Miscellaneous
Since 2016, polling has become somewhat of a controversial topic in the world of politics. Some Democrats have their concerns because of the pure shock of Donald Trump's victory in 2016, while some Republicans distrust polls because they have recently shown President Trump down considerable margins in key states. Despite this, public opinion institutes and pollsters have continued to churn out what they believe to be reputable data points about many campaigns all over the country. One of these pollsters, Dr. Christopher Borick, joined the Millennial Politics Podcast this week to discuss his work, how polls have improved over the past few years, and to look toward next week's elections. Dr. Borick is a Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. His polls, only one of six to receive an A+ rating from FiveThirtyEight, are widely regarded as some of the best in the country. Some of the things that he thinks contribute to this prestige are their level of transparency and their sampling and interview methods. Another aspect that Muhlenberg has recently included is weighting by educational attainment, which Dr. Borick says the absence of may have led to some of the polling errors we saw in 2016 in states like Wisconsin. In talking about the current state of the 2020 race, the professor said that as the polls currently stand, an error large enough to lead to a President Trump victory is a low-probability event but is certainly not impossible. However, he also cautioned that a polling error wouldn't necessarily be biased towards the Democrats as it was in 2016 and that in 2012, polls actually underestimated President Obama's performance. Dr. Borick went into detail about modeling and gave us some insight into what he thinks the probabilities of certain outcomes are for next week. In that conversation, he shared how factors like voter suppression, voter turnout, and mail-in voting affect the modeling and polling industry and what challenges those fields face in an unprecedented election cycle like 2020. If you liked this episode, be sure to like and subscribe to our podcast, rate us five-stars, and leave a review. It's one of the best ways for new listeners to find us. Stay tuned for our next episode.