Replication Data for: Just a Difficult Election to Poll? How Context Affects Polling Accuracy (OA edition)

Although polling accuracy increases throughout the election, polls are always at least a little wrong on election day. In this article, we attempt to understand how characteristics of particular elections may make them harder (or easier) to predict. In particular, we focus on estimating the impact of voter turnout, electoral change, and vote buying on polling error. We find support for two of the three hypotheses. There is little evidence that voter turnout affects polling error. However, polling errors tend to be higher where there have been large changes in parties’ vote share from the previous election. We also find that higher prevalence of vote buying may be associated with larger polling errors.尽管选前民调的准确率（polling accuracy）会随选举进程逐步提升，但在选举当日，民调结果总会存在至少小幅偏差。本研究旨在探讨特定选举的各项特征如何影响其预测难度。具体而言，本研究聚焦于评估选民投票率（voter turnout）、选举变动（electoral change）以及买票行为（vote buying）对民调误差（polling error）的影响。本研究验证了三项假说中的两项：几乎没有证据表明选民投票率会对民调误差产生影响；但在相较于上一届选举出现政党得票率大幅变动的选举中，民调误差往往更高；此外，买票行为的高发生率可能与更大的民调误差相关联。