Georgetown, University of Michigan Partner With CNN to Analyze 2024 Election

A new national poll designed in partnership with the McCourt School of Public Policy's Massive Data Institute(MDI)revealed that more Americans have been exposed to news about the major presidential candidates in the 2024 election than at the same point of the election cycle in 2020.

Lisa Singh is the director of the Massive Data Institute at the McCourt School of Public Policy.

The poll is part of the Breakthrough project, a collaboration between CNN, Georgetown, the University of Michigan, SSRS and Verasight, that tracks the opinions of Americans on major presidential candidates. Every week, SSRS and Verasight poll approximately 1,000 Americans on what they have seen, read or heard about the candidates to understand what Americans are remembering about the presidential candidates.

This project is part of the Social Media and Social Science Collaborative(s3mc) research project that investigates different ways to capture public opinion, including through the use of social media. The Georgetown team is led by Sonneborn Chair and MDI Director Lisa Singh, and includes an MDI postdoctoral fellow and two computer science doctoral students. The Georgetown and University of Michigan teams analyze the open-ended responsesusing sentiment analysis, topic modeling and word frequency.

"We are excited to have the opportunity to work with CNN, colleagues at the University of Michigan, SSRS and Verasight to find innovative ways to understand public opinion about the presidential election," said Singh, who is also a professor in public policy at the McCourt School and chair of the Department of Computer Science at the College of Arts & Sciences. "Ultimately, we hope to be able to help the public better understand when and why shifts in opinion occur."

The poll, which started accepting responses in June prior to President Joe Biden's debate with former President Donald Trump, will continue to gauge American opinions on the major candidates through the Sunday after election day.