece, I decided…
A recent survey sponsored by Care4Carolina gauged the opinions of registered voters in North Carolina about health care issues and Medicaid expansion. There are wide-ranging results concerning voters’ support of…
The latest Martin Center column collects expert opinions on the notion of “food insecurity” among college students. Count James Bovard among the skeptics. Some college students are going hungry nowadays,…
Samuel Abrams of the American Enterprise Institute warns readers not to overemphasize the extent of the divisions between urban and rural America. In “The Left Behind,” Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow…
I received a thought-provoking response to Lindsay Marchello’s Carolina Journal article on the N.C. Teacher Working Conditions Survey. Administrators usually make a big deal over teachers completing this survey. The K[indergarten]…
That recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic magazine that suggested “cultural anxiety” as the main factor that drove voters toward Donald Trump in the last…
A survey of Sylva merchants was conducted. The questions were not presented in the press coverage, but we are told a groundswell of respondents wanted a merchants association on top…
Here’s a human tendency it’s important to be mindful of when news media trumpet that some large supermajority of people polled want a restrictive safety regulation. (It’s also important to…
The NCDOT has a first ever customer survey. Copies have been mailed randomly to a fraction of the population, but you may participate online by following the links. Unlike most…
People who favor free markets and are skeptical of government intervention rightly cheer when a proposed bill fails or when the government chooses not to intervene at all. A report…
JLF’s John Hood takes a fascinating look at several well known pollsters and the characteristics of each. On the FiveThirtyEight.com letter grading system, Survey USA is one of the few…