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108-534: " Shy Tory factor " is a name given by British opinion polling companies to a phenomenon first observed by psephologists in the early 1990s. They observed that the share of the electoral vote won by the Conservative Party (known colloquially as the Tories ) was significantly higher than the equivalent share in opinion polls. The accepted explanation was that "shy Tories" were voting Conservative after telling pollsters they would not. The general elections held in 1992 and 2015 are examples where it has allegedly affected

216-441: A margin of error – usually defined as the radius of a 95% confidence interval for a particular statistic. One example is the percent of people who prefer product A versus product B. When a single, global margin of error is reported for a survey, it refers to the maximum margin of error for all reported percentages using the full sample from the survey. If the statistic is a percentage, this maximum margin of error can be calculated as

324-644: A ball in honor of the Battle of New Orleans ' ninth anniversary. He had supported Jackson during his invasion of Florida while Clay and Crawford opposed him, causing Jackson to oppose them. Clay supporters in the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for president in 1822, as an attempt to weaken Crawford in the state. William Lowndes was nominated for president by the South Carolina legislature on December 18, 1821, but died on October 27, 1822. Calhoun

432-500: A dead heat, 15 polls had the Conservatives ahead by 1%, 7 polls had the Conservatives ahead by 2%, 3 polls had the Conservatives ahead by 3%, 5 polls had the Conservatives ahead by 4%, one poll had the Conservatives ahead by 5%, and two polls had the Conservatives ahead by 6%. The two polls that gave the Conservatives a 6% lead were published two weeks before the voting, and the final polls from those polling companies, published on

540-415: A discounted rate. Others weighted their panel so that their past vote was exactly in line with the actual result of the election. For a time, opinion poll results were published both for unadjusted and adjusted methods. Polling companies found that telephone and personal interviews are more likely to generate a shy response than automated calling or internet polls. In the 1997 United Kingdom general election ,

648-489: A fixed number of the most recent periods, for example the past five days. In this example, the next calculated results will use data for five days counting backwards from the next day, namely the same data as before, but with the data from the next day included, and without the data from the sixth day before that day. However, these polls are sometimes subject to dramatic fluctuations, and so political campaigns and candidates are cautious in analyzing their results. An example of

756-471: A huge role in the supplying of news: 62 percent of US adults get news on social media. This fact makes the issue of fake news on social media more pertinent. Other evidence shows that the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories; many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them; and the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. As

864-720: A hung parliament, and exit polls suggesting Conservatives as the largest party but not majority, whereas the actual result was a slim Conservative majority of 12 seats. Of the 92 election polls which met the standards of the British Polling Council in the six weeks before the 2015 election, none foresaw the 6.5% difference in the popular vote between the Conservative Party and Labour Party. One poll had Labour leading by 6%, two polls had Labour ahead by 4%, 7 polls had Labour ahead by 3%, 15 polls had Labour ahead by 2%, 17 polls had Labour ahead by 1%, 17 polls had

972-445: A larger sample, however if a pollster wishes to reduce the margin of error to 1% they would need a sample of around 10,000 people. In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500–1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls. (To get complete responses it may be necessary to include thousands of additional participators.) Another way to reduce

1080-575: A national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson 's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the returns, The Literary Digest also correctly predicted the victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Then, in 1936 , its survey of 2.3 million voters suggested that Alf Landon would win

1188-461: A particular candidate. There was sometimes confusion as to who a particular elector was actually pledged to. Results are reported as the highest result for an elector for any given candidate. For example, if three Jackson electors received 100, 50, and 25 votes, Jackson would be recorded as having 100 votes. Confusion surrounding the way results are reported may lead to discrepancies between the sum of all state results and national results. States where

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1296-526: A person who is described by the surveyor as one of the "leading candidates". This description is "leading" as it indicates a subtle bias for that candidate, since it implies that the others in the race are not serious contenders. Additionally, leading questions often contain, or lack, certain facts that can sway a respondent's answer. Argumentative Questions can also impact the outcome of a survey. These types of questions, depending on their nature, either positive or negative, influence respondents' answers to reflect

1404-463: A question, with each version presented to half the respondents. The most effective controls, used by attitude researchers, are: These controls are not widely used in the polling industry. . However, as it is important that questions to test the product have a high quality, survey methodologists work on methods to test them. Empirical tests provide insight into the quality of the questionnaire, some may be more complex than others. For instance, testing

1512-407: A questionnaire can be done by: One of the criticisms of opinion polls is that societal assumptions that opinions between which there is no logical link are "correlated attitudes" can push people with one opinion into a group that forces them to pretend to have a supposedly linked but actually unrelated opinion. That, in turn, may cause people who have the first opinion to claim on polls that they have

