00:19So, you've probably noticed your news feed is full of polls and surveys.
00:23Facebook, Twitter, CNN, even my mother calls me about polls occasionally.
00:27I'm Harry Enten.
00:28And I'm Claire Malone.
00:29Harry and I follow polls for a living and political data in general.
00:33And welcome to the Millennial's Guide to Polling.
00:37Today we're going to help you understand how to take a closer look at the polls that bombard you every
00:41day.
00:42Because as you may already suspect, not all polls are created or presented equally.
00:46I had suspected that.
00:48Yeah, you should have that suspicion.
00:50Polls are a great way to look at public opinion during an election cycle.
00:53But think about it.
00:54If you want to know who's going to win an election,
00:56you really should figure out who's trying to vote.
01:00In reality, we'd like to know exactly who's going to vote, who the definite voters are.
01:05But that's not always easy to figure out.
01:07So, we go with likely voters.
01:09So, a good electoral poll will survey a random sample of likely voters.
01:13Makes sense.
01:14Mm-hmm.
01:14But here's where we should remind everyone that all polls are conducted for a reason.
01:19Some are polls that are conducted by, let's say, newspapers, and they're really just trying to get a handle on
01:23what public opinion is.
01:24Sure.
01:25But then there are also private polls that are conducted by campaigns, right?
01:29So, they're trying to get a grasp of public opinion, but they're also trying to figure out what motivates people.
01:34Suburban soccer moms might be differently motivated than, say, a millennial in the big city, such as yourself, Harry.
01:40Uh, let's not give away our age too quickly, Claire.
01:43I'm still trying to get into college.
01:46So, it's very important that you consider the motive for the poll, right?
01:49Let's just give you a small little example.
01:52What if I told you that 9 of 10 adults age 18 to 40 think hats are sexy?
01:59I would be suspicious of that poll.
02:00I would think that you would be suspicious of that poll.
02:02I'd probably be a little suspicious too, but I'm willing to try anything.
02:05But what if I told you that survey was commissioned by the hat manufacturers of America?
02:10How would you feel then?
02:11I'd be even more suspicious.
02:12You would probably have a pretty good reason to be suspicious, though I have been known to wear a hat
02:16and some people find them sexy.
02:18But enough about hats. Let's get back to electoral polling.
02:22Polls can really help us understand the atmosphere of an election, and that means what's motivating a people at a
02:26particular time,
02:27how they feel about the state of the country, things like that.
02:30So, how do polls do that?
02:31Well, a good electoral poll will survey a random sample of likely voters.
02:35And you want to survey more than a few people, most likely, but you don't have to survey a million
02:39people.
02:40So, not just my mom, but you don't have to survey a million moms.
02:43Right, exactly.
02:44But you do need to make sure that you're not just getting white people in Iowa and Latino voters in
02:49LA.
02:49You're trying to get, you know, a sample of everyone in the country who might be coming out to vote,
02:53right?
02:53It's like this.
02:54Imagine a pot of minestrone soup.
02:56It's sitting on the kitchen table at home, and you want to know what's in the soup.
03:00Thank you for closing your eyes.
03:01You take a spoon and you take a little taste off the top.
03:03Would you be getting a representative sample of what that soup is like?
03:06It may be a delicious sample, but no, I wouldn't think it'd be representative.
03:09It's probably just broth.
03:11You could eat spoon after spoon off the top of the soup, and you wouldn't have any clue what's going
03:14on in the bottom of the pot,
03:15because it's minestrone and all the good stuff sinks to the bottom.
03:18But let's say that you stir the soup and then dunk a ladle in and scoop it out.
03:24Now, do you have a good assessment of what's in the pot of soup?
03:26Yes, and I'm hungry.
03:27Exactly.
03:28So you're getting a more representative sample of what's in the minestrone, and that's what a good poll is.
03:33It's a random group of people.
03:35And again, it doesn't have to be a million people, but it just has to be a well-mixed soup.
03:41The other thing that's important to remember with polls is the order of questions.
03:45Let's say that you're putting out a survey of bus riders, and you're sort of trying to figure out if
03:50they're happy with the system.
03:52But in the question before, are you happy with your bus riding experience, you ask them, would you be down
03:59for a new electric bus system?
04:02Now all our poll takers are thinking about the shiny new electric buses as they assess their overall satisfaction.
04:08And they might have a biased answer to the question.
04:11So you're almost, you're leading the person in a certain path, and that's a no-no in polls.
04:16Right. One of the things that's also very important is how those polls are presented to the public, right?
04:21It's very important that you understand what's going on and that the people who are presenting those polls do so
04:26in an unbiased manner.
04:27Right. And polls are reported by partisan news outlets.
04:31Sure.
04:31They're also reported, again, by mainstream news organizations, The Washington Post, The New York Times.
04:36And then, you know, it's the new millennia. People like Facebook and Twitter are getting it on the game.
04:40Right.
04:41And, you know, what's just so wonderful about polls is that we can aggregate all of those individual viewpoints into
04:49something more meaningful.
04:51A more collective viewpoint, you might say.
05:00And surprise, surprise, the election is actually a poll itself.
05:04That's right. It is a poll. It's the ultimate poll, you might say.
05:07It's the perfect poll.
05:14That's it for this week's installment. We hope that you've enjoyed this podcast.
05:19I'm signing off as Claire Malone.
05:22And I'm Harry Enten.
05:23So g Glauble.
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