The world of public opinion polling is a noisy one. One week, a pollster might show President Joe Biden up one point, then down two points a week later. Another pollster might show Biden and Donald Trump in a statistical dead heat — a sensible reading, perhaps, given the fierce political divide in the U.S. these past election cycles.
Regardless of what the polls say week to week, questions about the methods and biases of pollsters always crop up: who are they talking to; what states and regions are they sampling; and how are they compiling the data? When it comes to the 2024 presidential election, Nick Beauchamp, associate professor of political science at Northeastern University, wants to cut through the noise. The desire for a simpler readout of polling data led him to create a new poll aggregator, which he’s published online and updates daily.