1620-494: A reduced role in the election, though positions on tariffs and internal improvements did create significant disagreements. Both Adams and Jackson supporters backed Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina for vice president. He easily secured the majority of electoral votes for that office. In reality, Calhoun was vehemently opposed to nearly all of Adams's policies, but he did nothing to dissuade Adams supporters from voting for him for vice president, partly because he

1728-719: A result of these facts, some have concluded that if not for these stories, Donald Trump may not have won the election over Hillary Clinton. By providing information about voting intentions, opinion polls can sometimes influence the behavior of electors, and in his book The Broken Compass , Peter Hitchens asserts that opinion polls are actually a device for influencing public opinion. The various theories about how this happens can be split into two groups: bandwagon/underdog effects, and strategic ("tactical") voting. 1824 United States presidential election James Monroe Democratic-Republican John Quincy Adams Democratic-Republican Presidential elections were held in

1836-427: A sample is drawn from a large panel of volunteers, and the results are weighted to reflect the demographics of the population of interest. In contrast, popular web polls draw on whoever wishes to participate rather than a scientific sample of the population, and are therefore not generally considered professional. Statistical learning methods have been proposed in order to exploit social media content (such as posts on

1944-415: A significant problem if a poll is conducted too early for anyone to know about the potential candidate. A benchmark poll needs to be undertaken when voters are starting to learn more about the possible candidate running for office. A benchmark poll serves a number of purposes for a campaign. First, it gives the candidate a picture of where they stand with the electorate before any campaigning takes place. If

2052-618: A subsidiary in the United Kingdom that was almost alone in correctly predicting Labour's victory in the 1945 general election : virtually all other commentators had expected a victory for the Conservative Party , led by wartime leader Winston Churchill . The Allied occupation powers helped to create survey institutes in all of the Western occupation zones of Germany in 1947 and 1948 to better steer denazification . By

2160-635: A third term. Vice President Daniel D. Tompkins had long-since been dismissed as a viable successor to Monroe due to a combination of health problems and a financial dispute with the federal government, and he formally ruled himself out of making a presidential run at the start of 1824. The presidential nomination was thus left wide open within the Democratic-Republican Party, the only remaining major national political entity. The congressional caucus nominated Crawford for president and Albert Gallatin for vice president, but only 66 of

2268-479: A tracking poll that generated controversy over its accuracy, is one conducted during the 2000 U.S. presidential election, by the Gallup Organization . The results for one day showed Democratic candidate Al Gore with an eleven-point lead over Republican candidate George W. Bush . Then, a subsequent poll conducted just two days later showed Bush ahead of Gore by seven points. It was soon determined that

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2376-486: A trustworthy avenue of measuring voting intentions. This enquiry found that, contrary to the popular reporting, there was no "Shy Tory factor" in the election, and the polling had been incorrect for other reasons, most importantly unrepresentative samples. Opinion poll The first known example of an opinion poll was a tally of voter preferences reported by the Raleigh Star and North Carolina State Gazette and

2484-450: A tune written by Samuel Woodsworth in 1815 under the title "The Unfortunate Miss Bailey". Contrafacta such as this one, which promoted Andrew Jackson as a national hero, have been a long-standing tradition in presidential elections. Another form of campaigning during this election was through newsprint. Political cartoons and partisan writings were best circulated among the voting public through newspapers. Presidential candidate John C. Calhoun

2592-497: Is a popular medium for the candidates to campaign and for gauging the public reaction to the campaigns. Social media can also be used as an indicator of the voter opinion regarding the poll. Some research studies have shown that predictions made using social media signals can match traditional opinion polls. Regarding the 2016 U.S. presidential election , a major concern has been that of the effect of false stories spread throughout social media . Evidence shows that social media plays

2700-517: Is much more effective than traditional public opinion polling. Unlike traditional public polling, deliberative opinion polls measure what the public believes about issues after being offered information and the ability to discuss them with other voters. Since voters generally do not actively research various issues, they often base their opinions on these issues on what the media and candidates say about them. Scholars argued that these polls can truly reflect voters' feelings about an issue once they are given

2808-485: Is often referred to as the Bradley effect . If the results of surveys are widely publicized this effect may be magnified – a phenomenon commonly referred to as the spiral of silence . Use of the plurality voting system (select only one candidate) in a poll puts an unintentional bias into the poll, since people who favor more than one candidate cannot indicate this. The fact that they must choose only one candidate biases

2916-491: Is probability sampling and statistical theory that enable one to determine sampling error, confidence levels, and the like and to generalize from the results of the sample to the broader population from which it was selected. Other factors also come into play in making a survey scientific. One must select a sample of sufficient size. If the sampling error is too large or the level of confidence too low, it will be difficult to make reasonably precise statements about characteristics of

