Download or read book Strength in Numbers How Polls Work and Why We Need Them written by G. Elliott Morris and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful exploration of political polling and a bold defense of its crucial role in a modern democracy. Public opinion polling is the ultimate democratic process; it gives every person an equal voice in letting elected leaders know what they need and want. But in the eyes of the public, polls today are tarnished. Recent election forecasts have routinely missed the mark and media coverage of polls has focused solely on their ability to predict winners and losers. Polls deserve better. In Strength in Numbers, data journalist G. Elliott Morris argues that the larger purpose of political polls is to improve democracy, not just predict elections. Whether used by interest groups, the press, or politicians, polling serves as a pipeline from the governed to the government, giving citizens influence they would otherwise lack. No one who believes in democracy can afford to give up on polls; they should commit, instead, to understanding them better. In a vibrant history of polling, Morris takes readers from the first semblance of data-gathering in the ancient world through to the development of modern-day scientific polling. He explains how the internet and “big data” have solved many challenges in polling—and created others. He covers the rise of polling aggregation and methods of election forecasting, reveals how data can be distorted and misrepresented, and demystifies the real uncertainty of polling. Candidly acknowledging where polls have gone wrong in the past, Morris charts a path for the industry’s future where it can truly work for the people. Persuasively argued and deeply researched, Strength in Numbers is an essential guide to understanding and embracing one of the most important and overlooked democratic institutions in the United States.
Download or read book Strength in Numbers written by G. Elliot Morris and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful exploration of political polling and a bold defense of its crucial role in a modern democracy. Public opinion polling is the ultimate democratic process; it gives every person an equal voice in letting elected leaders know what they need and want. But in the eyes of the public, polls today are tarnished. Recent election forecasts have routinely missed the mark and media coverage of polls has focused solely on their ability to predict winners and losers. Polls deserve better. In Strength in Numbers, data journalist G. Elliott Morris argues that the larger purpose of political polls is to improve democracy, not just predict elections. Whether used by interest groups, the press, or politicians, polling serves as a pipeline from the governed to the government, giving citizens influence they would otherwise lack. No one who believes in democracy can afford to give up on polls; they should commit, instead, to understanding them better. In a vibrant history of polling, Morris takes readers from the first semblance of data-gathering in the ancient world through to the development of modern-day scientific polling. He explains how the internet and “big data” have solved many challenges in polling—and created others. He covers the rise of polling aggregation and methods of election forecasting, reveals how data can be distorted and misrepresented, and demystifies the real uncertainty of polling. Candidly acknowledging where polls have gone wrong in the past, Morris charts a path for the industry’s future where it can truly work for the people. Persuasively argued and deeply researched, Strength in Numbers is an essential guide to understanding and embracing one of the most important and overlooked democratic institutions in the United States.
Download or read book Lost in a Gallup written by W. Joseph Campbell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This update of a lively, first-of-its-kind study of polling misfires and fiascoes in U.S. presidential campaigns takes up pollsters’ failure over the decades to offer accurate assessments of the most important of American elections. Lost in a Gallup tells the story of polling flops and failures in presidential elections since 1936. Polls do go bad, as outcomes in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2004, and 2000 all remind us. This updated edition includes a new chapter and conclusion that address the 2020 polling surprise and considers whether polls will get it right in 2024. As author W. Joseph Campbell discusses, polling misfires in presidential elections are not all alike. Pollsters have anticipated tight elections when landslides have occurred. They have pointed to the wrong winner in closer elections. Misleading state polls have thrown off expected national outcomes. Polling failure also can lead to media error. Journalists covering presidential races invariably take their lead from polls. When polls go bad, media narratives can be off-target as well. Lost in a Gallup encourages readers to treat election polls with healthy skepticism, recognizing that they could be wrong.
Download or read book Polling at a Crossroads written by Michael A. Bailey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polling at a Crossroads presents an intuitive paradigm that allows us to understand and confront the challenges facing modern polling.
Download or read book Is the Youth Vote Liberal written by Zachary Cook and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-02-14 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing off ninety years of survey data, Zachary Cook argues that younger voters, as a function of the life cycle, tend to believe that government should do more to regulate the business sector to help provide high quality jobs for all.
Download or read book Statistics for Political Analysis written by Theresa Marchant-Shapiro and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Statistics are just as vital to understanding political science as the study of institutions, but getting students to understand them when teaching a methods course can be a big challenge. Statistics for Political Analysis makes understanding the numbers easy. The only introduction to statistics book written specifically for political science undergraduates, this book explains each statistical concept in plain language—from basic univariate statistics and the basic measures of association to bivariate and multivariate regression—and uses real world political examples. Students learn the relevance of statistics to political science, how to understand and calculate statistics mathematically, and how to obtain them using SPSS. All calculations are modeled step-by-step, giving students needed practice to master the process without making it intimidating. Each chapter concludes with exercises that get students actively applying the steps and building their professional skills through data calculation, analysis, and memo writing.
