Cross Tabs

With the elections a little over 2 weeks away, "affordability" is everywhere — and KFF's Ashley Kirzinger thinks a big share of it is about health care. Ashley, KFF's director of survey methodology, joins Farrah to talk about how KFF reaches people most polls miss, why health costs now tie gas prices as Americans' top household worry, and how majorities of Republicans backed extending the ACA tax credits right up until the is...

Zoe Padgett, who runs public opinion research on SurveyMonkey's survey science team, joins Farrah to walk through three years of tracking data on how Americans actually feel about AI — not the LinkedIn-hype version. They dig into an unusual generational "crisscross" (Gen Z's trust in AI dropped from 2023 to 2026 while every older generation's rose), why brands selling AI tools are still just selling the category itself rather...

Every few years, Pew stops asking Americans whether they're Republicans or Democrats and instead lets the data decide where the lines actually fall. This year it landed on nine groups — and the most-discussed one is defined less by policy than by style: 53% of the "No Apologies Right" say they like it when politicians they agree with humiliate their opponents. Senior Researcher Baxter Oliphant and Research Associate Gabriel B...

Before things get heavier this fall, a conversation about the plumbing: CNN Polling and Election Analytics Editor Ariel Edwards-Levy joins Farrah to talk about why survey response rates keep sliding, what fraud and burnout look like from the respondent's side, and a fun experiment Ariel ran called "Why Are You Talking to Me?" — which breaks down, by age, race, and party, the real reasons people bother answering a poll at all.

Britain has spent a century as a two-party country. That may be over - and this week's local elections may be the strongest signal yet of a big breakup.

This week, I talk with Matthew Price, analyst and strategist at Focal Data in London, about what's happening to British politics right now — and what the polls are (and aren't) able to tell us about it. They cover what the 2024 MRP polls got wrong about Labour's vote share, h...

What happens when the people making decisions on your behalf are running on fumes? In this episode, I talk with Lindsay Scola — former advance person for Barack Obama, Hill staffer, and now sleep health educator — about the always-on culture of American political life, and what it actually costs us. From the Celsius cans visible in every Capitol hallway walk-and-talk, to the pharmacy hand-delivering Alzheimer's medicati...

The Roper Center at Cornell holds the world's oldest social science archive — over 25,000 data sets, nearly 900,000 survey questions, dating all the way back to the 1930s. It's a record not just of politics and elections, but of ordinary life: have you ever spent a night in jail? Would you tell a five-year-old not to lie about seeing a purple dragon? Do you remember the color of your first love's eyes?

Kathleen Weldon, Roper's...

In this episode, I sit down with Charlie Sabgir to unpack the "unprecedented gender gap" facing Gen Z. We dive into new research concerning the economic and social behaviors of young men—from the "gamification" of their finances through crypto and sports betting to their surprising nostalgia for unions and traditional stability. The conversation explores why the "manosphere" is winning the narrative war by offering concrete ...

It's likely that Democrats will retake the House this fall. But the most important question for a new majority is this: what will they use the power for?

This conversation is part of an ongoing series of interviews and explorations I plan to do this year trying to answer a slightly modified version of that question - what should the power be for?

One answer to that question is paid leave for all. In 1993, the Clinton Administration a...

Cross Tabs End Notes

The hardest thing to do in polling it seems is to accurately guess who the voters will be. Pollsters get better and better at weighting samples to more accurately reflect observable characteristics of voters, which is why the forecasts keep getting close to the center of the bullseye. But there are still these harder to observe characteristics that it's almost impossible to model... unless you can figure out wha...

We're living in a time ruled by old men.

And honestly, it's not going great. The richest, most powerful men on the planet - billionaires and political leaders alike - are well over 70, on average.

Meanwhile, young people are suffering from the high cost of living, unaffordable housing, high consumer debt, and political unrest.

Based on recent polling, they're not happy.

The right has made a long term investment in their political goals...

There's an unreality about this political moment. It makes it hard to hold people's attention, to create any kind of focus on any issue or event or action. People don't know what's real, what's certain, what's not just for dumb show.

And that is both by design, and the output, of totalitarian thinking. Aesthetics are ever-present in politics - the color of a suit, or whether someone even wears one can fill a news cycle and constitut...

Conor Kilgore is a producer of The Focus Group Podcast, and a qualitative researcher at Longwell Partners - and he joined host Farrah Bostic to discuss the value of listening to real people talk about their real beliefs and experiences in their own words. And he brought clips! We also discussed his journey into this work via work on political campaigns, and got as deep into the weeds as possible on how they do what they do.

Subscrib...

Keeping up our monthly Mood Swings discussion of polling and political strategy news that enrages, confuses, and inspires, host Farrah Bostic and guest Lauren Goldstein discuss the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, which explores American voters' opinions on a wide range of current events. We discussed the question types, answer options, and interpretation of the fairly extensive data - and beg researchers to remember how important it is t...

Farrah is joined by Kevin Collins, co-founder and Chief Research Officer at Survey 160, about the applicability of AI in survey methodologies, the perils of synthetic sample, and the importance of respondent preferences when it comes to survey mode and the respondent experience. We discussed Kevin's findings in some early explorations of available tools about the impact on data quality, the potential role of AI in coding open-ended...

In this episode of Cross Tabs, host Farrah Bostic discusses the intricacies of the current political climate and the emotional toll with guest Lauren Goldstein, author of the 'Mind the Gap' newsletter. The conversation touches on the overwhelming events of the last month, including ICE raids, National Guard actions, and the shutdown. Lauren shares her own struggles with the civic mood and together they explore the concept of thermo...

 Today on the show, we are diving deep into the fast changing world of political campaigns with someone who's had a front row seat to its transformation. Dr. Michael D. Cohen is the CEO of Cohen Research Group. A leading firm at the intersection of politics, public affairs, and corporate strategy.

He's the creator of the Congress in your Pocket suite of AI powered mobile apps, and teaches digital political strategy at Johns Hopkins ...

Farrah Bostic talks with G. Elliott Morris, the founder of Strength in Numbers (and author of a book by the same name) to discuss the evolution of data journalism and the critical role of public opinion polling in a healthy democracy. Morris, formerly of The Economist and FiveThirtyEight, shares his vision for a new era of "pollster-driven poll journalism" and how he aims to fill a crucial gap in the media landscape.

We also discuss...

On July 1, I sat down to talk to Scott Keeter and Hannah Hartig from Pew Research about their 2024 Validated Voter Survey.

We talked about the challenges of analyzing elections using panel data, and about the shifts in makeup of the electorate between 2020 and 2024, and what that means for how campaigns think about balancing turnout and persuasion strategies. More than anything, they tell us, mobilization is a result of campaigning....