3024-401: Is subject to controversy. Deliberative Opinion Polls combine the aspects of a public opinion poll and a focus group. These polls bring a group of voters and provide information about specific issues. They are then allowed to discuss those issues with the other voters. Once they know more about the issues, they are polled afterward on their thoughts. Many scholars argue that this type of polling

3132-422: Is that an estimate of a trend is subject to a larger error than an estimate of a level. This is because if one estimates the change, the difference between two numbers X and Y, then one has to contend with errors in both X and Y . A rough guide is that if the change in measurement falls outside the margin of error it is worth attention. Since some people do not answer calls from strangers, or refuse to answer

3240-494: The 1993 general election predicted the governing National Party would increase its majority. However, the preliminary results on election night showed a hung parliament with National one seat short of a majority, leading to Prime Minister Jim Bolger exclaiming "bugger the pollsters" on live national television. The official count saw National gain Waitaki to hold a one-seat majority and retain government. Social media today

3348-560: The Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?" The confusing wording of this question led to inaccurate results which indicated that 22 percent of respondents believed it seemed possible the Holocaust might not have ever happened. When the question was reworded, significantly fewer respondents (only 1 percent) expressed that same sentiment. Thus comparisons between polls often boil down to

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3456-469: The United States from October 26 to December 2, 1824. Andrew Jackson , John Quincy Adams , Henry Clay and William Crawford were the primary contenders for the presidency . The result of the election was inconclusive, as no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote . In the election for vice president , John C. Calhoun was elected with a comfortable majority of the vote. Because none of

3564-431: The United States was the prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 US presidential election . Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, had indicated that Dewey would defeat Truman in a landslide; Truman won a narrow victory. There were also substantial polling errors in the presidential elections of 1952, 1980, 1996, 2000, and 2016: while the first three correctly predicted

3672-613: The Wilmington American Watchman and Delaware Advertiser prior to the 1824 presidential election , showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency . Since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and the national popular vote, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually citywide phenomena. In 1916, The Literary Digest embarked on

3780-470: The 1950s, various types of polling had spread to most democracies. Viewed from a long-term perspective, advertising had come under heavy pressure in the early 1930s. The Great Depression forced businesses to drastically cut back on their advertising spending. Layoffs and reductions were common at all agencies. The New Deal furthermore aggressively promoted consumerism, and minimized the value of (or need for) advertising. Historian Jackson Lears argues that "By

3888-456: The 2016 New York primary, where a news organization reports misleading primary results. Government officials argue that since many Americans believe in exit polls more, election results are likely to make voters not think they are impacted electorally and be more doubtful about the credibility of news organizations. Over time, a number of theories and mechanisms have been offered to explain erroneous polling results. Some of these reflect errors on

3996-545: The 2016 U.S. primaries, CNN reported that the Democratic primary in New York was too close to call, and they made this judgment based on exit polls. However, the vote count revealed that these exit polls were misleading, and Hillary Clinton was far ahead of Bernie Sanders in the popular vote, winning the state by 58% to 42% margin. The overreliance on exit polling leads to the second point of how it undermines public trust in

4104-543: The 240 Democratic Republican members of Congress attended the caucus, which was widely attacked as undemocratic. Gallatin had not sought the vice presidential nomination and soon withdrew at Crawford's request. Gallatin was also dissatisfied with repeated attacks on his credibility made by the other candidates. He was replaced by North Carolina senator Nathaniel Macon . State legislatures also convened state caucuses to nominate candidates. Adams sought to have Jackson be his vice-presidential running mate and Louisa Adams hosted

4212-483: The Conservative lead. Following the 1992 election, most opinion pollsters altered their methodology to try to correct for this observed behaviour of the electorate. The methods varied for different companies. Some, including Populus , YouGov , and ICM Research , began to adopt the tactic of asking their interviewees how they had voted at the previous election and then assuming that they would vote that way again at

4320-400: The Conservatives neck and neck, when the actual result was a clear Conservative majority. On the other hand, in 2017 , the opposite appears to have occurred. Most polls predicted an increased Conservative majority, even though in reality the election resulted in a hung parliament with a Conservative plurality: some polls correctly predicted this outcome. In New Zealand, the polls leading up to

4428-591: The Electoral College did not win the election. It is also, to date, the election with the lowest popular vote percentage for an elected president (32.7%). The Era of Good Feelings , associated with the administration of President James Monroe , was a time of reduced emphasis on political party identity. With the Federalists discredited , Democratic-Republicans adopted some key Federalist economic programs and institutions. The economic nationalism of

