October 25, 2024 • 50 mins
On this episode of The Middle we'll be asking you if you trust the polls and, more importantly, if you're freaking out about them (of course you are). We're joined by Jon Ralston, founder and editor of The Nevada Independent, Clarissa Martinez De Castro, Vice President of the Latino Vote Initiative at Unidos U.S. and Berwood Yost, a pollster at Franklin and Marshall College. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #polls #2024 #election #Trump #Harris
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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More information on how you can support the Middle at
Listen tooth Middle dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm
Jeremy Hobson at Nevada Public Radio in Las Vegas. Along
(00:25):
with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver, we have some
new listeners this week on the NPR NOW channel on SiriusXM.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh wow. So we're two weeks out from the election.
Welcome to the Terrordome you guys.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
By the way it went, yeah, exactly and so moving
so quickly, Tolliver, you know, before this, I think we
were on the air in forty six states, but now
with serious XM, it's all fifty. So that's exciting. About
a year into our little independent production here. By the way,
we just did a special from Detroit the other day
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that was live across the
US and Canada. If you miss that, you can hear
it on our podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts on
(00:59):
the iHeart app or wherever you listen to podcasts. So
we're going to talk this hour about something that is
just obsessed over in the lead up to a major
presidential election like this. That would be the polls. And
if you're listening and you're simultaneously refreshing five thirty eight
to the New York Times polling page, you are not alone.
This is a close race. It's going to come down
(01:20):
to what happens in battleground states like Nevada where I
am right now. And of course the polls are a
mixed bag, and we also know that they're not always right,
just ask President Hillary Clinton. So we want to know
if you trust the polls in Tolliver, how can people
reach us?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You can call us at eight four four four Middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five
three or right to us that listen to the Middle
dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And before we get to our panel, I want to
bring in Polster Burwood Yost from Franklin and Marshall College
in Pennsylvania. Burwood, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hey, my President, good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So I've got a little bit of a lightning round
for you, just to get these out of the way.
For sure. So how are polls conducted right now? Is
it still mostly on the phone?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
No, that's actually somebody asked me that question earlier. I
said it would be a lot easier to answer that
thirty years ago than today. Poles now have a variety
of methodologies, and I think that's what consumers really need
to be careful about when they consume a poll, and
if they're going to decide if they should trust it,
they should understand how it was conducted. And so the
(02:22):
first thing you should do is figure out how did
this polster do his or her work, How did they
create a sample, who does that sample represent, how do
they write their questions? What is the order of those questions?
Could I answer those questions if someone asked me those
same things? You know, just some common sensical things before
(02:43):
you get to the technical sides of how that data
is adjusted and reported. But my main point is that
transparency is essential for understanding how poles conducted. You've got
to know what the pollster's doing, and if you don't know,
you shouldn't trust me.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
But if they're not the phone, so then they're done
on the internet. So are you sending out an email
to people and then they have to decide if they
want to respond back to it.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
You could, there's all kinds of ways to do it.
That's not how we do it. Do you want to
hear how we do it?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So what we do is we draw a random sample
of registered voters from the state's voter registration list. There's
like nine million of them, and in that list there's
all kinds of information. So what we draw that sample.
The first thing we do is we print a postcard
and we put it in people's mailbox, and we give
them all kinds of information telling them about us and
how we do our work, how they can respond do.
(03:35):
We give them a password so that they know how
to do it. We give them a website if they
want to do it online. We give them a toll
free number if they want to call us, or they
can wait and we'll call them. And anyone we don't
hear from we text them, we call them, we email them,
We just keep after them till we round out the sample.
That's how we do.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What's what's the most effective form of contacting people? What
has like the highest rate of return?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
You know, the highest rate of return comes from having
more ways to contacts on it. So if we've got
your cell phone, your address, your email, and a landline,
chances are you're going to respond because we're going to
stay after you. So one of the people little hardest
to reach are those that we just have an address for.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
One of the things, Burwood, that I've noticed in some
of the polls that are happening right now, maybe this
is just how it's always done. Is they like to
use what happened in the last election to kind of
wait various groups and say, you know this, many people
voted in twenty twenty, so therefore we're expecting it'll be
just like that. And I wonder in the case of
this election, this is the first election that is post
(04:44):
January sixth, it's the first election that's post the Supreme
Court decision over turning roversus weighed. Is it hard to
use what happened last time to determine what's going to
happen this time in terms of turnout.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, it depends how you do your modeling, Like you
could have assumptions about turnout that you impose, or you
can figure out turnout based on what people tell you
and how they've behaved in the past and so those
are different things. One of the things I like to
remind people is that polls, first, they're not that precise, right.
We don't have enough sample size to predict a toss
(05:19):
up race. So if it's within a point or two,
it's a it's a coin flip. Literally.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So a poll that shows Kamala Harris up to and
a poll that shows Donald Trump up to to you,
they're the same.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
They're the same, yes, because of the margin of error,
which isn't the most important issue in polling, but it
does suggest whenever you represent a group with a sample,
you're going to have variability just from using that sampling process.
But the other thing I want to say is that
polls are about description, right. Our poll that we released
(05:53):
today describes the way voters are thinking and feeling about
things at the moment. They are spending a lot of
time and money to change what voters think and how
they behave and so you know, when you start talking
about predictions, that is a different thing. Sometimes people use
polls to make predictions, but predictions are different than descriptions,
(06:18):
and we should keep that in mind.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Let me just finally ask you, Burwood, what is the
hardest thing about your profession right now.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
As a polster, I think it's building trust and being transparent.
What I'm trying to do when I do my work
is to show all my work in public, and sometimes
that's painful. Like can I give you example. Our latest
poll showed Harris Trump up above Harris fifty to forty
(06:49):
nine among likely voters. We never round our polls because
it employed. We never use decimal points because I think
that implies too much precision. Poll socual number was forty
nine point six Trump forty nine point three Harris. I
struggled over that because my traditional practice is to not
(07:10):
use decimals. That's the kind of thing that you have
to struggle with as a polster. I want to be
completely transparent and I want to have an open communication
about what our pulls shows, and that we should expect
the unexpected. That there's a lot of things that can
happen in an election, and when there's a group of
people who will walk into the voting booth and make
up their mind at that point, that's something no one
(07:34):
can really predict.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
As birdwood yost upholster at Franklin and Marshall College, thanks
for spending the last six point three to six point
seven minutes with.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Us happy to do it, do it anytime.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
All right, let's meet our panel. Joining me here in
Las Vegas the dean of Nevada Politics, John Ralston, Founder
and editor of the Nevada Independent. John, great to have
you in the middle.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Thanks for being in Vegas and having me.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
On jer Yeah, and joining us as well as Clarissa
Martinez Dicastro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at
whunitos US, which recently conducted a poll of Latino voters. Carlissa,
welcome to you as well.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
Thank you for having me. Also, I'm very excited about
this conversation.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And I'm excited to hear what people think. I'm guessing
that they don't trust the polls, but you never know,
maybe they will. John Ralston, what are you seeing in
the polls in Nevada right now? And do you trust
what you're seeing?
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Well, I'm going to be like one of your callers now, Jeremy.
I haven't trusted polls in Nevada for quite some time.
Nevada is a very difficult state to poll because of
we have three shifts as opposed to the normal two
in most cities. It's hard to get people get a
hold of people because.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
They're working in the casino. They're working in the.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Casinos, a lot of them are, and so there have
been only a handful of pollsters. And I learned this
certainly in my career in journalism. One of the problems
with trusting polls is how we in the media treat them.
We kind of treat all polls as being equal. And
we're ravenous for polls because we know people love to
hear about or read about polls, and some are good
(09:04):
and some are bad. And you listen to a sophistication
that Birwhead and talking about how they get samples. You know,
you and I could sit here with a few of
our friends and make a thousand phone calls tonight and
call that a poll, and it's not. And you need
to understand the state. You need to understand the electorate.
And finally, a poll is only as good as how
(09:28):
it models what the electorate is going to be on
election day, and if that's off, it doesn't do you
any good.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Well, the thing is, in a country like the United States,
the electorate is changing so quickly. People are moving it
moving from state to state, they're coming into the country,
people are being born and turning voting age, and people
are dying, so the electorate is always changing. Clarissa, you
recently did a poll of Latino voters in the US,
which is of course a population that is growing very fast,
(09:55):
that's constantly changing, that may need to be polled in
more than one language. How difficult is it to pull
Latinos in the United States.
Speaker 6 (10:04):
Well, it is definitely more expensive in the sense that
whenever you have to do multiple languages, it's going to
be more expensive. Right, So just imagine pulling the Asian
American Pacific Islander community right where there is even more languages.
So one of the things that is a good practice
(10:26):
if you are going to be doing polls and communities
that are multi lingual is to make sure that the operators,
if it's going to be live calls, are able to
engage with the responding in the ads in the language
in which they answer the phone. In the past, there
(10:47):
used to be practices about if somebody answering a different language,
they would do callbacks, and that also affected the you know,
the the overall response rate. So right off the bat,
making sure that if you you are pulling a community
that has different languages that you are equipped to be
able to in the.
Speaker 7 (11:06):
Moment engage the voter or in this case, the voter.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
Accordingly, the other thing is that there's a lot of
calculations that are involved to make sure that when people
say that a poll is a representative sample of a
particular community, you got to look at does it reflect
the subgroups in that community, the income in all those.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Things, right, And of course, of course, just when you
think about Latino's, somebody who's in South Florida who maybe
came from Venezuela is going to be very different probably
than somebody who's in Los Angeles that came from Mexico.
We're going to get to your calls in a moment
at eight for middle to Taliver, we mentioned Hillary Clinton
because the polls were way off in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, and that's almost an understatement. Here's CNN's Paul and
Newton talking about how Hillary Clinton was polling against Donald
Trump back in the summer of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 8 (11:58):
Hillary Clinton now beats Donald Trump in two new polls,
but the difference between the two poles is striking. The
Wall Street Journal at NBC News show Clinton with a
narrow five point lead the Washington Post and ABC News poll. However,
it gets Clinton a much healthier twelve point lead over Trump.