Download or read book 8 Billion and Counting How Sex Death and Migration Shape Our World written by Jennifer D. Sciubba and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative description of the power of population change to create the conditions for societal transformation. As the world nears 8 billion people, the countries that have led the global order since World War II are becoming the most aged societies in human history. At the same time, the world’s poorest and least powerful countries are suffocating under an imbalance of population and resources. In 8 Billion and Counting, political demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba argues that the story of the twenty-first century is less a story about exponential population growth, as the previous century was, than it is a story about differential growth—marked by a stark divide between the world’s richest and poorest countries. Drawing from decades of research, policy experience, and teaching, Sciubba employs stories and statistics to explain how demographic trends, like age structure and ethnic composition, are crucial signposts for future violence and peace, repression and democracy, poverty and prosperity. Although we have a diverse global population, demographic trends often follow predictable patterns that can help professionals across the corporate, nonprofit, government, and military sectors understand the global strategic environment. Through the lenses of national security, global health, and economics, Sciubba demonstrates the pitfalls of taking population numbers at face value and extrapolating from there. Instead, she argues, we must look at the forces in a society that amplify demographic trends and the forces that dilute them, particularly political institutions, or the rules of the game. She shows that the most important skills in demographic analysis are naming and being aware of your preferences, rethinking assumptions, and asking the right questions. Provocative and engrossing, 8 Billion and Counting is required reading for business leaders, policy makers, and anyone eager to anticipate political, economic, and social risks and opportunities. A deeper understanding of fertility, mortality, and migration promises to point toward the investments we need to make today to shape the future we want tomorrow.
Download or read book Winner Take All Politics written by Jacob S. Hacker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the growing divide between the incomes of the wealthy class and those of middle-income Americans, exonerating popular suspects to argue that the nation's political system promotes greed and under-representation.
Download or read book Is Voting for Young People written by Martin P. Wattenberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the root causes of the generation gap in voter turnout—changes in media consumption habits over time. It lays out an argument as to why young people have been tuning out politics in recent years, both in the United States and in other established democracies.
Download or read book The Crisis written by and published by . This book was released on 1982-06 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Crisis, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois as the official publication of the NAACP, is a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color. For nearly 100 years, The Crisis has been the magazine of opinion and thought leaders, decision makers, peacemakers and justice seekers. It has chronicled, informed, educated, entertained and, in many instances, set the economic, political and social agenda for our nation and its multi-ethnic citizens.
Download or read book How Democracies Die written by Steven Levitsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Comprehensive, enlightening, and terrifyingly timely.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITH BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • Foreign Affairs • WBUR • Paste Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved. Praise for How Democracies Die “What we desperately need is a sober, dispassionate look at the current state of affairs. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two of the most respected scholars in the field of democracy studies, offer just that.”—The Washington Post “Where Levitsky and Ziblatt make their mark is in weaving together political science and historical analysis of both domestic and international democratic crises; in doing so, they expand the conversation beyond Trump and before him, to other countries and to the deep structure of American democracy and politics.”—Ezra Klein, Vox “If you only read one book for the rest of the year, read How Democracies Die. . . .This is not a book for just Democrats or Republicans. It is a book for all Americans. It is nonpartisan. It is fact based. It is deeply rooted in history. . . . The best commentary on our politics, no contest.”—Michael Morrell, former Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (via Twitter) “A smart and deeply informed book about the ways in which democracy is being undermined in dozens of countries around the world, and in ways that are perfectly legal.”—Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Download or read book Democracy and Political Ignorance written by Ilya Somin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.
Download or read book Securing the Vote written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-09-30 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.
Download or read book The Politics Industry written by Katherine M. Gehl and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.
Download or read book A Century of Votes for Women written by Christina Wolbrecht and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how and why American women voted since the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.
Download or read book Bad News written by Mark Pack and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bad News is a popular guide that helps you make sense of the news wherever it appears – print, broadcast or online. Peppered with examples from around the world, the book turns a serious subject into an enjoyable read. You will learn as you are entertained. Readers will discover all the tricks and techniques required to work out whether to trust a story based on an anonymous source, when big numbers are really small and when small numbers are really big, why you should ignore what appears behind someone on the TV and much more. You'll even learn why you should always read stories in the Daily Mail backwards and when correlation is causation. But readers will also learn how ill-suited the news is to understanding and interpreting the modern world, even when it comes from honest journalists working for reputable outlets. The news has a role, but readers will learn how to ensure they don't confuse that with understanding the world.
Download or read book The Signalman s Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