Shy Tory factor - Misplaced Pages Continue

4536-799: The Era of Good Feelings that would authorize the Tariff of 1816 and incorporate the Second Bank of the United States portended abandonment of the Jeffersonian political formula for strict construction of the Constitution, limited central government, and primacy of Southern slaveholding interests. An unintended consequence of wide single-party identification was reduced party discipline. Rather than political harmony, factions arose within

4644-547: The House was limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford; Henry Clay, who had finished fourth, was eliminated. Each state delegation, voting en bloc , had a single vote. There were 24 states at the time, thus an absolute majority of 13 votes was required for victory. Clay detested Jackson and had said of him, "I cannot believe that killing 2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for

4752-569: The Pew Research Center in the US, in 2007, concluded that "cell-only respondents are different from landline respondents in important ways, (but) they were neither numerous enough nor different enough on the questions we examined to produce a significant change in overall general population survey estimates when included with the landline samples and weighted according to US Census parameters on basic demographic characteristics." This issue

4860-489: The United States (because the phone's owner may be charged for taking a call ), these individuals are typically excluded from polling samples. There is concern that, if the subset of the population without cell phones differs markedly from the rest of the population, these differences can skew the results of the poll. Polling organizations have developed many weighting techniques to help overcome these deficiencies, with varying degrees of success. Studies of mobile phone users by

4968-531: The Western states, and Jackson and Crawford split the Southern states. Jackson finished with a plurality of the popular vote (there was no popular vote in six states including New York, the most populous state), and also of the electoral vote (due to the Three-fifths Compromise ), while the other three candidates each finished with a significant share of the votes. Clay, who had finished fourth,

5076-422: The actual sample is a biased version of the universe the pollster wants to analyze. In these cases, bias introduces new errors, one way or the other, that are in addition to errors caused by sample size. Error due to bias does not become smaller with larger sample sizes, because taking a larger sample size simply repeats the same mistake on a larger scale. If the people who refuse to answer, or are never reached, have

5184-449: The answers given by respondents do not reflect their true beliefs. This may be deliberately engineered by unscrupulous pollsters in order to generate a certain result or please their clients, but more often is a result of the detailed wording or ordering of questions (see below). Respondents may deliberately try to manipulate the outcome of a poll by e.g. advocating a more extreme position than they actually hold in order to boost their side of

5292-424: The argument or give rapid and ill-considered answers in order to hasten the end of their questioning. Respondents may also feel under social pressure not to give an unpopular answer. For example, respondents might be unwilling to admit to unpopular attitudes like racism or sexism , and thus polls might not reflect the true incidence of these attitudes in the population. In American political parlance, this phenomenon

5400-584: The assumption that opinion polls show actual links between opinions is considered important. Another source of error is the use of samples that are not representative of the population as a consequence of the methodology used, as was the experience of The Literary Digest in 1936. For example, telephone sampling has a built-in error because in many times and places, those with telephones have generally been richer than those without. In some places many people have only mobile telephones . Because pollsters cannot use automated dialing machines to call mobile phones in

5508-445: The breakdown of the US population by party identification has not changed since the previous presidential election, you may underestimate a victory or a defeat of a particular party candidate that saw a surge or decline in its party registration relative to the previous presidential election cycle. Sample Techniques are also used and recommended to reduce sample errors and errors of margin. In chapter four of author Herb Asher he says,"it

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5616-544: The cabinet and remained critical of the administration. Two key events, the Panic of 1819 and the Missouri crisis of 1820 , influenced and reshaped politics. The economic downturn broadly harmed workers, the sectional disputes over slavery expansion raised tensions, and both events plus other factors drove demand for increased democratic control. Social disaffection would help motivate revival of rivalrous political parties in

5724-425: The campaign know which voters are persuadable so they can spend their limited resources in the most effective manner. Second, it can give them an idea of what messages, ideas, or slogans are the strongest with the electorate. In a tracking poll responses are obtained in a number of consecutive periods, for instance daily, and then results are calculated using a moving average of the responses that were gathered over

5832-508: The candidates for president garnered an electoral vote majority, the U.S. House of Representatives , under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment , held a contingent election . On February 9, 1825, the House voted (with each state delegation casting one vote) to elect John Quincy Adams as president, ultimately giving the election to him. The Democratic-Republican Party had won six consecutive presidential elections and by 1824

5940-504: The contingent election. All four candidates were nominated by at least one state legislature. Andrew Jackson was recruited to run for the office of the president by the state legislature of Tennessee. Jackson did not seek the task of running for president. Instead, he wished to retire to his estate on the outskirts of Nashville, called the Hermitage. Candidates drew voter support by different states and sections . Adams dominated