Holsters also found two out of three registered voters believe
(12:18):
Trump is unqualified for the Oval office.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, and that's when Nate Silver went into hiding immediately.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Exactly by the way, as we approach the election, Tolliver,
and this is our eleventh remote broadcast in the last year.
It does cost money to do this, and we do
want to ask you if you can make a contribution
in any amount to us at Listen to the Middle
dot com to keep these shows coming. We write back
with more of the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm
Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, In the Middle is
(12:48):
a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices
from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you
just want to meet in the Middle. Where live from
Las Vegas this week, where Donald Trump, by the way,
is holding a rally just across town. This is of
course one of the seven swing states. And this hour
we're asking you do you trust the polls? Telliver? What
is the number to call in.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. You can also
write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com
or on social media.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I'm joined by John Rawlston, founder of the Nevada Independent,
and Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the Latino
Vote Initiative at anitos US. And let's go to the phones.
And Robert is with us from Houston, Texas. Robert, Welcome
to the Middle.
Speaker 9 (13:29):
Go ahead, Hey, thanks for taking my call. So, uh,
I just I heard that in some countries they limit
when candidates can actually you know, run a campaign to
three weeks or a month or something to that effect.
I'd propose, what if with polls, we just have like
(13:52):
one day a week and that will be poll Bay
and all the polls will come out for that week
instead of just every fifteen minutes. It's you know, Rasmussen
says Trump is up by six, and DBS News Hours
says Harris is up by five point two, and Nate
Silver says, yeah, around how it comes out and we get,
(14:12):
you know, six more months of winter and Trump. I mean,
it's just so much, it's just such a mass of
never ending constant information that for the average person who
wasn't just versed in this stuff, and yeah, as a
background in statistics or whatever, it's just so overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah that you're but you're paying attention to it. It sounds like, Robert,
you actually are, You're actually paying attention to those polls.
Speaker 9 (14:40):
I mean, I'm trying, but I mean it may be
to my detriment, overalls, raising my blood pressure, just going
back and forth with all yes, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, all right, well, well, thank you for thank you
for calling in. Appreciate it. And Clarissa, let me ask
you when you hear Robert there, and I'm imagining we're
going to hear people that echo what he's saying. Why
to you are polls important?
Speaker 7 (15:05):
They are?
Speaker 6 (15:07):
But I think it's important to make sure that we
look at them in the right context. Right, So they're
like a snapshot, and the snapshot it's going to look
different depending on what time of the day and how
many and ones you have the picture, how many pixels
it has and all that stuff. So it's the same thing, right.
The pixels would be the sampling size in a poll.
(15:30):
One of the reasons we did this poll in August
and we're going to be doing one of actual voters
is because in the past, with the national exit polls,
because of the size of the project, the sampling of
Latino tended not to be very accurate in terms of
representative of what the Latino population looks like.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
So sometimes the results look skewed.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
And so when we for example, our poll in August
had three thousand Latino respondents at the national level, that
means a margin of error of one.
Speaker 7 (16:05):
Point eight percent.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
So what that means, again, as our previous guest was saying,
is that it's not going to be exact. It gives
you a picture, it gives you a sense. The better
the sample is, the better the sense that you are
going to have. But as you continue to see other reasonable,
well done polls, you will see that there are some changes, right,
(16:30):
and we are seeing some of that. But in any case,
for us, is a way to try to add more
information without more robust samples of Latinos because that you
don't have in a.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Lot of you don't get a lot of that. Let's
go to Sergio in Lincoln, Nebraska. Sergio, what do you
think do you trust the polls?
Speaker 6 (16:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (16:49):
Hi, Sometimes listener, first time caller, when I think about
the polls, though, is that I wouldn't trust them. I
am in Nebraska, I'm part of gen Z, and I
think after seeing what the polls were like during the
Hillary Clinton and Trump election cycle and how that turned out,
(17:10):
I think I really found a lot of distrust in that.
I mean, I think the second part of that is
that people my age aren't necessarily being pulled, and people
who are maybe within my community, who are in the
Latino community, aren't necessarily being pulled correctly. And I think
there's a lot of nuance to how you can get
the correct information, and for me, it feels like it's
(17:31):
really just throwing guards at a board.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Thank you so much for that call, Sergia, and thanks
for being a sometimes listener. Hopefully you'll listen all the time.
That's what we're going for, but I appreciate it, John
Rawson a lot there. First of all, the issue of
whether polls actually get to younger voters, first time voters,
but also just you know, Sergia's distrusted them. Have they
(17:55):
gotten better? Have they gotten a lot better since twenty sixteen?
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Well the answer to that is yes and no. There
are pollsters who learned lessons from twenty sixteen and have
refined their techniques, and as Burwood talked about, it's not
just about landlines anymore. They know how to wait samples
of text and use more cell phones. But it's also
(18:21):
gotten worse Jeremy in the sense that too many people
and I alluded to this earlier, call themselves polsters who
are not doing the correct waiting. But they know that
they can get attention and maybe make money off of
whether it's private clients or news organizations by saying.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
That they're a polster.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
I think that the media again is partly responsible for
Sergerio and others and what they say, and that they
just don't trust us as much as they used to,
So they don't trust what we put out as much
as they used to, and they think it's by one
way or another, a good polster will in Nevada. Let's
(19:04):
take Nevada. We'll make sure that they do they they're
polling in span in Spanish and English, that they that
they contact at least, you know, fifteen to twenty percent
of Hispanics, that they look at the Asian population here,
which is about ten percent of the electorate, and they
and they waited that way but that it's costly, as
(19:25):
Clarissa talked about, to do this correctly, and if you
don't pay for it, you're going to get what you
pay for.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Let's go to Shelley in Sylvania, Ohio. Shelley, what do
you think do you trust the polls?
Speaker 11 (19:38):
I think that they're not infallible, but they can come
pretty close. They can let us know which way the
wind is shifting, and that does increase my sense of
urgency around getting out there in this election season, even
before the election and or, you know, in these last
ten days and making my voice heard. I do think
(20:01):
in twenty sixteen the polls were more on target than
folks remember, especially as the election grew close. I remember
watching them, as you're saying, on refresh, like a dear
in headlight, seeing the margins tighten as the election, you know,
came closer, and I remember feeling like no one else
(20:22):
was seeing what I was seeing. So I think that
they can give us a good poll can give us
some very important information and let us give us the
information we need to guide our actions.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Shelley, do you feel more motivated to go and vote
if you see that the race is really tight?
Speaker 11 (20:43):
I'm motivating I will be voting no matter what, But
in terms of door knocking, in terms of volunteering, it
does make a difference. And also between deciding between uncommitted
and and to vote for Harris, that also does guide
(21:05):
guide my decision making in that regard, Shelly, thank.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
You for that. Clarissa, what about that? Do the polls
do you think affect whether people go out and vote,
Like did people in twenty sixteen not go and vote
for Clinton because they thought she was going to win?
Speaker 7 (21:24):
I think that could be a possibility.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
You know, for example, we do a poll of voters
and it runs up to election day because of course
now so many people are voting early in person or
by mail, and our practice is that we do not
release horse race results unless polls have close right and
(21:48):
also we are not doing a production. All we're saying
is these are the issues that people said took them
to the polls. So I think it could have that
effect of, you know, say, people thinking it's already done.
But frankly, I think that we haven't been in that
position for quite some time, at least in the last
(22:12):
several cycles. It seems like more and more races, our
razor thin margins all around and in some ways for
the first time, right, people in California will get very
little attention, and there's a presidential election now that the
balance of power in Congress is also in play with
(22:32):
districts in California, there's more attention in California, and that
always is going to energize votes.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
The House could be decided in New York and California,
two states that really just don't get very much attention
in the media generally, So that's nice. Finally we'll get
some Hey, Tolliver, some messages coming in online.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, and I got to tell you a lot of
them are about Hillary Clinton, so I want to try
and read one of them about Hillary. So Laura and
Green Greeley, Colorado, says, I believed them when Clinton ended
up losing, and I was devastated. Since then, I beefed
up my statistical analysis skills and knowledge and realize now
that surveys of people are extremely difficult to design to
be robust and informative. She went to math school after this.
(23:15):
Suzanne and Denver says, I don't know where to submit
my vote, but the word of the year should be
polar coaster and uh oh yeah, our guests are funny today.
I'm really into that.
Speaker 7 (23:24):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, it was like Pole Day and Polar Coaster, and
then I'll just end on this last one. So John
and Rockford shout out to Rockford says, I trust them
to be completely out of touch with reality. I believe
that their results constitute a systemic underestimate of the popular
support for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
M I want to go to a caller from where
we are, Las Vegas. Let's go to Sonny. Sonny, welcome
to the middle.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Go ahead, Yes, thank you so much. Be very cautious
with poles because they are inaccurate. I will tell you why.
I'm a retired girl to forty two years in the
steal twenty right here in Las Vegas, still president of
seven hundred and forty four homes called Woodcrest. And here's
the problem. There are massive scams going out there. People
(24:08):
that call that give you, try to put information out
of you. It's happening both on the phone and in
the Internet. Consequently, many people will simply not respond because
you do not want to have your credit ruined, You
don't want to have problems or give you a prime example,
I have been the winner of Publishers Clearinghouse, Grand Pride
(24:32):
tell you somethings. So people when they hear about the poll,
they will hang up or they'll shut the computers down. Yeah,
it's not accurate because it's we have this massive scamming problem.
Someone should look into that. Yeah, because it's big.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Sonny, thank you very much for that call. And John Ralston,
your fellow Las Vegas, what do you call Las Vegas?
