September 30, 2024
7:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Speaker/Topics:
Between now and election day, when millions of Americans go to the polls to cast their votes, there will be an enormous intensification of reporting on polling results purporting to predict election outcomes from the presidential level to local races. Are you struggling to make sense of these polls or are you just tuning them out as so much pre-election noise?
At its September 30th Fall Luncheon, LWVMC members and friends were treated to a timely in-depth look at what polls get right - and what they get wrong. Trending Topics speaker Steve Raabe, founder of Annapolis based Opinionworks and pollster for the Baltimore Sun, raised questions to provoke attendees’ understanding of what polls can and cannot measure, and dramatic changes in polling methodologies in recent election cycles.
Mr. Raabe’s presentation is well worth watching for insights into how polling methodologies have changed and whether these changes have improved polling reliability. For instance, there has been a drastic decrease in reliance on landline polls in favor of a blend of methodologies to reach different and underrepresented segments of the population, including cell phone polling, text to web polling, probability panels, nonprobability sampling such as opt-in panels, and more.
Pros and cons of each methodology were presented, with audience members gaining a greater awareness of how accurately these methodologies may predict voter behavior. There’s so much more to learn about, including social desirability/undesirability biases, how to assess likely voter poll results in swing states, and how pollsters weight results based on what they have learned about over- and under-reporting.