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Eleven Three Twenty: How to Read Political Polls Like a Pro
October 5, 2020
Election Day is now only four weeks from tomorrow, which means we are about to be flooded by a tsunami of daily polls. Some of these polls will be high-quality snapshots of where the election stands. Others will be absolutely useless due to the pollster’s bias or poor methodology. Still others may be designed well but still be a statistical outlier — an apparently random result that is not an accurate reflection of the current state of the race. (Even well-designed polls by historically reputable pollsters sometimes generate outlying results for no discernible reasons.)
To help you more accurately understand and assess the polling numbers with which you’ll soon be bombarded, I thought I’d share five questions you should ALWAYS ask yourself when reading poll results.
Question 1: What organization conducted this poll?
Not all pollsters are created equal. Some have a solid track record of designing and implementing high-quality scientific political polls. Others are thinly discussed public relations or marketing companies who administer non-scientific “polls” for their clients (either media outlets or the campaigns themselves).
If you’re unsure about the reputation of a pollster, check out FiveThirtyEight.com’s “Pollster…