In Las Vegas, las Vegan, las Vegan some of us
are vegans, took but what about that? I mean, if
you get a call on your phone from an unknown number,
you're probably not you may not answer it, and you're
certainly not going to give them all the information about
(25:09):
yourself and what you think.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Actually, it drives my wife crazy, Jeremy, because I do
answer some of those calls just to have fun with
the people. But clers, I can probably talk more about
this as well, Jeremy. But one of the problems that
I've heards posters that I trust and know personally talk
about is how is the difficult response rates that they've
had to deal with as time has gone on, Because
(25:32):
people like my fellow Las Vegan don't want to answer
their phones and it's difficult to get people to respond
to polls because they're afraid that they're trying to get
some information under the guise of polling, and it's very, very.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Difficult to do.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
And people are skeptical of just taking cold calls, which
is why different different methods of polling, texting and online
panels and the way these they may not be as
accurate unless you really understand that it's going to take
a while to get a good sample, that you have
to wait, the samples that you have to have the
(26:10):
model of the electorate that you believe is going to exist.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
You know how they have those scam likely things for Apple,
they should do polster and then like two smiley emogency.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Right then people would pick up let's hear from MJ.
Who's in Seattle, MJ, what do you think do you
trust the polls?
Speaker 12 (26:31):
Well, there's two different questions on that. Predictively or informationally.
I suppose strictly as a matter of information, I guess
there's some relevance to them. Is as good as a guideline,
But predictably no, absolutely not. I mean, consider we have
to consider what the poll is. It is essentially a
sliver of a larger group, a portion a representative portion
(26:54):
of a larger group. So for mathematically for it to
be accurate, larger group would need be fairly homogenous for
that sliver to represent the larger hole. But the more
diverse the larger group is, the less predictive a sliver
is going to be because you may or may not
get the same proportion and the same percentages of the
(27:16):
respondents of the larger group. So right out of the gate, structurally,
it's it's kind of difficult to put a lot of
weight on that. And then substantively there are good and
bad faith reasons why they're simply not able to be trusted,
you know, some bad faith reasons. You might be answering
it correctly because you're made to feel socially that your
(27:39):
opinion is not right to answer differently, you know, or
you might change your mind. You might receive new information
that you didn't have at the time of the poll,
you know, And there's some good faith reasons you intended
to go vote than you didn't or answer accurately. But
you're you're simply not gonna pull the lever. You know,
you're not going to place your ballot, so predictively. It
(28:00):
just doesn't feel like there's much to go on.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, that's a great points, MJ. Thank you very much, Clarissa.
What about that people who may lie to pollsters. We've
heard about over the years that some people may not
have said that they were going to vote for Donald Trump,
but then they did. There are also may be people who,
you know, with the abortion issue, don't want to say
what they're doing, but actually we'll go out and vote
in a certain way. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
No, that's right, And I think that's first and foremost.
I agree with the color they're informational, right. I think
that part of the issue is that polls have been
kind of used as a tool to make to solidify
a prediction, whether or not that makes sense in that
moment for us, there are important in terms of identifying
(28:49):
what are the top issues in the minds of voters, right,
And for that that's very different in terms of percentages,
and when you're talking about a horse race, that might
be one or two percentage points apart. So what I
tell people, including about our own pole, is hey, make
sure that you are looking under the hood, right. I
(29:12):
obviously follow a lot of what people who doubt about
the Hispanic electorate and the number of articles I've seen
where people are making a pronouncement about a seismic change
in opinion of the community along the lines of Latinos
used to think the.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
Air that was round, but now they say it's not,
and I'm like, oh my god, wow.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
But then I go and look at the methodology and
they interviewed two hundred people.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's which, in the world of polsters, is not that much. Again,
you can reach us at eight four four four middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five three.
You know, Tylber, We've been talking a lot about twenty sixteen,
but that was not the first time that presidential election
results were not in line with the polls.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Well, that's right. Look go further than nineteen forty eight
contests between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. The Chicago Daily
Tribune famously printed its first edition with the headline Dewey
defeats Truman based on Yeah, bad day for Dewey, based
on poles and a prediction from their political analyst. Of course,
Dewey didn't win. And since we don't have tape of
a newspaper headline, here's a clip of the news about
(30:20):
their campaign.
Speaker 13 (30:21):
In one hundred and forty talks before an estimated two
minion listeners across the nations, Mister Truman hammered away again
and again at the record of the Republican controlled eightieth Congress.
Mike candidate Truman candidate Dewey enters the home stretch of
his first coast to coast tour in Salt Lake City.
He underlines America's unity on foreign policy questions with a
strong denunciation of isolation and appeasement.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Jeremy, I need you to talk like that here out.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Welcome Sarah exactly. You know, Tolliver. I'll tell you what.
They don't campaign in Salt Lake City anymore. We need
that music. We need that music though. Anyway, We'll be
right back with more coming up on the middle. This
is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson at Nevada Public Radio
in Las Vegas. This week and this hour, we're asking
you do you trust the polls? You can call us
(31:07):
at eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. I'm joined by
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote
Initiative at UNITOS US and John Ralston of the Nevada Independent.
And before we go back to the phones, John Ralston,
if you're if you can't trust everything you see in
the polls, what else do you look at to try
(31:28):
to figure out what's going on? Because everybody comes to
you to ask you what's going to happen, for example,
in Nevada, what other things are you watching? Well?
Speaker 5 (31:36):
Now, and Clarissa mentioned this, there's so many votes that
are cast early. And it's been true in Nevada for
a long time. There's a two week early voting period,
and for since it really got popular, Jeremy, two thirds
of a vote is in before election day. And so
I am essentially looking into the data of actual votes
and trying to project off of that what the electorate
(31:58):
is going to look like accurately than most polls by
the way they're taking there. I'm not bragging about that.
I just have all that data of real votes to
go by.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
But and what are you saying, by the way, because
people are probably going, well, what does he think what's happening?
Speaker 5 (32:12):
Well, you know, I'm sure that you as a regular
reader of the Nevada Independent, Jeremy, you're reading my early
voting blog, but which I put out. But seriously, the
Republicans are doing very well here early on. But again,
this is the problem that happens with Poles too. Is
it suddenly Republicans say, oh, We're going to win Nevada
and Democrats are saying, oh my god, we're going to
lose Nevada. Nevada has been a democratic state and presidential
(32:35):
race since two thousand and eight. But four hundred thousand
people have already voted here in Nevada. Probably one point
four million are going to be in the electorate. Still
a million people have to vote. These trends are not
set in stone. It looks good for the Republicans early on,
but things can change the mix of the electorate, which
is what we've been talking about why polls might or
(32:56):
might not be accurate. Is going to change, so you know,
and also, Jeremy, look, luckily this isn't TV. People can't
tell that I'm old. I've been around, I've been doing
this for a while, Jeremy. So I have the experience,
I have the sources on the ground who can tell
me what's really happening. And so you have to be
(33:16):
a reporter too. If you're covering poles. You can't just
take them at face lure. And that's one other thing
let me just say quickly and Clarissa will back me
up on this. People don't think about how questions are phrased,
and what the media don't do enough is ask for
the actual polling instrument, look at how they ask the questions.
Don't just look at a polling memo because that's probably
written for a purpose. Look at the actual wording.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
I was talking to our reporter the other day about
our poll and they say, oh my god, you guys
who have your methodology and your crosstufs publicly available? And
I'm like, yeah, we're trying to try to help people
have a better understanding about this electorate, and we want
to be transparent about our data. Plus sometimes we learn
(34:05):
about how to better ask a question when we talk to.
Speaker 7 (34:08):
People and they're able to see it right.
Speaker 6 (34:10):
So absolutely it's important to look at how the question
was asked.
Speaker 7 (34:16):
That matters a great deal too tall the truth.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
That yeah, that early voters tend to sway more democratic,
or is that is an old wives take.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
John, Well, what's happened here?
Speaker 5 (34:26):
And it doesn't happen this way in all states, but
it's definitely been true here. The late Harry Reid erected
this machine where the Democrats bank all these early votes.
So by the time election day comes, as I said,
so many of the votes have been cast. Before election day,
the die is cast, and it's almost impossible for the
Republicans to catch up. That's why today, that's why this
(34:49):
year's president presidential race turnout pattern is so odd. The
Republicans are doing so well.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Now there may be some reasons for that.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Rural counties are turning out much bigger early.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, early, but that also means they're not going to
vote later.
Speaker 5 (35:03):
That's probably And as an optimistic Democrat told me, look,
there's only so many votes there, and you know, two
thirds of a voters still in Clark County, which is
predominantly Democratic.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Uh, let's go to another swing state and Billy, who's
in Raleigh, North Carolina. Billy, what do you think? Do
you trust the bulls?
Speaker 14 (35:23):
I'm pretty indifferent to them. Living in a purple state.
The presidential election becomes especially here when we voted Trump
twice and then Roy Cooper twice, the presidential race becomes
inconsequential to me. I pay attention more to the more
local races. But I also would say that if they
(35:46):
could be broken out, I know you have a Latino
contributor there, if it could be more broken out by
communities like Latino and people of color communities, So I
know could learn more about that because I know that
was in underserved part of the electorate, or at least
that was how it was portrayed. I think that would
be more interesting to me to know those polls, which
(36:08):
they maybe exist, but I again, I don't really pay
as much attention to them, but if they were more
not as generally done as are you voting for Trump
or Kamala?
Speaker 1 (36:18):
You know, right, Billy, thank you for that, you know, Clarissa,
on that point of Latino voters, I was looking back
and the number of Latinos of voting age in the
US is about forty four million, but only about sixteen
million voted in twenty twenty. Why is that? Do you
think any you think that'll change this time There'll be
(36:38):
more turnout among Latinos.
Speaker 6 (36:42):
So there's a couple of different things going on, and
we're about thirty two million plus I think in terms
of citizen voting age population.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oh, I see okay, right, because there may be some
that are not sating.
Speaker 6 (36:52):
So in a lot of times people say, oh, there's
over thirty million Latinos elegivot vote, and I say, okay,
Aggregating data is important. If people are not registered come
election day, they're not eligible to vote, right. So what
that allows us to do is in presidential years, more
(37:13):
than eighty percent of Latinos who are registered vote. So
what we have midterms, as we know, are a different animal.
But what we really have is a voter registration opportunity gap.
And as you all know, of the obscene, increasingly obscene
amounts of money spent in every election cycle, an infinitesimal
(37:35):
amount goes into voter registration. And that's where the biggest
opportunity is in terms of the growth of the Latino electorate.
