Research Group on Public Opinion and Elections

Description

The research group in Public Opinión and Elections aims at analyzing, studying and finding solutions to all issues and questions related to electoral processes and/or the measurement and monitoring of public opinion, applying the most advanced quantitative techniques.

The most relevant research fields of the group include (but are not limited to) the following: the generation of electoral predictions, inference of individual voting behavior, analysis of polls and surveys, the search of new methodological approaches to improve (reducing costs) the quality of sampling methods, semantic analysis of opinions and monitoring of the internet sentiment, the study of the consequences of non-response and of the biases introduced during the whole inference process, the solution to the gaps in the databases, the integration and pooling of local and global information to obtain multilevel responses, and the development of statistcal theory and methodology.

The approach used in the research group in Public Opinión and Elections is open, not being limited by any particular methodological tendency, and makes extensive use of whatever sources of information. Thus, we use classical and Bayesian techniques, we apply from simple linear regression models to complex approaches based on neural networks, wavelets or auto-binomial models, we use the spatial and/or temporal component of the data explicitly, we perform simulation via Markov chain Monte Carlo or directly by Monte Carlo methods, and we introduce in our models survey data, reported election results, news reports, internet messages and/or official statistics.

The members of the group are open to working with other research groups, companies and institutions and encourage interested parties to contact us in order to explore possible avenues of collaboration.

Goals CT

To provide answers to queries relevant for public opinion and society and to develop new methodological issues to better exploit available data.

Research lines

Surveys and polls
Analysis and preparation of opinion surveys and polls.
Ecological Inference
Discovery of individual behaviours from aggregated information.
Electoral prediction
Application and development of models for electoral prediction.
Multiple imputation
Methodological and software developments to find solutions to the problem of partial non-response in surveys and gaps in databases.
Social networks
Methodological developments and applications for active listening on the Internet, favouring the identification of feelings and authors to convert the huge flows of data and opinions into information.
Bias and Non-Response
Methodological developments and applications for the measurement of non-response in surveys and for the correction of their effects, especially the biases that can be introduced in the inferential process.