The research group in Elections and Public Opinion of the University of Valencia (Spain) 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 generation of electoral predictions, the inference of individual voting behavior, the analysis of polls and surveys, the search of new methodological approaches to improve (reducing costs) the quality of sampling methods, the semantic analysis of opinions and the monitoring of the internet sentiment, the study of the consequences of non-response and of the biases introduced during the whole inference process, the imputation of missing values in the databases, and the integration and pooling of local and global information in multilevel models.
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 available.
Thus, we use classical and Bayesian techniques, apply from simple linear regression models to complex approaches based on neural networks, wavelets or auto-binomial models, exploit the spatial and/or temporal component of the data explicitly, perform simulation via Markov chain Monte Carlo or directly by Monte Carlo methods, and introduce in our models survey data, recorded 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.