But even with that, we are the second fastest growing
because we are a young population and every year one
million Latino US citizens are turning eighteen and becoming eligible
to register and vote.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
That's why, by the way, we'll have to see whether
the tailor's wift voter registration drive has an effect in
this election. Let's go to Bill who's in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Bill do you trust the polls.
Speaker 15 (38:09):
I don't trust the polls quite frankly, And I think
too many people who are just afraid to tell the
truth of how they're going to vote. They're afraid to
tell each other. There's such a divergence between how we
feel about things. And I think it's awful hot to
be so savvy that you can figure out whether Chris
is tell them the truth or not, even with all
(38:29):
the different ways you ask questions and so forth. So
I'm going to concerned, But I do have a question
for your panel and.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
All of you.
Speaker 15 (38:35):
Yeah, yeah, What's what has happened? When I was younger,
and I'm pretty old the gallup pole was the only
one we heard of. I hear about so many different
down polls today from all these different organizations, every news organization,
every newspaper. And on top of that, what's the economics
behind it? Who's using them? Because I know in the
(38:55):
past maybe campaigns use them, maybe to try and figure
out where they should puts, But man, they don't seem
to really. It just doesn't seem value. But there's a
ton of money being spent on these things. I don't
understand what's what's the economics about it.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Well, thanks, great question, John Rawlston, you want to take that.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Well, course I might know more about the exact economics,
but I'll tell you this. Campaigns spend a lot of
money on polls, and campaigns more than the ones that
are done for news organizations want to make sure that
what they're getting is the right information because they can't
afford not to have the right information. So they knows,
(39:35):
as the gentleman said, where to put resources, what groups
they need to target, So they will spend the mense
amount of money on polls. And there are people who
have made a very good living at polling. Because of this,
news organizations can't afford to pay as much as campaigns
can in general, Jeremy, So they will either get a
(39:59):
deal made with a really good pollster or and this
is what's happened too often, news organizations will partner with
a polster who is not as good. And the other
manifestation that's occurred since I started covering politics a long
time ago, Jeremy, is you have partisan polsters of service,
(40:19):
and yeah, a lot of them now. Some of them actually,
while they're partisan, can produce good numbers, but others are
just in business. To control the narrative.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
And you can do that with the sample that you
put out right.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
You can make it a Republican leaning or Democratic leaning sample.
And my problem, again I'm going to be a broken
record on this, is that we in the media trend
tend to treat all polls as being equal. Let's just
put it out because we love numbers, and you gave
us a polling member while we got an exclusive. Let's
get this out. And the other way the world has changed, Jeremy,
(40:53):
is that the velocity with which information moves right, you
want to get it out right away on social media,
on your website and so, and you can't pull it
back even if it turns out not to be a
good poll.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
You know, since we're in Las Vegas, I wish we
had a bet here like they all make them all
on the craps table, where we could every state that
comes in as a call on this show right now,
because we would be really getting around because I'm going
to go to now Ognen Utah and Miranda, who's on
the line, Miranda, welcome to the middle. Go ahead. Do
you trust the polls?
Speaker 16 (41:26):
I do, but I trust the polls to be questionable
at best. Right, because there's so much going on at
the edges that a lot of people don't pay attention
to a lot of sort of the people consuming the news,
consuming the media, they just don't pay attention to those
margins of error. They don't think about, as one of
(41:46):
your panelists said, the methodology, as Bill said, you know
your your previous caller. People don't sort of pay attention
to how much people are or are not made being
truthful with polsters. And there's so much going on that
the people say, hooray, we're up by two points. That
must mean we're winning, without considering those margins of error
(42:10):
and all of these others, all these other pieces and
parts of how polling really works.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Miranda, let me let me ask you a question, just
given that that you obviously are skeptical about what you
see in the polls, who do you think is going
to win the election for president based on what you've
seen so far? Or do you have no idea?
Speaker 16 (42:31):
I am terrified. I have no idea. I know what
I hope for and I know what I'll work for,
but I it in the polling it seems very much
a toss up, and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, Miranda, Thank you very much for that call, Clarissa,
What do you think about that. We've gotten a lot
of callers who don't trust the polls, but they're being
very specific, think about why, the margin of error, the methodology,
and all that sort of thing. People are really very
smart about this and how this works, and they're taking
it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
I think your callers are actually doing a better job
than some reporters out there in terms of what they're saying.
Speaker 7 (43:16):
They're looking at margins of error and everything.
Speaker 6 (43:18):
Whenever we're go I talk to a reporter who says, hey,
I was looking at this cross having your poll, I'm like,
I get so excited because I'm like, okay, you're looking under.
Speaker 7 (43:28):
The hood, but I want to actually ask you.
Speaker 6 (43:33):
Right, In some ways, the question do you trust the
polls is also a bit unfair, Right. It's almost like
asking somebody do you trust your family? And I think
most people would say.
Speaker 11 (43:47):
For what or for what?
Speaker 6 (43:49):
I trust my cousins on fashion, I trust this one
for you know whatever. So maybe that's where the grain
of salt comes in, or or to simply say, we
have to be discerning and understand. Is this a push
pull of somebody is trying to shape the narrative or
(44:10):
is this somebody who's just trying to put out the
data of what people are saying in that moment.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Okay, let's go to Michelle, who's in Hatley, Wisconsin. Michelle,
go ahead, welcome to the middle.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
Hi.
Speaker 17 (44:22):
Good. You mean I do not trust the poles. And
the reason I say that is twofold. First of all,
when Biden dropped out and Harris became the presumptive nominee,
there was a like a proverbial shift in the narrative
and there felt like a different energy. There seems to
be a lot more enthusiasm behind her. And then in
(44:44):
the last few weeks the things that I just find
that if fifty percent of people are behind a person
who is talking about how an admirable Hitler was in
his top generals and chief of stass are calling him,
I fe just that fifty percent are aligning themselves without
him with him. Excuse me, it's just be on the tail.
(45:06):
And the other one is I am a member of
IPSOS and I have been for twenty years, and the
polls that I'm getting are very They're very how should
I say this, They're very geared toward a certain electorate,
like they're they're geared toward Democrats, or they're geared toward
hopefully you're a Republican myself. I'm not on any voter
(45:28):
roll or any registration. I'm not even registered as an independent.
But I've voted both the parties before, and I just
I don't feel like the polls are as streamlined as
they want us to be, or as.
Speaker 14 (45:42):
By partisdent.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
And I guess it is a good way to put it, Michelle,
thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
John Ralson, I have to tell you, first of all,
we have a unanimity in the poll we've taken.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Of people have called in right.
Speaker 5 (45:52):
Right, none of them drusts the polls, so that that
is one poll that we can trust. But I see
this question of not trusting the polls in the same
way that people say they hate negative ads, and in
the sense that, let me make the analogy, Senator X
is a crook. Oh, I don't be that's so negative.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I hate that.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
Then you do the exit polls and you interview the
same person, why did you vote against the opponent?
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Well, Senator X is a crook.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
I saw it on TV that there is there's a
disconnect because people when they talk about the race, the
presidential race, they're talking about it being so close. Why
do they think it's so close, Jeremy, Because the polls
are telling them even though they don't trust them. So
there's a disconnect that goes on there. And and I
do think people tune out stuff more than they ever
(46:39):
have when it has to do with politics and polling.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
And all the rest of it. Let me just ask
each of you a final question as we close out
this hour and claricity you first. One of the reasons
that polls matter, I think is because if they're way
off and people think they're going to be one way,
then when they when the election turns out the other way,
they they think it's not fair, that it's rigged. They
(47:02):
may turn to violence, as we saw in January sixth,
twenty twenty one. Are you worried about that happening this
time just because of the poll expectation? And is there
anything that you think that we in the media can
do to help in terms of what we say when
poles are mentioned.
Speaker 7 (47:18):
So, I think those are different things.
Speaker 6 (47:21):
I'll deal with the second one about I do think
that the media can continue to remind people that a
poll is a snapshot in time, that the margins of
errors mean that this is a dead heat and can.
Speaker 7 (47:34):
Go either way.
Speaker 6 (47:35):
You know, those kinds of things to help readers understand
what they are seeing.
Speaker 7 (47:41):
In terms of the polls fueling violence.
Speaker 5 (47:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:45):
No, there's other people who are doing that and will
do it even if the poll results were not even close,
because I think that they've started already pumping a narrative
to leave the door open.
Speaker 7 (47:58):
For that no matter what happens. John Ralston, that's unfortunate.
Speaker 5 (48:02):
Yeah, I mean, the horse has left the barn on
that one. I totally agree with Clarissa on this Germans.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
It does.
Speaker 5 (48:08):
It worries me every day, not just as a journalist,
but as a citizen, as a parent, as a husband,
all the rest of it. We should all be concerned
about this because of what is being fueled. And no
matter what the polls say, that there are people who
are not going to believe, not going.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
To accept the results of this election.
Speaker 5 (48:28):
You know, I hope and pray that we don't have
anything resembling January sixth again ever in the history of
this country. But it's not because of a post. Luckily,
there are some things that have cropped up that didn't
used to exist. Pole aggregators who put together a bunch
of poles and put that out and say this is
what the average is. But still I don't think that's
(48:48):
an issue and the issue that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Well, John Ralston, founder and editor of the Nevada Independent,
and Clarissa Martinez di Castro, vice president of the Latino
Vote Initiative, Anita's us. Thank you both so much, thank.
Speaker 7 (48:59):
You, thank you, And one thing be sure of go
out and vote yes.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
That definitely, and also thanks to burwood yost to Franklin
and Marshall. And next week in our last pre election show, Toliver,
we want to hear from people about how they're feeling, hopes, fears.
We're going to be joined by a great panel next week,
including Enrique A. Sevedo from Univision and see it former
CNN Chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Be sure to call in at eight four four four
Middle that's eight four four four six four three three
five three, or you can write out, write to us
and listen to the Middle dot com and sign up
for our free weekly newsletter.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
The Middle is brought to you by Longnock Media, distributed
by Illinois Public Media and or Ban Illinois. Produced by
Harrison Patino, Danie Alexander, Sam Burmistas and John Barthur. Technical
director is Jason Croft. A special thanks to Dave Becker
and Brionna Joseph. Here at Nevada Public Radio in Las Vegas,
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and I will talk to you next
week
Support for the Middle comes from the Tiwani Foundation, making
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More information on how you can support the Middle at
Listen tooth Middle dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm
Jeremy Hobson at Nevada Public Radio in Las Vegas. Along
(00:25):
with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver, we have some
new listeners this week on the NPR NOW channel on SiriusXM.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh wow. So we're two weeks out from the election.
