My Podcast: Episode 4 – How Do Polls Work Edition!

This week’s episode of my new podcast is a treat. I talk to Professor Charles Franklin, one of the nation’s top polling experts. Charles is also the outside consultant we work with for statistical and methodology questions tied to PollTracker. We’re now in the thick of a presidential campaign. Everybody’s obsessing about polls, everybody gets worried about polls and everybody – at least real political junkies – knows some of the basics of how polls work. But I thought it would be interesting and helpful to run some basic questions by a true expert. That way you and I could both get a really grounded understanding. Should you try to un-skew polls if the crosstabs look weird? How do pollsters “weight” samples? Are the online polls as good as the traditional phone polls? We get into all of that and more in this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoy it.