Blogs

Last night, we conducted an exclusive snap poll for Politico on the US vice-presidential debate between the Democratic nominee Tim Walz and Republican nominee JD Vance.

Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the US presidential race in July saw an effective reset of the election, leading to renewed hopes for the Democrats’ chances of retaining the White House. The Economist’s presidential model prior to Biden dropping out gave the sitting president a 1-in-4 chance of winning the election; Harris now sits at 55%. All polling evidence we have indicates Kamala Harris is a stronger electoral asset than Biden, but their supporters differ in important ways.

Kamala Harris has received a polling boost in some crucial Sun Belt swing states in the first wave of Focaldata polls released since the presidential debate earlier this month.

In both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, pollsters underestimated Donald Trump's performance. Compared to 538's election day polling averages, the Democratic candidate's national lead over Trump was 3.9 points lower than the polls predicted in 2020 and 1.8 points lower in 2016.

The current models of commissioning and running online surveys — either directly using panels or working through traditional market research agencies — are fundamentally flawed. Both models are painful, slow, and manual, and they are holding research and insights teams at comms firms back. These teams are not able to deliver insights at the pace and quality that their clients need.

Following the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, we used our qualitative research tool, Focaldata AI, to gather debate viewers’ opinions on the event.

The first public US presidential election MRP poll from Focaldata finds that Donald Trump is narrowly on course for a second term in the White House, defeating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Imagine you’re launching a time-critical political campaign and want to gather some information to write your survey. There’s no time for focus groups: the vote is only a few weeks away and your qual recruiters can’t convene the key swing groups you really need. What do you do?