Polls in the Panagakis Study

The Pangagakis study collected and analyzed polls that were mostly conducted within two weeks of election day. They covered both general and primary elections with Democratic and Republican incumbents and were predominantly from statewide races, with a few U.S. House, mayoral, and countywide contests included. Most dated from the 1986 and 1988 elections, although a few came from the 1970s. The polls included in the study were drawn from CBS, Gallup, Gordon S. Black Corp., Market Opinion Research, Tarrance Associates, and Mason-Dixon Opinion Research, as well as polls that appeared in The Polling Report.

Polls in the Bowers Study

The Bowers study collected and analyzed polls in which at least one day of the polling period occurred within the last week before election day. To determine the allocation of undecided voters, Bowers employed a three-step process. First, he subtracted the final poll result for the incumbent from the actual election result for the incumbent to determine the total number of points the incumbent gained from the final poll until the election. He then added up all 451 of these results to determine the total number of points all incumbents gained from all final polls until the election. In his second step he repeated the process for challengers. In step three he took the total from step one and added it to the total from step two. He then divided this total into both the results from step one and step two to determine the relative gain for the incumbent and the challenger.