Welcome to the Terrordome you guys.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
By the way it went, yeah, exactly and so moving
so quickly, Tolliver, you know, before this, I think we
were on the air in forty six states, but now
with serious XM, it's all fifty. So that's exciting. About
a year into our little independent production here. By the way,
we just did a special from Detroit the other day
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that was live across the
US and Canada. If you miss that, you can hear
it on our podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts on
(00:59):
the iHeart app or wherever you listen to podcasts. So
we're going to talk this hour about something that is
just obsessed over in the lead up to a major
presidential election like this. That would be the polls. And
if you're listening and you're simultaneously refreshing five thirty eight
to the New York Times polling page, you are not alone.
This is a close race. It's going to come down
(01:20):
to what happens in battleground states like Nevada where I
am right now. And of course the polls are a
mixed bag, and we also know that they're not always right,
just ask President Hillary Clinton. So we want to know
if you trust the polls in Tolliver, how can people
reach us?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You can call us at eight four four four Middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five
three or right to us that listen to the Middle
dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And before we get to our panel, I want to
bring in Polster Burwood Yost from Franklin and Marshall College
in Pennsylvania. Burwood, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hey, my President, good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So I've got a little bit of a lightning round
for you, just to get these out of the way.
For sure. So how are polls conducted right now? Is
it still mostly on the phone?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
No, that's actually somebody asked me that question earlier. I
said it would be a lot easier to answer that
thirty years ago than today. Poles now have a variety
of methodologies, and I think that's what consumers really need
to be careful about when they consume a poll, and
if they're going to decide if they should trust it,
they should understand how it was conducted. And so the
(02:22):
first thing you should do is figure out how did
this polster do his or her work, How did they
create a sample, who does that sample represent, how do
they write their questions? What is the order of those questions?
Could I answer those questions if someone asked me those
same things? You know, just some common sensical things before
(02:43):
you get to the technical sides of how that data
is adjusted and reported. But my main point is that
transparency is essential for understanding how poles conducted. You've got
to know what the pollster's doing, and if you don't know,
you shouldn't trust me.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
But if they're not the phone, so then they're done
on the internet. So are you sending out an email
to people and then they have to decide if they
want to respond back to it.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
You could, there's all kinds of ways to do it.
That's not how we do it. Do you want to
hear how we do it?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So what we do is we draw a random sample
of registered voters from the state's voter registration list. There's
like nine million of them, and in that list there's
all kinds of information. So what we draw that sample.
The first thing we do is we print a postcard
and we put it in people's mailbox, and we give
them all kinds of information telling them about us and
how we do our work, how they can respond do.
(03:35):
We give them a password so that they know how
to do it. We give them a website if they
want to do it online. We give them a toll
free number if they want to call us, or they
can wait and we'll call them. And anyone we don't
hear from we text them, we call them, we email them,
We just keep after them till we round out the sample.
That's how we do.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
What's what's the most effective form of contacting people? What
has like the highest rate of return?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
You know, the highest rate of return comes from having
more ways to contacts on it. So if we've got
your cell phone, your address, your email, and a landline,
chances are you're going to respond because we're going to
stay after you. So one of the people little hardest
to reach are those that we just have an address for.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
One of the things, Burwood, that I've noticed in some
of the polls that are happening right now, maybe this
is just how it's always done. Is they like to
use what happened in the last election to kind of
wait various groups and say, you know this, many people
voted in twenty twenty, so therefore we're expecting it'll be
just like that. And I wonder in the case of
this election, this is the first election that is post
(04:44):
January sixth, it's the first election that's post the Supreme
Court decision over turning roversus weighed. Is it hard to
use what happened last time to determine what's going to
happen this time in terms of turnout.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, it depends how you do your modeling, Like you
could have assumptions about turnout that you impose, or you
can figure out turnout based on what people tell you
and how they've behaved in the past and so those
are different things. One of the things I like to
remind people is that polls, first, they're not that precise, right.
We don't have enough sample size to predict a toss
(05:19):
up race. So if it's within a point or two,
it's a it's a coin flip. Literally.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So a poll that shows Kamala Harris up to and
a poll that shows Donald Trump up to to you,
they're the same.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
They're the same, yes, because of the margin of error,
which isn't the most important issue in polling, but it
does suggest whenever you represent a group with a sample,
you're going to have variability just from using that sampling process.
But the other thing I want to say is that
polls are about description, right. Our poll that we released
(05:53):
today describes the way voters are thinking and feeling about
things at the moment. They are spending a lot of
time and money to change what voters think and how
they behave and so you know, when you start talking
about predictions, that is a different thing. Sometimes people use
polls to make predictions, but predictions are different than descriptions,
(06:18):
and we should keep that in mind.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Let me just finally ask you, Burwood, what is the
hardest thing about your profession right now.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
As a polster, I think it's building trust and being transparent.
What I'm trying to do when I do my work
is to show all my work in public, and sometimes
that's painful. Like can I give you example. Our latest
poll showed Harris Trump up above Harris fifty to forty
(06:49):
nine among likely voters. We never round our polls because
it employed. We never use decimal points because I think
that implies too much precision. Poll socual number was forty
nine point six Trump forty nine point three Harris. I
struggled over that because my traditional practice is to not
(07:10):
use decimals. That's the kind of thing that you have
to struggle with as a polster. I want to be
completely transparent and I want to have an open communication
about what our pulls shows, and that we should expect
the unexpected. That there's a lot of things that can
happen in an election, and when there's a group of
people who will walk into the voting booth and make
up their mind at that point, that's something no one
(07:34):
can really predict.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
As birdwood yost upholster at Franklin and Marshall College, thanks
for spending the last six point three to six point
seven minutes with.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Us happy to do it, do it anytime.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
All right, let's meet our panel. Joining me here in
Las Vegas the dean of Nevada Politics, John Ralston, Founder
and editor of the Nevada Independent. John, great to have
you in the middle.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Thanks for being in Vegas and having me.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
On jer Yeah, and joining us as well as Clarissa
Martinez Dicastro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at
whunitos US, which recently conducted a poll of Latino voters. Carlissa,
welcome to you as well.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
Thank you for having me. Also, I'm very excited about
this conversation.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And I'm excited to hear what people think. I'm guessing
that they don't trust the polls, but you never know,
maybe they will. John Ralston, what are you seeing in
the polls in Nevada right now? And do you trust
what you're seeing?
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Well, I'm going to be like one of your callers now, Jeremy.
I haven't trusted polls in Nevada for quite some time.
Nevada is a very difficult state to poll because of
we have three shifts as opposed to the normal two
in most cities. It's hard to get people get a
hold of people because.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
They're working in the casino. They're working in the.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Casinos, a lot of them are, and so there have
been only a handful of pollsters. And I learned this
certainly in my career in journalism. One of the problems
with trusting polls is how we in the media treat them.
We kind of treat all polls as being equal. And
we're ravenous for polls because we know people love to
hear about or read about polls, and some are good
(09:04):
and some are bad. And you listen to a sophistication
that Birwhead and talking about how they get samples. You know,
you and I could sit here with a few of
our friends and make a thousand phone calls tonight and
call that a poll, and it's not. And you need
to understand the state. You need to understand the electorate.
And finally, a poll is only as good as how
(09:28):
it models what the electorate is going to be on
election day, and if that's off, it doesn't do you
any good.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Well, the thing is, in a country like the United States,
the electorate is changing so quickly. People are moving it
moving from state to state, they're coming into the country,
people are being born and turning voting age, and people
are dying, so the electorate is always changing. Clarissa, you
recently did a poll of Latino voters in the US,
which is of course a population that is growing very fast,
(09:55):
that's constantly changing, that may need to be polled in
more than one language. How difficult is it to pull
Latinos in the United States.
Speaker 6 (10:04):
Well, it is definitely more expensive in the sense that
whenever you have to do multiple languages, it's going to
be more expensive. Right, So just imagine pulling the Asian
American Pacific Islander community right where there is even more languages.
So one of the things that is a good practice
(10:26):
if you are going to be doing polls and communities
that are multi lingual is to make sure that the operators,
if it's going to be live calls, are able to
engage with the responding in the ads in the language
in which they answer the phone. In the past, there
(10:47):
used to be practices about if somebody answering a different language,
they would do callbacks, and that also affected the you know,
the the overall response rate. So right off the bat,
making sure that if you you are pulling a community
that has different languages that you are equipped to be
able to in the.
Speaker 7 (11:06):
Moment engage the voter or in this case, the voter.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
Accordingly, the other thing is that there's a lot of
calculations that are involved to make sure that when people
say that a poll is a representative sample of a
particular community, you got to look at does it reflect
the subgroups in that community, the income in all those.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Things, right, And of course, of course, just when you
think about Latino's, somebody who's in South Florida who maybe
came from Venezuela is going to be very different probably
than somebody who's in Los Angeles that came from Mexico.
We're going to get to your calls in a moment
at eight for middle to Taliver, we mentioned Hillary Clinton
because the polls were way off in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, and that's almost an understatement. Here's CNN's Paul and
Newton talking about how Hillary Clinton was polling against Donald
Trump back in the summer of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 8 (11:58):
Hillary Clinton now beats Donald Trump in two new polls,
but the difference between the two poles is striking. The
Wall Street Journal at NBC News show Clinton with a
narrow five point lead the Washington Post and ABC News poll. However,
it gets Clinton a much healthier twelve point lead over Trump.
Holsters also found two out of three registered voters believe
(12:18):
Trump is unqualified for the Oval office.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, and that's when Nate Silver went into hiding immediately.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Exactly by the way, as we approach the election, Tolliver,
and this is our eleventh remote broadcast in the last year.
