2021/04/28 by Alexander Bauer, Bauer, Alexander, André Klima +9 · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Applications (stat.AP) #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Media Studies and Communication #Social Media and Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2105.07811
openalex publication_date 2021/04/28 · openalex created_date 2022/09/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Election poll reporting often focuses on mean values and only subordinately\ndiscusses the underlying uncertainty. Subsequent interpretations are too often\nphrased as certain. Moreover, media coverage rarely adequately takes into\naccount the differences between now- and forecasts. These challenges were\nubiquitous in the context of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, but\nare also present in multi-party systems like Germany. We discuss potential\nsources of bias in nowcasting and forecasting and review the current standards\nin the visual presentation of survey-based nowcasts. Concepts are presented to\nattenuate the issue of falsely perceived accuracy. We discuss multiple visual\npresentation techniques for central aspects in poll reporting. One key idea is\nthe use of Probabilities of Events instead of party shares. The presented ideas\noffer modern and improved ways to communicate (changes in) the electoral mood\nfor the general media.\n