How to Poll Runoff Elections

Abstract We present a polling strategy to predict and analyze runoff elections using the 2017 French presidential race as an empirical case. This strategy employs rejective probability sampling to identify a small sample of polling stations that is balanced with respect to past election results. We...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public opinion quarterly 2020, Vol.84 (3), p.776-787
Main Authors: Selb, Peter, Göbel, Sascha, Lachat, Romain
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Humanities and Social Sciences
Political science
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Summary:Abstract We present a polling strategy to predict and analyze runoff elections using the 2017 French presidential race as an empirical case. This strategy employs rejective probability sampling to identify a small sample of polling stations that is balanced with respect to past election results. We then survey the voters’ candidate evaluations in first-round exit polls. We poststratify the voter sample to first-round election returns to account for nonresponse and coverage issues, and impute missing candidate evaluations to emulate campaign learning. Next, the votes for eliminated competitors are redistributed according to their supporters’ lower-order preferences. Finally, the predictions are validated against official results and other polls. We end with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of this approach.
ISSN:0033-362X
1537-5331
DOI:10.1093/poq/nfaa039