It does cost money to do this, and we do
want to ask you if you can make a contribution
in any amount to us at Listen to the Middle
dot com to keep these shows coming. We write back
with more of the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm
Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, In the Middle is
(12:48):
a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices
from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you
just want to meet in the Middle. Where live from
Las Vegas this week, where Donald Trump, by the way,
is holding a rally just across town. This is of
course one of the seven swing states. And this hour
we're asking you do you trust the polls? Telliver? What
is the number to call in.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. You can also
write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com
or on social media.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I'm joined by John Rawlston, founder of the Nevada Independent,
and Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the Latino
Vote Initiative at anitos US. And let's go to the phones.
And Robert is with us from Houston, Texas. Robert, Welcome
to the Middle.
Speaker 9 (13:29):
Go ahead, Hey, thanks for taking my call. So, uh,
I just I heard that in some countries they limit
when candidates can actually you know, run a campaign to
three weeks or a month or something to that effect.
I'd propose, what if with polls, we just have like
(13:52):
one day a week and that will be poll Bay
and all the polls will come out for that week
instead of just every fifteen minutes. It's you know, Rasmussen
says Trump is up by six, and DBS News Hours
says Harris is up by five point two, and Nate
Silver says, yeah, around how it comes out and we get,
(14:12):
you know, six more months of winter and Trump. I mean,
it's just so much, it's just such a mass of
never ending constant information that for the average person who
wasn't just versed in this stuff, and yeah, as a
background in statistics or whatever, it's just so overwhelming.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah that you're but you're paying attention to it. It sounds like, Robert,
you actually are, You're actually paying attention to those polls.
Speaker 9 (14:40):
I mean, I'm trying, but I mean it may be
to my detriment, overalls, raising my blood pressure, just going
back and forth with all yes, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, all right, well, well, thank you for thank you
for calling in. Appreciate it. And Clarissa, let me ask
you when you hear Robert there, and I'm imagining we're
going to hear people that echo what he's saying. Why
to you are polls important?
Speaker 7 (15:05):
They are?
Speaker 6 (15:07):
But I think it's important to make sure that we
look at them in the right context. Right, So they're
like a snapshot, and the snapshot it's going to look
different depending on what time of the day and how
many and ones you have the picture, how many pixels
it has and all that stuff. So it's the same thing, right.
The pixels would be the sampling size in a poll.
(15:30):
One of the reasons we did this poll in August
and we're going to be doing one of actual voters
is because in the past, with the national exit polls,
because of the size of the project, the sampling of
Latino tended not to be very accurate in terms of
representative of what the Latino population looks like.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
So sometimes the results look skewed.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
And so when we for example, our poll in August
had three thousand Latino respondents at the national level, that
means a margin of error of one.
Speaker 7 (16:05):
Point eight percent.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
So what that means, again, as our previous guest was saying,
is that it's not going to be exact. It gives
you a picture, it gives you a sense. The better
the sample is, the better the sense that you are
going to have. But as you continue to see other reasonable,
well done polls, you will see that there are some changes, right,
(16:30):
and we are seeing some of that. But in any case,
for us, is a way to try to add more
information without more robust samples of Latinos because that you
don't have in a.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Lot of you don't get a lot of that. Let's
go to Sergio in Lincoln, Nebraska. Sergio, what do you
think do you trust the polls?
Speaker 6 (16:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (16:49):
Hi, Sometimes listener, first time caller, when I think about
the polls, though, is that I wouldn't trust them. I
am in Nebraska, I'm part of gen Z, and I
think after seeing what the polls were like during the
Hillary Clinton and Trump election cycle and how that turned out,
(17:10):
I think I really found a lot of distrust in that.
I mean, I think the second part of that is
that people my age aren't necessarily being pulled, and people
who are maybe within my community, who are in the
Latino community, aren't necessarily being pulled correctly. And I think
there's a lot of nuance to how you can get
the correct information, and for me, it feels like it's
(17:31):
really just throwing guards at a board.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Thank you so much for that call, Sergia, and thanks
for being a sometimes listener. Hopefully you'll listen all the time.
That's what we're going for, but I appreciate it, John
Rawson a lot there. First of all, the issue of
whether polls actually get to younger voters, first time voters,
but also just you know, Sergia's distrusted them. Have they
(17:55):
gotten better? Have they gotten a lot better since twenty sixteen?
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Well the answer to that is yes and no. There
are pollsters who learned lessons from twenty sixteen and have
refined their techniques, and as Burwood talked about, it's not
just about landlines anymore. They know how to wait samples
of text and use more cell phones. But it's also
(18:21):
gotten worse Jeremy in the sense that too many people
and I alluded to this earlier, call themselves polsters who
are not doing the correct waiting. But they know that
they can get attention and maybe make money off of
whether it's private clients or news organizations by saying.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
That they're a polster.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
I think that the media again is partly responsible for
Sergerio and others and what they say, and that they
just don't trust us as much as they used to,
So they don't trust what we put out as much
as they used to, and they think it's by one
way or another, a good polster will in Nevada. Let's
(19:04):
take Nevada. We'll make sure that they do they they're
polling in span in Spanish and English, that they that
they contact at least, you know, fifteen to twenty percent
of Hispanics, that they look at the Asian population here,
which is about ten percent of the electorate, and they
and they waited that way but that it's costly, as
(19:25):
Clarissa talked about, to do this correctly, and if you
don't pay for it, you're going to get what you
pay for.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Let's go to Shelley in Sylvania, Ohio. Shelley, what do
you think do you trust the polls?
Speaker 11 (19:38):
I think that they're not infallible, but they can come
pretty close. They can let us know which way the
wind is shifting, and that does increase my sense of
urgency around getting out there in this election season, even
before the election and or, you know, in these last
ten days and making my voice heard. I do think
(20:01):
in twenty sixteen the polls were more on target than
folks remember, especially as the election grew close. I remember
watching them, as you're saying, on refresh, like a dear
in headlight, seeing the margins tighten as the election, you know,
came closer, and I remember feeling like no one else
(20:22):
was seeing what I was seeing. So I think that
they can give us a good poll can give us
some very important information and let us give us the
information we need to guide our actions.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Shelley, do you feel more motivated to go and vote
if you see that the race is really tight?
Speaker 11 (20:43):
I'm motivating I will be voting no matter what, But
in terms of door knocking, in terms of volunteering, it
does make a difference. And also between deciding between uncommitted
and and to vote for Harris, that also does guide
(21:05):
guide my decision making in that regard, Shelly, thank.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
You for that. Clarissa, what about that? Do the polls
do you think affect whether people go out and vote,
Like did people in twenty sixteen not go and vote
for Clinton because they thought she was going to win?
Speaker 7 (21:24):
I think that could be a possibility.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
You know, for example, we do a poll of voters
and it runs up to election day because of course
now so many people are voting early in person or
by mail, and our practice is that we do not
release horse race results unless polls have close right and
(21:48):
also we are not doing a production. All we're saying
is these are the issues that people said took them
to the polls. So I think it could have that
effect of, you know, say, people thinking it's already done.
But frankly, I think that we haven't been in that
position for quite some time, at least in the last
(22:12):
several cycles. It seems like more and more races, our
razor thin margins all around and in some ways for
the first time, right, people in California will get very
little attention, and there's a presidential election now that the
balance of power in Congress is also in play with
(22:32):
districts in California, there's more attention in California, and that
always is going to energize votes.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
The House could be decided in New York and California,
two states that really just don't get very much attention
in the media generally, So that's nice. Finally we'll get
some Hey, Tolliver, some messages coming in online.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, and I got to tell you a lot of
them are about Hillary Clinton, so I want to try
and read one of them about Hillary. So Laura and
Green Greeley, Colorado, says, I believed them when Clinton ended
up losing, and I was devastated. Since then, I beefed
up my statistical analysis skills and knowledge and realize now
that surveys of people are extremely difficult to design to
be robust and informative. She went to math school after this.
(23:15):
Suzanne and Denver says, I don't know where to submit
my vote, but the word of the year should be
polar coaster and uh oh yeah, our guests are funny today.
I'm really into that.
Speaker 7 (23:24):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, it was like Pole Day and Polar Coaster, and
then I'll just end on this last one. So John
and Rockford shout out to Rockford says, I trust them
to be completely out of touch with reality. I believe
that their results constitute a systemic underestimate of the popular
support for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
M I want to go to a caller from where
we are, Las Vegas. Let's go to Sonny. Sonny, welcome
to the middle.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Go ahead, Yes, thank you so much. Be very cautious
with poles because they are inaccurate. I will tell you why.
I'm a retired girl to forty two years in the
steal twenty right here in Las Vegas, still president of
seven hundred and forty four homes called Woodcrest. And here's
the problem. There are massive scams going out there. People
(24:08):
that call that give you, try to put information out
of you. It's happening both on the phone and in
the Internet. Consequently, many people will simply not respond because
you do not want to have your credit ruined, You
don't want to have problems or give you a prime example,
I have been the winner of Publishers Clearinghouse, Grand Pride
(24:32):
tell you somethings. So people when they hear about the poll,
they will hang up or they'll shut the computers down. Yeah,
it's not accurate because it's we have this massive scamming problem.
Someone should look into that. Yeah, because it's big.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Sonny, thank you very much for that call. And John Ralston,
your fellow Las Vegas, what do you call Las Vegas?
In Las Vegas, las Vegan, las Vegan some of us
are vegans, took but what about that? I mean, if
you get a call on your phone from an unknown number,
you're probably not you may not answer it, and you're
certainly not going to give them all the information about
(25:09):
yourself and what you think.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Actually, it drives my wife crazy, Jeremy, because I do
answer some of those calls just to have fun with
the people. But clers, I can probably talk more about
this as well, Jeremy. But one of the problems that
I've heards posters that I trust and know personally talk
about is how is the difficult response rates that they've
had to deal with as time has gone on, Because
(25:32):
people like my fellow Las Vegan don't want to answer
their phones and it's difficult to get people to respond
to polls because they're afraid that they're trying to get
some information under the guise of polling, and it's very, very.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Difficult to do.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
And people are skeptical of just taking cold calls, which
is why different different methods of polling, texting and online
panels and the way these they may not be as
accurate unless you really understand that it's going to take
a while to get a good sample, that you have
to wait, the samples that you have to have the
(26:10):
model of the electorate that you believe is going to exist.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
You know how they have those scam likely things for Apple,
they should do polster and then like two smiley emogency.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Right then people would pick up let's hear from MJ.
