The Topline: A Year in Review
Polling is an act of political resistance. It agglomerates the messy and inconvenient opinions of everyday people, kneads them into a whole, and forces them through the door into the air-conditioned echo chambers of political elites. This is not newly true, it’s just newly apparent.” That’s from a CommonWealth Magazine piece I wrote early this year, arguing why polling is more important now than ever. A few readers called it a polling manifesto. I’ll take it.
The Topline: Massachusetts voters fear their own Harvey.
Houston hadn’t even begun to wring itself out from Hurricane Harvey when Irma, now the most powerful storm on record in the Atlantic, began churning towards the Caribbean. Before Irma finished laying waste to the islands, Hurricane Jose lined up behind on a similar track. While it is not expected to follow Irma to Florida, it appears likely to hit some of the same islands. It's also now a Category 4 storm. Meanwhile, Category 2 Hurricane Katia churns in the gulf right off the coast of Mexico.
The Topline: Diving into the Boston Olympics Polling
Plus: Super Bowl data wrap-up; Obama approval uptick; early 2016 primary polling; vaccines, income inequality, education; and what does margin of error really mean, anyhow?
