The research group in Elections and Public Opinion is attached to the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Valencia (Spain) and 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 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, and the integration and pooling of local and global information to obtain multilevel responses.

The approach used in the research group in Elections and Public Opinion 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.

More information: http://www.epo-uv.es/