MINNEAPOLIS — Whether on our radio or your social media feeds, the results of election polls are hard to miss.
Monday evening, at the latest CBS News and YouGov survey Vice President Kamala Harris had a three-point lead over former President Donald Trump nationwide.
Processing the numbers and making sense of them is the mission of Anthony Salvanto, director of elections and polling at CBS News.
“The Democrats have become more enthusiastic since (Harris) was seen as the likely candidate,” he said of Harris’s three percentage point lead. “It’s the battlegrounds that will decide the electoral college and therefore the presidency, and (Harris and Trump) are neck and neck.”
To create an effective poll, Salvanto said, it must be a microcosm of the group he is trying to survey. The groups could consist of voters, Democrats, Republicans, people of different genders, ages and education levels.
“People always ask me, ‘Why wasn’t I part of the poll?’ Well, maybe I was and maybe you were, but even if not, someone in that poll was similar enough to you to represent you,” he said. “More than 81 million people voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, meaning many of those voters could have represented someone who wasn’t included in a poll based on a number of demographic characteristics.”
The majority of CBS News’ polling involves contacting people directly and asking them to take an online survey, Salvanto said.
These days, email invitations and poll apps are common, but occasionally a good old-fashioned phone call to registered voters will result in a respondent taking the survey.
“The key is that they are invited to do it. It’s not like anyone can come in and take it if they want,” Salvanto added.
Salvanto said he believes polls are very accurate, even considering 2016, the proverbial “black eye” of opinion polls, when Hillary Clinton was seen winning over Trump in many polls.
He pointed out that the polls in 2016 were somewhat accurate, as Clinton won the majority of the vote, but Analyses The results of their methodology showed that college graduates were overrepresented in the polls, leading to an overestimation of support for Clinton.
Voters without college degrees, especially white men, voted for Trump in large numbers.
That’s why Salvanto puts more emphasis on polls in swing states and the electoral college votes they receive. And he says knowing a poll’s margin of error contributes to its accuracy.
Many voters tell WCCO that the polls do not influence their voting behavior, but they serve a purpose.
“I think this is especially true for politicians,” says Terrance Hendricks. “And who they are campaigning for.”
“I think they’re probably most useful for getting a sense of where people stand on certain issues,” added Gretchen Buchanan.
Jeff Wagner