6048-609: The country, allowing for a comparative analysis between specific regions. For example, in the United States, exit polls are beneficial in accurately determining how the state voters cast their ballot instead of relying on a national survey. Third, exit polls can give journalists and social scientists a greater understanding of why voters voted the way they did and what factors contributed to their vote. Exit polling has several disadvantages that can cause controversy depending on its use. First, these polls are not always accurate and can sometimes mislead election reporting. For instance, during

6156-514: The election five years previously. As a result of this failure to predict the result, the Market Research Society held an inquiry into the reasons why the polls had been so much at variance with actual public opinion. The report found that 2% of the 8.5% error could be explained by Conservative supporters refusing to disclose their voting intentions; it cited as evidence the fact that exit polls on election day also underestimated

6264-472: The election, had their delegations support Adams. Van Buren attempted to have New York's delegation be divided between Adams and Crawford in order to increase its power and make a deal with one of them. However, Stephen Van Rensselaer , a Federalist allied with Van Buren, voted for Adams. Van Buren stated that Van Rensselaer found a ballot for Adams on the floor while Van Rensselaer, in his letter to Governor DeWitt Clinton , stated that he voted for Adams as he

6372-518: The eve of the voting, gave a dead heat and a 1% Labour lead. The result was eventually a Conservative Party majority with a popular vote share of 36.8% with the Labour Party achieving 30.4%. It was later widely claimed in the media that the "Shy Tory factor" had again occurred as it had done in 1992. The British Polling Council subsequently launched an independent enquiry into how polls were so wrong amid widespread criticism that polls are no longer

6480-404: The factors that impact the results of opinion polls are the wording and order of the questions being posed by the surveyor. Questions that intentionally affect a respondents answer are referred to as leading questions . Individuals and/or groups use these types of questions in surveys to elicit responses favorable to their interests. For instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for

6588-693: The field of public opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later became partner. In September 1938, Jean Stoetzel , after having met Gallup, created IFOP, the Institut Français d'Opinion Publique , as the first European survey institute in Paris. Stoetzel started political polls in summer 1939 with the question " Why die for Danzig? ", looking for popular support or dissent with this question asked by appeasement politician and future collaborationist Marcel Déat . Gallup launched

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6696-643: The final collapse of the Republican-Federalist political framework. The electoral map confirmed the candidates' sectional support, with Adams winning in New England, Jackson having wide voter appeal, Clay attracting votes from the West, and Crawford attracting votes from the eastern South. Jackson earned only a plurality of electoral votes . Thus, the presidential election was decided by the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams on

6804-607: The first ballot. John C. Calhoun , supported by Adams and Jackson, easily won the vice presidency, not requiring a contingent election in the Senate. Jackson's electoral college plurality was the result of the Three-fifths Compromise . The electoral college results would have been 83 for Adams and 77 for Jackson without the inflated electoral count of slaveholding states. Crawford likewise benefited in this regard, as all but eight of his electoral votes were from slave states, while Clay's electoral votes were split relatively evenly (20 from

6912-574: The free states of New York and Ohio, 17 from the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri); without the Three-fifths Compromise, Crawford would have finished last in the electoral college, and Clay would have entered the contingent election at his expense. [REDACTED] Elections in this period were vastly different from modern-day presidential elections. The actual presidential candidates were rarely mentioned on tickets and voters were voting for particular electors who were pledged to

7020-413: The late 1930s, though, corporate advertisers had begun a successful counterattack against their critics." They rehabilitated the concept of consumer sovereignty by inventing scientific public opinion polls, and making it the centerpiece of their own market research, as well as the key to understanding politics. George Gallup, the vice president of Young and Rubicam, and numerous other advertising experts, led

7128-409: The margin of error is to rely on poll averages . This makes the assumption that the procedure is similar enough between many different polls and uses the sample size of each poll to create a polling average. Another source of error stems from faulty demographic models by pollsters who weigh their samples by particular variables such as party identification in an election. For example, if you assume that

7236-411: The margin of victory was under 1%: States where the margin of victory was under 5%: States where the margin of victory was under 10%: As no presidential candidate had won an absolute electoral vote majority, the responsibility for electing a new president devolved upon the U.S. House of Representatives , which held a contingent election on February 9, 1825. As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment ,

7344-425: The media and the electoral process. In the U.S., Congress and state governments have criticized the use of exit polling because Americans tend to believe more in the accuracy of exit polls. If an exit poll shows that American voters were leaning toward a particular candidate, most would assume that the candidate would win. However, as mentioned earlier, an exit poll can sometimes be inaccurate and lead to situations like

7452-467: The micro-blogging platform Twitter ) for modelling and predicting voting intention polls. A benchmark poll is generally the first poll taken in a campaign. It is often taken before a candidate announces their bid for office, but sometimes it happens immediately following that announcement after they have had some opportunity to raise funds. This is generally a short and simple survey of likely voters. Benchmark polling often relies on timing, which can be

