When Elmo Roper and George Gallup conducted the nation's first scientific opinion polls back in the 1930s, they were motivated by a belief that how people voted was only part of what really matters in a democracy. It was also crucial to understand how people felt about the major issues of the day. |
Today, the 2020 election is behind us, and so is the constant flood of pre-election polling that streamed in throughout the year. But the stakes are still high on many issues — and, as ever, the public's views are constantly evolving. Gallup's question abides. |
So we're unveiling a new feature today on nytimes.com to keep you updated on the latest polls, across a range of political issues. |
Where does President Biden's approval rating stand? How does the public feel about the major legislation being debated in Washington? How willing are people to be vaccinated? Pollsters are still constantly asking these questions, and you can see what they're finding out here. |
Of course, there's a big elephant in this room. In both 2016 and 2020, pre-election surveys underestimated the public's support for Donald Trump, nearly across the board. After the election this past November, a dispirited chattering class was left asking: Should we even listen to the polls at all? |
The short answer, polling experts say, is yes. With a caveat. |
Pollsters now agree that a small but meaningful chunk of Trump voters simply weren't being represented in surveys, although no one has come up with a comprehensive explanation for how that happened. One popular theory suggests that Trump supporters, who tend to be more distrustful of social institutions, may simply be less willing to talk to pollsters. (We'll probably know more in the next couple of months, after some major postelection analyses are released.) |
And this invites another question: How much will the problems in pre-election polls continue to plague surveys going forward? Even in polls that aren't directly about Trump, or an upcoming election, could the views of his supporters still go underrepresented? |
Josh Clinton, a pollster and political scientist at Vanderbilt University, wrote a defense of polling shortly after the November election, urging readers not to throw out the polling baby with the 2020 bath water. The performance of those polls "does not necessarily impugn the accuracy of all public opinion polling," he said. "Pre-election polling is different from, and more difficult than, public opinion polling that seeks to gauge the opinions of citizens." |
To investigate those concerns, the Pew Research Center did a thorough analysis over the past few months, culminating in a report released yesterday. By adjusting the results from their pre-election polls throughout 2020 to account for Trump's actual showing in November, Pew's researchers found that whatever caused his support to go underrepresented didn't have as much of an effect on responses to other questions. |
"We discovered that the impact on the issue questions was very minimal," Scott Keeter, who helped create the report, said in an interview, referring to questions about social and political issues. For questions more directly tied to partisan affiliation, like the president's approval rating, "those numbers moved more," Keeter said. "But they still didn't move as much as the vote moved, in our simulations. So we took this as generally good news." |
Ultimately, the Pew report found that adjusting poll results to properly account for Trump's support altered the results on issues-based questions by anywhere from 0.5 to 3 percentage points. That's not nothing — but it's also not enough to render these results moot, Keeter said. |
"Given how evenly divided the public is, in election polls an error of two or three percentage points makes a real difference," he said. "But we don't hold issues polling to that kind of standard because we understand that questions on issues are inherently more subjective." |
Those kinds of questions, he explained, are already messier than questions asking which candidate a respondent will support. "They tend to be tied to how questions are worded, and what people happen to be thinking about on a particular topic at any given point," Keeter said. So while it can be useful to know that a solid majority of the public supports, say, a $15 minimum wage, it isn't as worthwhile to focus on the exact numerical figure, down to the percentage point. |
With that in mind, there's no doubt that polls continue to provide a useful tool for understanding — as George Gallup's syndicated newspaper column was once called — "What America Thinks." |
We can reliably say that Biden's approval rating is more positive than negative. We know the public broadly supports the $1.9 trillion relief bill he has proposed — while certain elements within it are even more popular than the package writ large. And polls clearly reflect the fact that most Republicans would like Trump to continue playing a role in their party going forward. |
We'll be updating our polling blog whenever big new polling data comes out, so if you're curious about this kind of stuff, consider bookmarking the page — or just check back every few days to get caught up. We'll also include some updates in this newsletter. |
As always, thanks for reading. I'll be doing my best not to let us get lost in the numbers. |
Cuomo apologizes, but says he's not resigning. |
By Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferré-Sadurní |
ALBANY, N.Y. — In his first public remarks since a sexual harassment scandal enveloped his administration, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today that he was embarrassed by his actions and apologized, but he added that he would not resign from office. |
Appearing at the State Capitol, the governor sought to quell the outrage over his actions regarding three young women — including accusations of sexual harassment from two state workers, and another of unwanted touching and kissing at a wedding — as a growing chorus of his fellow Democrats called for him to step aside. |
Cuomo, his voice appearing to crack at times, said that he wanted New Yorkers to "hear from me directly on this." |
"I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable," he said. "It was unintentional and I truly and deeply apologize for it. I feel awful about it and frankly embarrassed by it and that's not easy to say but that's the truth." |
He stressed that he "never touched anyone inappropriately." |
"I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable," he said. "And I certainly never meant to offend anyone or hurt anyone or cause anyone any pain. That is the last thing I would ever want to do." |
In his remarks and in response to a series of questions, Cuomo expressed contrition — a rarity in a politician known for his sometimes bruising and abrasive personality — saying he had "learned from what has been an incredibly difficult situation for me as well as other people." |
"I will be the better for this experience," he said. |
Few, if any, top officials have vociferously defended Cuomo, with most Democrats repeatedly calling for an independent investigation into the claims, now to be overseen by the state attorney general, Letitia James. |
The news conference on Wednesday was the governor's first briefing in nine days, the longest he had gone without taking questions from reporters since the coronavirus pandemic began. |
The governor, a third-term Democrat, had previously sought to explain that some of his past remarks and questions to staff had been misconstrued, and "may have been insensitive or too personal." |
"I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation," Cuomo said in a statement on Sunday. "To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that." |
That statement fell short for many, including Charlotte Bennett, a 25-year-old former aide of Cuomo's. She told The New York Times that the governor asked her a series of sexually charged questions during a private meeting last June, including whether she was monogamous and had slept with older men. Shaken and upset, Bennett reported the incident to Cuomo's chief of staff, and was promptly transferred to another part of the state government. |
On Monday, she characterized the governor's initial apology — and an aborted attempt to install an associate of a top aide to conduct an investigation — as a craven attempt to avoid responsibility. |
"These are not the actions of someone who simply feels misunderstood," Bennett wrote. "They are the actions of an individual who wields his power to avoid justice." |
'The Argument': Will populism destroy the Republican Party? |
In the latest episode of "The Argument," Jane Coaston was joined by Ross Douthat, the Times Opinion columnist, and Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer from National Review, to debate the future of the Republican Party and the role populism should play in its direction. You can listen here. |
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| Is there anything you think we're missing? Anything you want to see more of? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
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