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This report examines accuracy and bias in national and subnational preelection polls conducted during the 2008 presidential election cycle. The analyses indicate that, despite concerns about poll methodology voiced during the election cycle, polls across the board generally performed quite well in 2008. That said, concerns about poll methodologies should not be wholly and readily dismissed. While the evidence suggests that improvements in accuracy and declining bias in preelection polls as a whole, compared to previous election cycles, sources of inaccuracy and bias can also be detected using 2008 polls.

This article reports the results of a randomized field experiment designed to compare directly the mobilization impact of partisan versus nonpartisan messages delivered via commercial phone banks. The experiment, conducted during the November 2005 municipal elections in Albany, New York, incorporates a series of design innovations to improve on extant research and to assuage skepticism about the internal and external validity of previous studies conducted along these lines. The author finds that partisan messages delivered by professional call centers are no more effective than nonpartisan messages in mobilizing voters. Adapted from the source document.

Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in the use of field experimental methods to examine the impact of a range of get-out-the-vote tactics (Green and Gerber, 2008), continuing a tradition that dates as far back as Gosnell (1927). Scholars have investigated the impact of face-to-face canvassing, direct mail, phone calls, leafleting, and mass media (Green and Gerber, 2008), yet no field experiment of which we are aware has tested the impact of a street sign campaign on voter mobilization. This study reports the first randomized field experiment gauging the effects of a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote street sign campaign. The experiment we describe is essentially a matched-pair, cluster-randomized design conducted in the context of the November 2005 municipal elections in New York City. We identified 14 pairs of poll sites (voting locations) that were closely matched in terms of past voter turnout. One poll site in each pair was randomly assigned to be exposed to the treatment that encouraged voters to vote on the day before Election Day. The street sign intervention is found to produce higher turnout. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

This article reports the results of a randomized field experiment designed to compare directly the mobilization impact of partisan versus nonpartisan messages delivered via commercial phone banks. The experiment, conducted during the November 2005 municipal elections in Albany, New York, incorporates a series of design innovations to improve on extant research and to assuage skepticism about the internal and external validity of previous studies conducted along these lines. The author finds that partisan messages delivered by professional call centers are no more effective than nonpartisan messages in mobilizing voters.

Few aspects of the presidential selection process have changed as dramatically as nominating conventions have over the past half century or so. Once the epicenters of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms that all but decided presidential nominations, some argue that conventions are now mainly superficial, perfunctory and even superfluous affairs. These developments, influenced in large part by the ways in which political parties have adapted to institutional changes and growth in mass media, have essentially transformed the nature and role of conventions in modern campaigns. But conventions remain key political events that motivate and inform voters and that have the capacity to influence the dynamics of presidential campaigns. Conventions still matter and persist as useful political institutions.