Langer Research Associates formally launched our PARC knowledge management tool for survey research professionals at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in New Orleans this past week, as well as presented three papers, all focused on aspects of polling in the 2016 presidential election.

PARC is a secure, cloud-based system that enables researchers to instantly and accurately search their past projects, including individual survey questions. It’s invaluable for internal organization and efficiency, client support and retention and stakeholder or public-facing uses. We received great interest and feedback at our exhibit hall booth. (Our ad in the conference program looked pretty swell, too!)

Among our papers was “Predicting 2016 State Presidential Election Results with a National Tracking Poll and MRP,” in which we described our use of the national ABC News and ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll in 2016 to produce state-level vote estimates via multilevel regression with poststratification. Our model correctly predicts the winner in 50 of 51 states and the District of Columbia, outperforming publicly released pre-election prognostications. Our findings indicate the effectiveness of using a large, high-quality, probability-based national dataset to make state-level election predictions. See the full paper here and our presentation slides here.

We also offered our summary of “How and Why it’s President Trump,” slides here; and our postmortem analysis of the tracking poll we produced for ABC News, in which our final estimate came within 2 points of the actual popular vote margin, matching the average accuracy of ABC News pre-election polls since 1984 (slides here).

Covering the first 100 days of the Trump administration, our latest ABC/Post poll revealed Americans’ views on the president and his policies, Russian entanglement in the 2016 election and the “deep state”. It’s been covered by CNN, Politico, Newsweek, Fox News, Vox, The Hill, GQ, Salon, New York magazine, The Daily Beast, Breitbart, the New York Post, Vice, Mic, the New York Daily News, The Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Examiner, among others.

Our most recent ABC/Post poll probes Americans’ views on Syria following President Trump’s airstrikes on the country. It’s been picked up by The Huffington Post, The Hill, Politico and the International Business Times, among others.

We’re now accepting applications for the positions of Research Analyst (or Senior Research Analyst) and Research Associate at Langer Research Associates. Please visit our Open Positions page for more information on these opportunities.

A national survey by Langer Research Associates and SSRS finds that nearly half of all small business owners think Donald Trump’s election will be good for their businesses, especially those who are struggling. Positive sentiment peaks at more than 8 in 10 of those who supported Trump in the election – nearly half of those surveyed.

These and other results are from a new, nationally representative poll of 503 owners of businesses with fewer than 100 employees. The research was conducted via the SSRS Small Business Omnibus, a quarterly survey of small businessowners, with analysis and reporting by Langer Research Associates.

In addition to expectations about the general business climate and Trump’s impact on it, the survey measures businessowners’ assessments of current conditions and specific expectations about their own businesses in 2017, including volume, profitability, customer base and hiring. Several of these questions have been aggregated into the Small Business Survey Index, planned as an ongoing assessment of small business owners’ views.

Read more in our report.

Problematic polling projections in the 2016 election have generated substantial interest in alternative methodologies for increasing accuracy of election forecasting. Langer Research Associates is offering half-day private workshops on a promising strategy, multilevel regression with poststratification, or MRP.

MRP has grown in popularity in recent years among researchers seeking to improve survey weighting techniques, particularly in making state-level election forecasts. By combining pre-election polls with Census data and other variables, MRP provides a powerful approach for improving opinion estimates by pooling information across groups. The technique offers a robust alternative to traditional weighting techniques, whose weaknesses may have contributed to polling errors in the 2016 elections.

Our workshops will be based on internal research that employed MRP to predict state-level election results using national tracking poll data. This approach proved highly accurate for the 2016 election, exactly predicting the estimated 2-point national popular vote margin and correctly forecasting the outcome in 49 of 50 states, all but Michigan. This approach has been tested in the last five presidential elections, correctly predicting the outcome in 46 states in 2000, 47 in 2004 and 48 in 2008 and 2012 alike.

These tutorials will be geared toward applied survey researchers and campaign professionals interested in employing this technique in their future work. Familiarity with R is recommended though not required. Presentations can be customized to clients’ needs. See a more detailed summary and please contact us for details at info@langerresearch.com

With less than a month to go, our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds the big split among whites is on college education, not gender, in both views of Donald Trump’s recently leaked tape and in horserace vote choice. Media coverage came from outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Politico, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, Breitbart, The Hill, New York Magazine, Slate, The Christian Science Monitor, Mic, The Japan Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Financial Times, The Times of Israel, the Kuwait News Agency, the Daily Mail, The Hindu, and Israel Hayom.

Our second ABC/Washington Post poll of September was released this week, covering the state of the race ahead of the first presidential debate as well as a look at the deep divides in views on race and gender among Americans. It’s gotten considerable pickup, including coverage from CNN, Politico, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, Fox News Latino, The Boston Globe, Vox, The Atlantic, National Review, The Hill, the Financial Times, The Washington Times, the New York Daily News, Breitbart, Rolling Stone, Mic, Mediaite, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Daily Iowan, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Economic Times, the International Business Times, The Times of Israel, The Irish Times, The Hindu and Israel Hayom.

We released two analyses of the 2016 race from our latest ABC News-Washington Post poll this week, one covering the presidential election and the other a deep dive on individuals’ views on the state of the country and how they impact vote choices. The poll’s received coverage from a variety of outlets, including CNN, CBS News, Time, NBC News, Politico, The Week, The Washington Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Providence Journal, The Straits Times and The Economic Times.

With just two months left to go until Election Day, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable ratings reached a new high in our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, while Donald Trump remained as unpopular as ever. The poll’s been picked up by Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Fox News, Politico, Breitbart, The Washington Times, USA Today, New York Magazine, The Hill, Vanity Fair, Business Insider, the New York Daily News, New York Observer, MarketWatch and the Daily Mail, among others, in addition to coverage from ABC and the Post.