Tatishe Nteta, Associate Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, appeared on the program “Basic Black,” following the 2020 presidential election, to discuss the role of opinion polling. Reflecting upon the ways in which he believes that many people use polls incorrectly, Nteta says, “Polls are not soothsayers. This is not Ides of March. This is not Julius Caesar. They tell a picture when the polling occurs. The media has used this in a predictive fashion but pollsters never, myself included, intend for these to be predictive.” (WGBH-TV Boston, 11/6/20) Watch video here.

Three years ago, when tensions were high with Iran, political scientists from Dartmouth and Stanford released a study claiming that Americans would have little respect for the norm of civilian immunity in a war with Iran. New research by Charli Carpenter, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst  and Alexander Montgomery, Associate Professor of Political Science at Reed College, shows this finding was highly misleading with over 80% of Americans saying civilians should never be the object of attack in war.

Jesse Rhodes, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and Associate Director of the UMass Poll, was quoted in a Boston Globe article about the inaccuracy of pre-election polling. Rhodes said, “Polling within states for presidential races is notoriously difficult. Given the difficulties of predicting outcomes at the state level, it is essential to take any given poll within a battleground state (particularly one that appears to give a candidate a huge advantage) with a very large grain of salt.”

Ray La Raja, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst and Associate Director of the UMass Poll, comments in an article about reasons behind increased support for President Trump by Latino voters in this year’s election.  La Raja says Latinos still support the Democratic ticket, but they don’t necessarily agree with the Democratic Party on every issue. “When you have elements of the Democratic Party calling for defunding the police, that is the last thing people in some of these communities want to hear,” he says.