Title: How U.S. Pre-election Polls are Changing in an Era of Disruption and Scrutiny
Date/Time: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 4:00–5:30 p.m.
Informal reception to follow at approximately 5:45 p.m. at East Street Café on the mezzanine level of Union Station.
Speaker: Scott Clement, Polling Director, The Washington Post
Chair: Sareeta Carter Schmitt, AP Statistics teacher, The School Without Walls of Washington, DC
Sponsors: WSS Statistics Education Committee, WSS Methodology Section and DC-AAPOR (The Washington-Baltimore Chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research)
Location: Bureau of Labor Statistics Janet Norwood Conference Center, Rooms 7/8 (Please check board in case of change of room). BLS is located at 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE. Use the Red Line to Union Station. Parking in the area of BLS is available at Union Station. For parking information see http://www.unionstationdc.com/parking. No validation is available from BLS for reduced parking rates.
RSVP: To be placed on the seminar attendance list at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you need to e-mail your name, affiliation, date of the seminar and seminar name to wss_seminar@bls.gov (underscore after ‘wss’) by noon on Friday, November 9. Please bring a photo ID to the seminar.
Abstract: The past decade has brought a rapid proliferation in U.S. pre-election polls, ways they are conducted and approaches to combining and interpreting results. This change has also come amid heightened scrutiny of the accuracy of pre-election polls and efforts to use polls to provide precise forecasts of election results, which came to a head with Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 election. A report by the American Association for Public Opinion Research found national polls that year were particularly accurate by historical standards, but that state surveys significantly underestimated Trump’s support. This talk will discuss the driving forces behind changes in pre-election polling, the chief challenges for pollsters and the news media in conducting and interpreting polls in the coming years. The talk is non-technical and relevant for both statisticians and non-statisticians.
No Remote Access Will be Available for this Event
POC (Point of Contact) email: Carol Joyce Blumberg, cblumberg@gmail.com
The Roper Center, DC-AAPOR and Pew Research Center Present: 2018 Election Polling: A Postmortem – Midterms in a Polarizing Time
November 15, 2018
Pew Research Center, 1615 L St, NW Suite 800, Washington, DC
The upcoming midterm election has long been generating interest, news and endless speculation about consequences for both parties and the country. Join us for our 2018 election polling postmortem to gather with colleagues, industry leaders, and polling enthusiasts as we digest the 2018 midterm election results and their implications. This is an opportunity to hear from many pollsters and consultants in town for the Roper Center’s Mitofsky Award Dinner.
The postmortem will be held at Pew Research Center. The postmortem’s panel will include several distinguished panelist.
Claudia Deane (Pew Research Center) is Vice President of Research at Pew Research Center. In this role, she oversees the creation and execution of the Center’s domestic research agenda and works to promote methods innovation. Deane has previously served as Associate Director for Public Opinion & Survey Research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Assistant Director of Polling at The Washington Post and an election night exit poll analyst for ABC News.
Dan Judy (North Star Opinion Research) has been Vice President of North Star Opinion Research since 2009. In 2012, Campaigns and Elections magazine named him a “Rising Star” in the political consulting industry, and in 2015 he was part of the American Association of Political Consultants’ inaugural “40 under 40” class, having helped the winning campaigns of U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Lindesy Graham, and Marco Rubio, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, numerous members of the U.S. House, and state and local officials across the country. He works on a wide variety of political, non-profit, and corporate projects, including questionnaire development, to fielding, to strategic analysis and presentation, and is a skilled moderator.
Mark Mellman (The Mellman Group), one of the nation’s leading public opinion researchers and communication strategists, is President of the American Association of Political Consultants and CEO of The Mellman Group, a polling and consulting firm whose clients include leading political figures, Fortune 500 companies, and some of the nation’s most important public interest groups. Mellman, who counts among his clients Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Whip Steny Hoyer, has helped guide the campaigns of twenty-nine U.S. Senators, ten Governors, over two dozen Members of Congress, and numerous state and local officials.
Heidi Przybyla (NBC News) is an NBC News national political reporter, who regularly breaks exclusive reporting on the politics of the White House, Congress and the 2018 congressional elections. Previously, she has been a senior political reporter at USA TODAY, covering the 2016 presidential field and for more than a decade, served as political, White House and congressional reporter at Bloomberg News in Washington and served as Bloomberg’s lead poll writer. She is a Michigan native and has a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and German from Michigan State University.
The panel will be chaired by Susan Pinkus – polling consultant and former director of the Los Angeles Times poll. Susan has been a public opinion pollster for more than 25 years and is a member of the Roper Board.
The postmortem event is free but advanced registration is required, as space is limited.
Register now for this exciting post-election panel. Registration is available at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2018-election-polling-a-postmortem-midterms-in-a-polarizing-time-tickets-51046404169.
A ticket for the Mitofsky Award Dinner is not required.
For questions about this event, please contact douglaswilliams@westat.com
2018 Annual DC-AAPOR Holiday Party
December 18, 2018, 5-7:30 pm
Clyde’s at Gallery Place, 707 7th St, NW, Washington, DC
It’s time for the annual DC-AAPOR Holiday party!
Register here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/
We’ve had an exciting year as a DC-AAPOR family and it’s time to get together and celebrate one last time before 2019. Join us and your fellow colleagues as we look back on a successful year and look towards 2019. Come enjoy free food and beverages, meet your DC-AAPOR council and your incoming 2019 council members.
This year, our holiday party will be held at Clyde’s at Gallery Place – 707 7th Street NW, Washington DC, easily accessible via Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop on the Red line.
In addition to drinks, light dinner, and hors d’oeuvres we will be announcing both the student paper award and the annual Outstanding Achievement Award at the party.
As always, the party is free for DC-AAPOR members–but registration is required! Non-members are welcome, but require a paid registration – which will also give you DC-AAPOR membership through 2019.
Not a member? Need to renew your membership? We encourage you to sign up or renew through the DC-AAPOR website, https://dc-aapor.org/membership/shop/. If you join now (good through 2019), you’ll get to attend for free as well–which is cheaper than purchasing a ticket to the party! You can also join or renew when renewing your national AAPOR membership. If you want to confirm your membership, please contact Secretary/Membership Chair Stephanie Willson (swillson@cdc.gov).
For questions about this event, contact Doug Williams (douglaswilliams@westat.com).