7560-758: The near future, though these had not yet formed by the time of the 1824 election. The previous competition between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party collapsed after the War of 1812 due to the disintegration of the Federalists' popular appeal. President James Monroe of the Democratic-Republicans was able to run without opposition in the 1820 election. Like previous presidents who had been elected to two terms, Monroe declined to seek re-nomination for

7668-429: The necessary information to learn more about it. Despite this, there are two issues with deliberative opinion polls. First, they are expensive and challenging to perform since they require a representative sample of voters, and the information given on specific issues must be fair and balanced. Second, the results of deliberative opinion polls generally do not reflect the opinions of most voters since most voters do not take

7776-581: The overall results but has further been discussed in other elections where the Conservatives did unexpectedly well. It has also been applied to the success of the Republican Party in the United States or the continued electoral victories of the People's Action Party in Singapore. The final opinion polling for the 2015 United Kingdom general election gave the Conservatives between 38% and 39% of

7884-545: The part of the pollsters; many of them are statistical in nature. Some blame respondents for not providing genuine answers to pollsters, a phenomenon known as social desirability-bias (also referred to as the Bradley effect or the Shy Tory Factor ); these terms can be quite controversial. Polls based on samples of populations are subject to sampling error which reflects the effects of chance and uncertainty in

7992-539: The party. Monroe attempted to improve discipline by appointing leading statesmen to his Cabinet, including Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford of Georgia, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee led high-profile military missions. Only House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky held political power independent of Monroe. He refused to join

8100-403: The poll is done prior to announcing for office the candidate may use the poll to decide whether or not they should even run for office. Secondly, it shows them where their weaknesses and strengths are in two main areas. The first is the electorate. A benchmark poll shows them what types of voters they are sure to win, those they are sure to lose, and everyone in-between these two extremes. This lets

8208-611: The poll, causing it to favor the candidate most different from the others while it disfavors candidates who are similar to other candidates. The plurality voting system also biases elections in the same way. Some people responding may not understand the words being used, but may wish to avoid the embarrassment of admitting this, or the poll mechanism may not allow clarification, so they may make an arbitrary choice. Some percentage of people also answer whimsically or out of annoyance at being polled. This results in perhaps 4% of Americans reporting they have personally been decapitated . Among

8316-434: The poll, poll samples may not be representative samples from a population due to a non-response bias . Response rates have been declining, and are down to about 10% in recent years. Various pollsters have attributed this to an increased skepticism and lack of interest in polling. Because of this selection bias , the characteristics of those who agree to be interviewed may be markedly different from those who decline. That is,

8424-691: The popular vote in New England and won some support elsewhere, Clay dominated his home state of Kentucky and won pluralities in two neighboring states, and Crawford won the Virginia vote overwhelmingly and polled well in North Carolina . Jackson had geographically the broadest support, though there were heavy vote concentrations in his home state of Tennessee and in Pennsylvania and populous areas where even he ran poorly. Policy played

8532-504: The population of interest to the pollster. A scientific poll not only will have a sufficiently large sample, it will also be sensitive to response rates. Very low response rates will raise questions about how representative and accurate the results are. Are there systematic differences between those who participated in the survey and those who, for whatever reason, did not participate? Sampling methods, sample size, and response rates will all be discussed in this chapter" (Asher 2017). A caution

8640-504: The presidency, as Adams and his three predecessors had all served as Secretary of State. Jackson and his followers accused Adams and Clay of striking a " corrupt bargain ", and the Jacksonians would campaign on this claim for the next four years, ultimately helping Jackson defeat Adams in 1828 . Ironically, Adams offered Jackson a position in his Cabinet as Secretary of War, which Jackson declined to accept. Adams' supporters controlled

8748-492: The presidential election, but Roosevelt was instead re-elected by a landslide. George Gallup 's research found that the error was mainly caused by participation bias ; those who favored Landon were more enthusiastic about returning their postcards. Furthermore, the postcards were sent to a target audience who were more affluent than the American population as a whole, and therefore more likely to have Republican sympathies. At

8856-570: The questions are then worded in a way that limit the possible answers, typically to yes or no. Another type of question that can produce inaccurate results are " Double-Negative Questions". These are more often the result of human error, rather than intentional manipulation. One such example is a survey done in 1992 by the Roper Organization , concerning the Holocaust . The question read "Does it seem possible or impossible to you that

8964-455: The radius of the confidence interval for a reported percentage of 50%. Others suggest that a poll with a random sample of 1,000 people has margin of sampling error of ±3% for the estimated percentage of the whole population. A 3% margin of error means that if the same procedure is used a large number of times, 95% of the time the true population average will be within the sample estimate plus or minus 3%. The margin of error can be reduced by using

