Pollcat, AKA Scott Keeter

Why and how we’re weighting surveys for past presidential vote This piece explains why, when and how we are weighting our surveys on Americans’ past vote.

Today's release of the 2025 NPORS survey and data wasn't the only thing we were up to. Here's a piece on why we decided to add past vote to our survey weighting and how it's done www.pewresearch.org/decoded/2025...

Party Affiliation Fact Sheet (NPORS) Explore trends in partisan identification among U.S. adults using data from Pew Research Center’s National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS).

And here are party affiliation trends from six years of NPORS data www.pewresearch.org/politics/fac...

National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) NPORS is an annual survey of U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center used to to produce benchmark estimates for several topics.

Calling all data nerds! Pew Research Center has just released its 2025 edition of the National Public Opinion Reference Survey, with estimates of U.S. party affiliation, religious affiliation and frequency of internet use. Fact sheet and links to the dataset: www.pewresearch.org/methods/fact...

Americans’ Trust in One Another Americans trust each other less than they did a few decades ago. We explore why this is, and why some are more trusting than others.

We took a broad look at social trust in America today. With a survey of almost 37,000 people we were able to look at levels of trust across the states and even in metro areas. Check out our new report here www.pewresearch.org/SocialTrust

Americans Give Early Trump Foreign Policy Actions Mixed or Negative Reviews More disapprove than approve of leaving the WHO and ending USAID. About half see tariffs on China as bad for the U.S. and them personally, but views differ by party.

NEW from @pewresearch.org today: Americans Give Early Trump Foreign Policy Actions Mixed or Negative Reviews

www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/...

Below, a thread of some key findings

Here's a great starter pack filled with some of my wonderful colleagues at @pewresearch.org Give 'em a follow!

How a glitch in an online survey replaced the word ‘yes’ with ‘forks’ Dating back to at least early 2023, a bizarre and alarming technical glitch started popping up in some organizations’ online surveys and forms.

You probably don't often turn to the survey methodology world for a good detective story, but here is one from my colleague Anna Brown pewrsr.ch/4isAu2s

Thanks Elliott. These both appear to be bespoke mail push to web (and phone option, for Franklin and Marshall). Although Dartmouth reinterviewed people from an early Oct survey, neither is a typical prob panel. Plus, F&M's LV estimate was Trump +1 (election result Trump+2), their RV was Harris +4.

I'm puzzled by that last line. I assumed that "online prob panel" (bias = 2.8 D) is the line for most of the probability panels used in this cycle. I'm also unaware of errors from any probability panels that were as large as 13 points. @gelliottmorris.bsky.social help us out here!

Area chart showing that the number of public pollsters in the United States has increased greatly in recent decades and that survey methods have become more diverse during that span.

Our new explainer looks at the key things Americans should know about election polling this year: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/... One key point: While polling methods have diversified greatly in recent years, not all methods are equally sound. Caveat emptor.

Key things to know about election polling in the United States The real environment in which polls are conducted bears little resemblance to the idealized settings presented in textbooks.

We put together a little grab-bag of things to know about election polling in the US, for example that polling methods are quite different today than in 2016, that the margin of sampling error captures just one of several kinds of error, and much more pewrsr.ch/3iay5d5

The party ID is from NPORS and can be filtered on registration in the survey, while the registration parameter itself comes from the CPS

National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) NPORS is an annual survey of U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center used to to produce benchmark estimates for several topics.

Now available from Pew Research Center: the annual National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS), which interviewed 5,626 U.S. adults identified via address-based sampling with a 32% response rate. View key estimates and download the data: pewrsr.ch/3ukleLR

it's not a slam dunk decision, but we think it's better to use a presidential year estimate than a more recent off-year estimate

Quiz: Test your polling knowledge Test your knowledge of public opinion polling by taking our 10-question quiz.

And of course there is a quiz www.pewresearch.org/methods/quiz...

Public Opinion Polling Basics How do polls work? What are the different kinds of polls? And what should you look for in a high-quality opinion poll? A Pew Research Center survey methodologist answers these questions and more in si...

This week we released a new version of our short course “Public Opinion Polling Basics.” In six short lessons, I discuss why we have polls, how polls work, the challenges facing polls, what to look for in a poll, and more. A new lesson focuses on election polling. www.pewresearch.org/course/publi...

What the data says about abortion in the U.S. The U.S. abortion rate has generally declined since the 1980s, but there have been slight upticks in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

"The majority of abortions in the U.S. now involve pills, according to both the CDC and Guttmacher. The CDC says 56% of U.S. abortions in 2021 involved pills, up from 53% in 2020 and 44% in 2019."

There is a "Worm Moon" coming on March 25, so I suppose there is also a....

Relatively few Americans (22%) say they are closely following news about the Israel-Hamas war, and only about half can correctly report that more Palestinians than Israelis have died since the war’s start. On many attitude questions about the war, sizable numbers express no opinion

Majority in U.S. Say Israel Has Valid Reasons for Fighting; Fewer Say the Same About Hamas 57% of Americans express some sympathy with both Israelis and Palestinians, including 26% who say their sympathies lie equally with both groups.

We just released a new report exploring views of Americans about the Israel-Hamas war, including views among Jewish and Muslim Americans. Despite sharp disagreement on many questions, a majority of the public (57%) expresses sympathy for both the Palestinian and Israeli people pewrsr.ch/4co9bUo

Online opt-in polls can produce misleading results, especially for young people and Hispanic adults We examine how an opt-in poll may have unintentionally misled the public about the sensitive issue of Holocaust denial among young Americans.

We just released a new analysis about the potential for opt-in surveys -- those where people volunteer to take surveys -- to provide misleading results, especially for young adults and Hispanics pewrsr.ch/49BMhqF

We look at measures of religious affiliation, family income, political party affiliation, gender identity and sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, and age and generation. Many of these measures have evolved over time in response to growing diversity and changing attitudes among the U.S. public.

Who Are You? The Art and Science of Measuring Identity As a shop that studies human behavior through surveys and other social scientific techniques, we have a good line of sight into the contradictory nature of human preferences. Here's a look at how we c...

To help describe the richness of public opinion, pollsters sort people into groups based on their religion, race, gender, partisanship and more. We've written a new data essay that takes a look at the stories behind those measures www.pewresearch.org/methods/2024...

Tuning Out: Americans on the Edge of Politics Untethered from partisan politics and uninterested in keeping up with political news, here is how some Americans view the current state of U.S. politics.

Last year, my colleagues talked to a group of people who, while they may vote, are not strongly attached to either political party. By and large, they look at the nation’s politics as a topic better avoided than embraced. Here’s what some of them had to say:
www.pewresearch.org/politics/?p=...

Featured image for Pew Research Center's annual list of striking findings from the past year

NEW from the Pew Research Center: Striking findings from 2023

These findings and charts from the past year include a record-high share of unmarried Americans, record-low views of the Supreme Court, rising public concern about artificial intelligence, and more.

Read the full list: pewrsr.ch/47PSOx4

Do You Tip More or Less Often Than the Average American? Compare your tipping habits with those of the overall public by visiting Tipping Point, the small town with a big-city feel.

Looking for some non-political content to give your nerves a break? Visit the little village of Tipping Point USA to compare your tipping habits with those of a representative sample of U.S. adults www.pewresearch.org/2023/11/28/d...

Pew Research Center has just released estimates and data from its annual National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS), which interviewed 5,733 U.S. adults identified via address-based sampling. The study had a 31% response rate. View the estimates and download the raw data: pewrsr.ch/3LKNIJC