Who's in Seattle, MJ, what do you think do you
trust the polls?
Speaker 12 (26:31):
Well, there's two different questions on that. Predictively or informationally.
I suppose strictly as a matter of information, I guess
there's some relevance to them. Is as good as a guideline,
But predictably no, absolutely not. I mean, consider we have
to consider what the poll is. It is essentially a
sliver of a larger group, a portion a representative portion
(26:54):
of a larger group. So for mathematically for it to
be accurate, larger group would need be fairly homogenous for
that sliver to represent the larger hole. But the more
diverse the larger group is, the less predictive a sliver
is going to be because you may or may not
get the same proportion and the same percentages of the
(27:16):
respondents of the larger group. So right out of the gate, structurally,
it's it's kind of difficult to put a lot of
weight on that. And then substantively there are good and
bad faith reasons why they're simply not able to be trusted,
you know, some bad faith reasons. You might be answering
it correctly because you're made to feel socially that your
(27:39):
opinion is not right to answer differently, you know, or
you might change your mind. You might receive new information
that you didn't have at the time of the poll,
you know, And there's some good faith reasons you intended
to go vote than you didn't or answer accurately. But
you're you're simply not gonna pull the lever. You know,
you're not going to place your ballot, so predictively. It
(28:00):
just doesn't feel like there's much to go on.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, that's a great points, MJ. Thank you very much, Clarissa.
What about that people who may lie to pollsters. We've
heard about over the years that some people may not
have said that they were going to vote for Donald Trump,
but then they did. There are also may be people who,
you know, with the abortion issue, don't want to say
what they're doing, but actually we'll go out and vote
in a certain way. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (28:25):
No, that's right, And I think that's first and foremost.
I agree with the color they're informational, right. I think
that part of the issue is that polls have been
kind of used as a tool to make to solidify
a prediction, whether or not that makes sense in that
moment for us, there are important in terms of identifying
(28:49):
what are the top issues in the minds of voters, right,
And for that that's very different in terms of percentages,
and when you're talking about a horse race, that might
be one or two percentage points apart. So what I
tell people, including about our own pole, is hey, make
sure that you are looking under the hood, right. I
(29:12):
obviously follow a lot of what people who doubt about
the Hispanic electorate and the number of articles I've seen
where people are making a pronouncement about a seismic change
in opinion of the community along the lines of Latinos
used to think the.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
Air that was round, but now they say it's not,
and I'm like, oh my god, wow.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
But then I go and look at the methodology and
they interviewed two hundred people.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's which, in the world of polsters, is not that much. Again,
you can reach us at eight four four four middle
that's eight four four four six four three three five three.
You know, Tylber, We've been talking a lot about twenty sixteen,
but that was not the first time that presidential election
results were not in line with the polls.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Well, that's right. Look go further than nineteen forty eight
contests between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. The Chicago Daily
Tribune famously printed its first edition with the headline Dewey
defeats Truman based on Yeah, bad day for Dewey, based
on poles and a prediction from their political analyst. Of course,
Dewey didn't win. And since we don't have tape of
a newspaper headline, here's a clip of the news about
(30:20):
their campaign.
Speaker 13 (30:21):
In one hundred and forty talks before an estimated two
minion listeners across the nations, Mister Truman hammered away again
and again at the record of the Republican controlled eightieth Congress.
Mike candidate Truman candidate Dewey enters the home stretch of
his first coast to coast tour in Salt Lake City.
He underlines America's unity on foreign policy questions with a
strong denunciation of isolation and appeasement.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Jeremy, I need you to talk like that here out.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Welcome Sarah exactly. You know, Tolliver. I'll tell you what.
They don't campaign in Salt Lake City anymore. We need
that music. We need that music though. Anyway, We'll be
right back with more coming up on the middle. This
is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson at Nevada Public Radio
in Las Vegas. This week and this hour, we're asking
you do you trust the polls? You can call us
(31:07):
at eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four three three five three. I'm joined by
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote
Initiative at UNITOS US and John Ralston of the Nevada Independent.
And before we go back to the phones, John Ralston,
if you're if you can't trust everything you see in
the polls, what else do you look at to try
(31:28):
to figure out what's going on? Because everybody comes to
you to ask you what's going to happen, for example,
in Nevada, what other things are you watching? Well?
Speaker 5 (31:36):
Now, and Clarissa mentioned this, there's so many votes that
are cast early. And it's been true in Nevada for
a long time. There's a two week early voting period,
and for since it really got popular, Jeremy, two thirds
of a vote is in before election day. And so
I am essentially looking into the data of actual votes
and trying to project off of that what the electorate
(31:58):
is going to look like accurately than most polls by
the way they're taking there. I'm not bragging about that.
I just have all that data of real votes to
go by.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
But and what are you saying, by the way, because
people are probably going, well, what does he think what's happening?
Speaker 5 (32:12):
Well, you know, I'm sure that you as a regular
reader of the Nevada Independent, Jeremy, you're reading my early
voting blog, but which I put out. But seriously, the
Republicans are doing very well here early on. But again,
this is the problem that happens with Poles too. Is
it suddenly Republicans say, oh, We're going to win Nevada
and Democrats are saying, oh my god, we're going to
lose Nevada. Nevada has been a democratic state and presidential
(32:35):
race since two thousand and eight. But four hundred thousand
people have already voted here in Nevada. Probably one point
four million are going to be in the electorate. Still
a million people have to vote. These trends are not
set in stone. It looks good for the Republicans early on,
but things can change the mix of the electorate, which
is what we've been talking about why polls might or
(32:56):
might not be accurate. Is going to change, so you know,
and also, Jeremy, look, luckily this isn't TV. People can't
tell that I'm old. I've been around, I've been doing
this for a while, Jeremy. So I have the experience,
I have the sources on the ground who can tell
me what's really happening. And so you have to be
(33:16):
a reporter too. If you're covering poles. You can't just
take them at face lure. And that's one other thing
let me just say quickly and Clarissa will back me
up on this. People don't think about how questions are phrased,
and what the media don't do enough is ask for
the actual polling instrument, look at how they ask the questions.
Don't just look at a polling memo because that's probably
written for a purpose. Look at the actual wording.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
I was talking to our reporter the other day about
our poll and they say, oh my god, you guys
who have your methodology and your crosstufs publicly available? And
I'm like, yeah, we're trying to try to help people
have a better understanding about this electorate, and we want
to be transparent about our data. Plus sometimes we learn
(34:05):
about how to better ask a question when we talk to.
Speaker 7 (34:08):
People and they're able to see it right.
Speaker 6 (34:10):
So absolutely it's important to look at how the question
was asked.
Speaker 7 (34:16):
That matters a great deal too tall the truth.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
That yeah, that early voters tend to sway more democratic,
or is that is an old wives take.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
John, Well, what's happened here?
Speaker 5 (34:26):
And it doesn't happen this way in all states, but
it's definitely been true here. The late Harry Reid erected
this machine where the Democrats bank all these early votes.
So by the time election day comes, as I said,
so many of the votes have been cast. Before election day,
the die is cast, and it's almost impossible for the
Republicans to catch up. That's why today, that's why this
(34:49):
year's president presidential race turnout pattern is so odd. The
Republicans are doing so well.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Now there may be some reasons for that.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
Rural counties are turning out much bigger early.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, early, but that also means they're not going to
vote later.
Speaker 5 (35:03):
That's probably And as an optimistic Democrat told me, look,
there's only so many votes there, and you know, two
thirds of a voters still in Clark County, which is
predominantly Democratic.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Uh, let's go to another swing state and Billy, who's
in Raleigh, North Carolina. Billy, what do you think? Do
you trust the bulls?
Speaker 14 (35:23):
I'm pretty indifferent to them. Living in a purple state.
The presidential election becomes especially here when we voted Trump
twice and then Roy Cooper twice, the presidential race becomes
inconsequential to me. I pay attention more to the more
local races. But I also would say that if they
(35:46):
could be broken out, I know you have a Latino
contributor there, if it could be more broken out by
communities like Latino and people of color communities, So I
know could learn more about that because I know that
was in underserved part of the electorate, or at least
that was how it was portrayed. I think that would
be more interesting to me to know those polls, which
(36:08):
they maybe exist, but I again, I don't really pay
as much attention to them, but if they were more
not as generally done as are you voting for Trump
or Kamala?
Speaker 1 (36:18):
You know, right, Billy, thank you for that, you know, Clarissa,
on that point of Latino voters, I was looking back
and the number of Latinos of voting age in the
US is about forty four million, but only about sixteen
million voted in twenty twenty. Why is that? Do you
think any you think that'll change this time There'll be
(36:38):
more turnout among Latinos.
Speaker 6 (36:42):
So there's a couple of different things going on, and
we're about thirty two million plus I think in terms
of citizen voting age population.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oh, I see okay, right, because there may be some
that are not sating.
Speaker 6 (36:52):
So in a lot of times people say, oh, there's
over thirty million Latinos elegivot vote, and I say, okay,
Aggregating data is important. If people are not registered come
election day, they're not eligible to vote, right. So what
that allows us to do is in presidential years, more
(37:13):
than eighty percent of Latinos who are registered vote. So
what we have midterms, as we know, are a different animal.
But what we really have is a voter registration opportunity gap.
And as you all know, of the obscene, increasingly obscene
amounts of money spent in every election cycle, an infinitesimal
(37:35):
amount goes into voter registration. And that's where the biggest
opportunity is in terms of the growth of the Latino electorate.
But even with that, we are the second fastest growing
because we are a young population and every year one
million Latino US citizens are turning eighteen and becoming eligible
to register and vote.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
That's why, by the way, we'll have to see whether
the tailor's wift voter registration drive has an effect in
this election. Let's go to Bill who's in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Bill do you trust the polls.