9072-408: The result produced a smaller gap between the parties that polls had showed but a big majority for the Labour Party because the swing was not uniform; the polling companies that had adjusted for the "Shy Tory effect" got closer to the voting proportions than those that did not. Opinion polling for the 2015 United Kingdom general election underestimated the Conservative vote, with most polls predicting

9180-416: The same characteristics as the people who do answer, then the final results should be unbiased. If the people who do not answer have different opinions then there is bias in the results. In terms of election polls, studies suggest that bias effects are small, but each polling firm has its own techniques for adjusting weights to minimize selection bias. Survey results may be affected by response bias , where

9288-402: The same time, Gallup, Archibald Crossley and Elmo Roper conducted surveys that were far smaller but more scientifically based, and all three managed to correctly predict the result. The Literary Digest soon went out of business, while polling started to take off. Roper went on to correctly predict the two subsequent reelections of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Louis Harris had been in

9396-408: The sampling process. Sampling polls rely on the law of large numbers to measure the opinions of the whole population based only on a subset, and for this purpose the absolute size of the sample is important, but the percentage of the whole population is not important (unless it happens to be close to the sample size). The possible difference between the sample and whole population is often expressed as

9504-776: The second opinion without having it, causing opinion polls to become part of self-fulfilling prophecy problems. It has been suggested that attempts to counteract unethical opinions by condemning supposedly linked opinions may favor the groups that promote the actually unethical opinions by forcing people with supposedly linked opinions into them by ostracism elsewhere in society making such efforts counterproductive, that not being sent between groups that assume ulterior motives from each other and not being allowed to express consistent critical thought anywhere may create psychological stress because humans are sapient, and that discussion spaces free from assumptions of ulterior motives behind specific opinions should be created. In this context, rejection of

9612-466: The time to research issues the way an academic researches issues. Exit polls interview voters just as they are leaving polling places. Unlike general public opinion polls, these are polls of people who voted in the election. Exit polls provide a more accurate picture of which candidates the public prefers in an election because people participating in the poll did vote in the election. Second, these polls are conducted across multiple voting locations across

9720-445: The tone of the question(s) and generate a certain response or reaction, rather than gauge sentiment in an unbiased manner. In opinion polling, there are also " loaded questions ", otherwise known as " trick questions ". This type of leading question may concern an uncomfortable or controversial issue, and/or automatically assume the subject of the question is related to the respondent(s) or that they are knowledgeable about it. Likewise,

9828-519: The various, difficult, and complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy." Moreover, Clay's American System was closer to Adams's position on tariffs and internal improvements than Jackson's. Even if Clay had wished to align with Crawford over Jackson, which was highly unlikely in any event since Clay's policy differences with Crawford were even deeper, especially on matters of the tariff, Crawford had been in poor health, and no path to victory

9936-534: The volatility of the results was at least in part due to an uneven distribution of Democratic and Republican affiliated voters in the samples. Though the Gallup Organization argued the volatility in the poll was a genuine representation of the electorate, other polling organizations took steps to reduce such wide variations in their results. One such step included manipulating the proportion of Democrats and Republicans in any given sample, but this method

10044-460: The vote, about 1% behind the Labour Party , suggesting that the election would produce a hung parliament or a narrow Labour majority and end 13 years of Tory rule. In the final results, the Conservatives received almost 42% (a lead of 7.6% over Labour) and won their fourth successive general election, although they now had a 21-seat majority compared to the 102-seat majority they had gained in

10152-796: The way. Moving into the 1940s, the industry played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people in fighting the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II. As part of that effort, they redefined the "American Way of Life" in terms of a commitment to free enterprise. "Advertisers", Lears concludes, "played a crucial hegemonic role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society." Opinion polls for many years were maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person contact. Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely accepted in most areas. Over

10260-592: The winner (albeit not the extent of their winning margin), with the last two correctly predicting the winner of the popular vote (but not the Electoral College). In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of 1970 and 1992 , and Labour's victory in February 1974 . In the 2015 election , virtually every poll predicted a hung parliament with Labour and

10368-474: The winner of a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, expected the House to choose him. Not long before the contingent House election, an anonymous statement appeared in a Philadelphia paper, called the Columbian Observer . The statement, said to be from a member of Congress, essentially accused Clay of selling Adams his support for the office of Secretary of State. No formal investigation

10476-440: The wording of the question. On some issues, question wording can result in quite pronounced differences between surveys. This can also, however, be a result of legitimately conflicted feelings or evolving attitudes, rather than a poorly constructed survey. A common technique to control for this bias is to rotate the order in which questions are asked. Many pollsters also split-sample. This involves having two different versions of

