Sunshine Hillygus, Neil Newhouse on Predicting Elections

The Republican presidential primary has seen candidates' fortunes swiftly rise and fall, highlighting the perils of predicting elections and the challenges of political communications. In a live "Office Hours" interview Feb. 9, Duke political science professor Sunshine Hillygus takes viewer questions about the science of public opinion polling and the art of campaign communications.

Watch the webcast live Thursday beginning at noon on the Duke University Ustream channel. To pose a question for Hillygus, email live@duke.edu, post to the Duke University Facebook page or Tweet with the hashtag #dukelive.

"Elections and polling are so intertwined that it is hard to imagine one without the other," Hillygus writes in the article, "The Evolution of Election Polling in the United States." "Poll numbers provide fodder for media coverage and election predictions, they shape candidate and voter behavior, and they are the basis of interpreting the meaning of election outcomes."

            Neil Newhouse '74

Hillygus is an expert on public opinion surveys, voter behavior and campaign communications. She is the founder of the Initiative on Survey Methodology at Duke, a program for providing high quality data-collection for original survey research.

Joining the conversation via Skype from Mitt Romney's campaign headquarters in Boston is Duke alumnus Neil Newhouse. A pollster for the Romney campaign, Newhouse is a partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs research firm.

Duke "Office Hours" webcast series allows members of the Duke community and others to engage in live conversations with faculty about their research and scholarship. Visit the Office Hours website to see a schedule of upcoming topics, watch past episodes and sign up for email reminders.