The Santa Rosa Press Democrat published an analysis by longtime SSU Political Science Lecturer and pollster Richard Hertz about the reasons why many widely held predictions about the outcome of the November, 2022 General Election did not materialize.
In his piece, that ran in the newspaper's Close to Home opinion section on January 13, 2023, Hertz describes a combination of factors he feels contributed to the problematic projections. Among them was overreliance on historical data for similar off-year (non-Presidential) elections that usually but not always produce significant pickups in Congressional seats for the party out of power during a President's first term. Hertz pointed out there were just under 60 such elections in the entire history of the U.S. and besides being a small database, much of the data was quite old, limiting its contemporary reliability. He also said the proliferation of polls conducted by firms with partisan connections likely skewed some polling averages and expectations.
Mr. Hertz has taught a variety of American Politics courses at SSU including the American Political System, Seminar: California Politics and Government, State, City and County Government, Interest Groups, Politics and the Media, as well as both undergraduate and graduate level Social Science courses in Research Methods.