MINNEAPOLIS — Whether it’s on our radio or in your social media, election poll results are hard to avoid.
Monday evening, the last CBS News and YouGov Poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris with a three-point lead over former President Donald Trump nationally.
Analyzing numbers and making sense of them is the mission of Anthony Salvanto, director of elections and polling at CBS News.
“Democrats have gotten more excited since (Harris) became the presumptive nominee,” he explained of Harris’ three-point lead. “These are the battlegrounds that are going to determine the Electoral College and therefore the presidency, and (Harris and Trump) are tied.”
To create an effective poll, Salvanto said it has to be a microcosm of the group he’s trying to survey. The groups can include voters, Democrats, Republicans, people of different genders, age groups and education levels.
“People always ask me, ‘Why didn’t I participate in the poll?’ Well, you can and you could have, but even if you didn’t, there was someone in that poll who looked just like you enough to represent you,” he said. “Over 81 million people voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, which means that many of those voters could have represented someone who wasn’t included in a poll based on a range of demographics.”
According to Salvanto, for the most part, people are approached directly and asked to complete an online survey.
Nowadays, email invitations and voting apps are used, but occasionally you can just make an old-fashioned phone call to registered voters to find a participant.
“The key is that they are invited to take it. It’s not like anyone can just come and take it if they want,” Salvanto added.
Salvanto said he believes polls are very accurate, even when you look at what happened in 2016: the proverbial “bruise” in the polls, when Hillary Clinton beat Trump in many polls.
He pointed out that the polls were somewhat accurate in 2016, as Clinton had won the most votes, but Analyze Their methodology found that college graduates were overrepresented in polls, overestimating support for Clinton.
Voters without a college education, particularly white men, voted en masse for Trump.
That’s why Salvanto places more weight on polls of hard-hit states and the Electoral College votes they get. And he says knowing a poll’s margin of error will help its accuracy.
Many voters say WCCO polls have no impact on their voting behavior, but they do serve a purpose.
“I think it’s especially true for politicians,” Terrance Hendricks said. “And who they’re campaigning for.”
“I think they’re most useful for getting a sense of where people stand on a particular issue,” adds Gretchen Buchanan.
Jeff Wagner