10584-461: The years, technological innovations have also influenced survey methods such as the availability of electronic clipboards and Internet based polling. Opinion polling developed into popular applications through popular thought, although response rates for some surveys declined. Also, the following has also led to differentiating results: Some polling organizations, such as Angus Reid Public Opinion , YouGov and Zogby use Internet surveys, where

10692-430: Was a clear tendency for polls which included mobile phones in their samples to show a much larger lead for Obama , than polls that did not. The potential sources of bias are: Some polling companies have attempted to get around that problem by including a "cellphone supplement". There are a number of problems with including cellphones in a telephone poll: A widely publicized failure of opinion polling to date in

10800-2371: Was bound to win and that he wanted to shorten "the long agony". Van Buren supported Jackson during the 1828 election and aided in Calhoun's selection as vice president. Ignoring the nonbinding directive of the Kentucky legislature that its House delegation choose Jackson, the delegation voted 8–4 for Adams instead. Thus, Adams was elected president on the first ballot, with 13 states, followed by Jackson with seven, and Crawford with four. Connecticut       0 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Illinois       0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Kentucky       0 8 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 Louisiana       0 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 Maine       0 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Maryland       0 5 0 0 3 0 0 1 0 Massachusetts       0 12 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 Missouri       0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 New Hampshire       0 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 New York       0 18 0 0 2 0 0 14 0 Ohio       0 10 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 Rhode Island       0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Vermont       0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Alabama       0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 Indiana       0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 Mississippi       0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 New Jersey       0 1 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 Pennsylvania       0 1 0 0 25 0 0 0 0 South Carolina       0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 Tennessee       0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 Delaware       0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 Georgia       0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 North Carolina       0 1 0 0 2 0 0 10 0 Virginia       0 1 0 0 1 0 0 19 0 0 83 0 0 13 0 0 17 0 0 2 0 0 55 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0 37 0 Adams' victory shocked Jackson, who, as

10908-457: Was conducted, so the matter was neither confirmed nor denied. When Clay was indeed offered the position after Adams was victorious, he opted to accept and continue to support the administration he voted for, knowing that declining the position would not have helped to dispel the rumors brought against him. Jackson referred to Clay as the "Judas of the West". By appointing Clay his Secretary of State, President Adams essentially declared him heir to

11016-405: Was eliminated. Adams was the first son of a former president to become president. This is one of two presidential elections (along with the 1800 election ) that have been decided in the House. It is also one of five elections in which the winner did not achieve at least a plurality of the national popular vote and the only election in which the candidate who received the most electoral votes from

11124-424: Was even more vehemently opposed to the prospect of a Clay presidency, and partly because he had a long-standing personal enmity with Crawford. The campaigning for presidential election of 1824 took many forms. Contrafacta , or well known songs and tunes whose lyrics have been altered, were used to promote political agendas and presidential candidates. Below can be found a sound clip featuring " Hunters of Kentucky ",

11232-429: Was evident. Daniel Pope Cook , Illinois' sole representative, was anti-slavery and gave his support to Adams. James Buchanan attempted to make a compromise with Clay in which Jackson would make him Secretary of State in exchange for his support. Clay instead gave his support to Adams and was able to have the Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio delegations support him. Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland, which Jackson won during

11340-573: Was first identified in 2004, but came to prominence only during the 2008 US presidential election . In previous elections, the proportion of the general population using cell phones was small, but as this proportion has increased, there is concern that polling only landlines is no longer representative of the general population. In 2003, only 2.9% of households were wireless (cellphones only), compared to 12.8% in 2006. This results in " coverage error ". Many polling organisations select their sample by dialling random telephone numbers; however, in 2008, there

11448-724: Was nominated by a group of men in Philadelphia, including George M. Dallas , in December 1821. However, Dallas later gave his support to Jackson's presidential campaign, with Calhoun as his running mate, in February 1824. Martin Van Buren and his political machine supported Crawford in New York . During the selection of New York's electors Van Buren was able to deny Clay enough support to prevent him from being eligible for

11556-469: Was one of the candidates most directly involved through his participation in the publishing of the newspaper The Patriot as a member of the editorial staff. This was a sure way to promote his own political agendas and campaign. In contrast, most candidates involved in early 19th century elections did not run their own political campaigns. Instead it was left to volunteer citizens and partisans to speak on their behalf. The 1824 presidential election marked

11664-526: Was the only national political party. However, as the election approached, the presence of multiple viable candidates resulted in there being multiple nominations by the contending factions, signaling the splintering of the party and an end to the Era of Good Feelings , as well as the First Party System . Adams won New England , Jackson and Adams split the mid-Atlantic states , Jackson and Clay split

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