Speaker 15 (38:09):
I don't trust the polls quite frankly, And I think
too many people who are just afraid to tell the
truth of how they're going to vote. They're afraid to
tell each other. There's such a divergence between how we
feel about things. And I think it's awful hot to
be so savvy that you can figure out whether Chris
is tell them the truth or not, even with all
(38:29):
the different ways you ask questions and so forth. So
I'm going to concerned, But I do have a question
for your panel and.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
All of you.
Speaker 15 (38:35):
Yeah, yeah, What's what has happened? When I was younger,
and I'm pretty old the gallup pole was the only
one we heard of. I hear about so many different
down polls today from all these different organizations, every news organization,
every newspaper. And on top of that, what's the economics
behind it? Who's using them? Because I know in the
(38:55):
past maybe campaigns use them, maybe to try and figure
out where they should puts, But man, they don't seem
to really. It just doesn't seem value. But there's a
ton of money being spent on these things. I don't
understand what's what's the economics about it.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Well, thanks, great question, John Rawlston, you want to take that.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
Well, course I might know more about the exact economics,
but I'll tell you this. Campaigns spend a lot of
money on polls, and campaigns more than the ones that
are done for news organizations want to make sure that
what they're getting is the right information because they can't
afford not to have the right information. So they knows,
(39:35):
as the gentleman said, where to put resources, what groups
they need to target, So they will spend the mense
amount of money on polls. And there are people who
have made a very good living at polling. Because of this,
news organizations can't afford to pay as much as campaigns
can in general, Jeremy, So they will either get a
(39:59):
deal made with a really good pollster or and this
is what's happened too often, news organizations will partner with
a polster who is not as good. And the other
manifestation that's occurred since I started covering politics a long
time ago, Jeremy, is you have partisan polsters of service,
(40:19):
and yeah, a lot of them now. Some of them actually,
while they're partisan, can produce good numbers, but others are
just in business. To control the narrative.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
And you can do that with the sample that you
put out right.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
You can make it a Republican leaning or Democratic leaning sample.
And my problem, again I'm going to be a broken
record on this, is that we in the media trend
tend to treat all polls as being equal. Let's just
put it out because we love numbers, and you gave
us a polling member while we got an exclusive. Let's
get this out. And the other way the world has changed, Jeremy,
(40:53):
is that the velocity with which information moves right, you
want to get it out right away on social media,
on your website and so, and you can't pull it
back even if it turns out not to be a
good poll.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
You know, since we're in Las Vegas, I wish we
had a bet here like they all make them all
on the craps table, where we could every state that
comes in as a call on this show right now,
because we would be really getting around because I'm going
to go to now Ognen Utah and Miranda, who's on
the line, Miranda, welcome to the middle. Go ahead. Do
you trust the polls?
Speaker 16 (41:26):
I do, but I trust the polls to be questionable
at best. Right, because there's so much going on at
the edges that a lot of people don't pay attention
to a lot of sort of the people consuming the news,
consuming the media, they just don't pay attention to those
margins of error. They don't think about, as one of
(41:46):
your panelists said, the methodology, as Bill said, you know
your your previous caller. People don't sort of pay attention
to how much people are or are not made being
truthful with polsters. And there's so much going on that
the people say, hooray, we're up by two points. That
must mean we're winning, without considering those margins of error
(42:10):
and all of these others, all these other pieces and
parts of how polling really works.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Miranda, let me let me ask you a question, just
given that that you obviously are skeptical about what you
see in the polls, who do you think is going
to win the election for president based on what you've
seen so far? Or do you have no idea?
Speaker 16 (42:31):
I am terrified. I have no idea. I know what
I hope for and I know what I'll work for,
but I it in the polling it seems very much
a toss up, and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, Miranda, Thank you very much for that call, Clarissa,
What do you think about that. We've gotten a lot
of callers who don't trust the polls, but they're being
very specific, think about why, the margin of error, the methodology,
and all that sort of thing. People are really very
smart about this and how this works, and they're taking
it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
I think your callers are actually doing a better job
than some reporters out there in terms of what they're saying.
Speaker 7 (43:16):
They're looking at margins of error and everything.
Speaker 6 (43:18):
Whenever we're go I talk to a reporter who says, hey,
I was looking at this cross having your poll, I'm like,
I get so excited because I'm like, okay, you're looking under.
Speaker 7 (43:28):
The hood, but I want to actually ask you.
Speaker 6 (43:33):
Right, In some ways, the question do you trust the
polls is also a bit unfair, Right. It's almost like
asking somebody do you trust your family? And I think
most people would say.
Speaker 11 (43:47):
For what or for what?
Speaker 6 (43:49):
I trust my cousins on fashion, I trust this one
for you know whatever. So maybe that's where the grain
of salt comes in, or or to simply say, we
have to be discerning and understand. Is this a push
pull of somebody is trying to shape the narrative or
(44:10):
is this somebody who's just trying to put out the
data of what people are saying in that moment.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Okay, let's go to Michelle, who's in Hatley, Wisconsin. Michelle,
go ahead, welcome to the middle.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
Hi.
Speaker 17 (44:22):
Good. You mean I do not trust the poles. And
the reason I say that is twofold. First of all,
when Biden dropped out and Harris became the presumptive nominee,
there was a like a proverbial shift in the narrative
and there felt like a different energy. There seems to
be a lot more enthusiasm behind her. And then in
(44:44):
the last few weeks the things that I just find
that if fifty percent of people are behind a person
who is talking about how an admirable Hitler was in
his top generals and chief of stass are calling him,
I fe just that fifty percent are aligning themselves without
him with him. Excuse me, it's just be on the tail.
(45:06):
And the other one is I am a member of
IPSOS and I have been for twenty years, and the
polls that I'm getting are very They're very how should
I say this, They're very geared toward a certain electorate,
like they're they're geared toward Democrats, or they're geared toward
hopefully you're a Republican myself. I'm not on any voter
(45:28):
roll or any registration. I'm not even registered as an independent.
But I've voted both the parties before, and I just
I don't feel like the polls are as streamlined as
they want us to be, or as.
Speaker 14 (45:42):
By partisdent.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
And I guess it is a good way to put it, Michelle,
thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
John Ralson, I have to tell you, first of all,
we have a unanimity in the poll we've taken.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Of people have called in right.
Speaker 5 (45:52):
Right, none of them drusts the polls, so that that
is one poll that we can trust. But I see
this question of not trusting the polls in the same
way that people say they hate negative ads, and in
the sense that, let me make the analogy, Senator X
is a crook. Oh, I don't be that's so negative.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I hate that.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
Then you do the exit polls and you interview the
same person, why did you vote against the opponent?
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Well, Senator X is a crook.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
I saw it on TV that there is there's a
disconnect because people when they talk about the race, the
presidential race, they're talking about it being so close. Why
do they think it's so close, Jeremy, Because the polls
are telling them even though they don't trust them. So
there's a disconnect that goes on there. And and I
do think people tune out stuff more than they ever
(46:39):
have when it has to do with politics and polling.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
And all the rest of it. Let me just ask
each of you a final question as we close out
this hour and claricity you first. One of the reasons
that polls matter, I think is because if they're way
off and people think they're going to be one way,
then when they when the election turns out the other way,
they they think it's not fair, that it's rigged. They
(47:02):
may turn to violence, as we saw in January sixth,
twenty twenty one. Are you worried about that happening this
time just because of the poll expectation? And is there
anything that you think that we in the media can
do to help in terms of what we say when
poles are mentioned.
Speaker 7 (47:18):
So, I think those are different things.
Speaker 6 (47:21):
I'll deal with the second one about I do think
that the media can continue to remind people that a
poll is a snapshot in time, that the margins of
errors mean that this is a dead heat and can.
Speaker 7 (47:34):
Go either way.
Speaker 6 (47:35):
You know, those kinds of things to help readers understand
what they are seeing.
Speaker 7 (47:41):
In terms of the polls fueling violence.
Speaker 5 (47:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:45):
No, there's other people who are doing that and will
do it even if the poll results were not even close,
because I think that they've started already pumping a narrative
to leave the door open.
Speaker 7 (47:58):
For that no matter what happens. John Ralston, that's unfortunate.
Speaker 5 (48:02):
Yeah, I mean, the horse has left the barn on
that one. I totally agree with Clarissa on this Germans.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
It does.
Speaker 5 (48:08):
It worries me every day, not just as a journalist,
but as a citizen, as a parent, as a husband,
all the rest of it. We should all be concerned
about this because of what is being fueled. And no
matter what the polls say, that there are people who
are not going to believe, not going.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
To accept the results of this election.
Speaker 5 (48:28):
You know, I hope and pray that we don't have
anything resembling January sixth again ever in the history of
this country. But it's not because of a post. Luckily,
there are some things that have cropped up that didn't
used to exist. Pole aggregators who put together a bunch
of poles and put that out and say this is
what the average is. But still I don't think that's
(48:48):
an issue and the issue that you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Well, John Ralston, founder and editor of the Nevada Independent,
and Clarissa Martinez di Castro, vice president of the Latino
Vote Initiative, Anita's us. Thank you both so much, thank.
Speaker 7 (48:59):
You, thank you, And one thing be sure of go
out and vote yes.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
That definitely, and also thanks to burwood yost to Franklin
and Marshall. And next week in our last pre election show, Toliver,
we want to hear from people about how they're feeling, hopes, fears.
We're going to be joined by a great panel next week,
including Enrique A. Sevedo from Univision and see it former
CNN Chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Be sure to call in at eight four four four
Middle that's eight four four four six four three three
five three, or you can write out, write to us
and listen to the Middle dot com and sign up
for our free weekly newsletter.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
The Middle is brought to you by Longnock Media, distributed
by Illinois Public Media and or Ban Illinois. Produced by
Harrison Patino, Danie Alexander, Sam Burmistas and John Barthur. Technical
director is Jason Croft. A special thanks to Dave Becker
and Brionna Joseph. Here at Nevada Public Radio in Las Vegas,
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and I will talk to you next
week
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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