The Upshot at The NY Times is trying something new, and it’s kinda cool. They’re conducting polls of selected races, and you can watch the results come in in real time. Calls placed are represented by little dots flashing across the screen, with the occasional red or blue dot to show responses.
Aside from the hypnotic nature of the dot UI, lol, this project is offering some transparency that is really interesting for poll-watchers and amateur polysci enthusiasts. You can see how the results fluctuate wildly as the initial sample is built, and then moderates itself over time.
Some takeaways as I’ve watched several of these polls:
- it’s surprising how many call they need to make to get 500 responses. Like 40,000+! No wonder polling is so damn expensive.
- I am surprised how many races flip depending on whether you go from the 480th response or the 500th. The margins of error aren’t that different between those numbers of responses — either poll would be valid to publish. The response-over-time charts really illustrate the chaotic flux that many of these races are in.
How is Ms. Davids doing?
KS-03 is underway. As I write this, they’re at about 200 responses and 10k calls. It’s looking good, but sorry guys...it’d be utterly unscientific to quote results this early, lol. Go watch the calls come in yourself if you are geeky enough to enjoy that sort of thing:
www.nytimes.com/...