Poll Party E7 – Election Polls Aren’t Broken

Are you ready for a new episode of Poll Party?  We have a jammed-packed episode this week!  The episode starts off a Democratic primary update, specifically the latest Monmouth poll that has Mayor Pete leading the pack in Iowa with 22%. 

Adam and Rory then switch gears and discuss a recent article from Knowable Magazine that talks about how election polls aren’t broken, but shouldn’t be the end-all in predicting an election.  The article discusses how close races, swing voters, skewed sample, and other factors come into play.  It also discusses the move to a hybrid poling approach, the same approach that we have discussed in previous episodes, and was a main topic at this year’s AAPOR conference.

We then get into a topic that is close to our resident Kentuckian, Adam, the Kentucky Governor’s race and how the polls compared to the results.  They discuss the latest poll conducted by Trafalgar a few days prior to the election that had Matt Bevin up 5 points with likely voters, but that the election results were within the margin of error.  They also touch on some of the exiting polling conducted by CKEP that found Bashear had majorities with minorities, women, educated voters, as well as getting 16% of Republican voters.  (Update: Matt Bevin conceded the election after we recorded this.)

In this week’s poll of the week, Rory tees up a recent Gallup poll on American’s trust in media and perceived bias in the news.  They talk about some of the results, including that local news is perceived as less bias, and they speculate on why that might be.

Finally, in the quiz of the week, we delve into the world of Mean Girls and find out which “Plastic” Rory and Adam are.  You can take the quiz here.

You can join the conversation by reaching out to us on Twitter at @PollPartyPod, by email at [email protected], text us, or leave us a voicemail at 312-620-7187.