WASHINGTON -- These are the high times for political pollsters. The roughly 183 candidates running for president and 4,323 news outlets following them all need data, and many are ponying up big money for their own public and private surveys.
But with increased business comes increased attention. While pollsters may be in high demand, their work is also increasingly scrutinized.
In the latest Drinking & Talking, we explore the growth of the polling industry and the demands that have come with it. Bill McInturff, a prominent Republican pollster, Anna Greenberg, a prominent Democratic one, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report and Mark Blumenthal of The Huffington Post joined us to discuss several topics:
- The unskew phenomenon of 2012 -- “It was nuts,” McInturff said.
- Whether the polls in New Hampshire in 2008 got it wrong because of an undisclosed racial bias against Barack Obama among voters -- “It was mostly disclosed,” said Greenberg.
- The rise and (expected?) fall of Donald Trump.
“You can win the first round in the high twenties. You can win sort of the second round in the mid-thirties,” said McInturff. “Sooner or later you have to approach forty-plus to start winning, and forty-plus requires a coalition of different kinds of Republicans.”
We also talked shop: how mobile phones have changed polling, why “really bad” media polls have given the industry at large a bad name and whether it breaks a pollster's heart to hear the candidate they work for tell an audience that he or she doesn’t listen to the pollsters.
The discussion can be viewed above. An audio version of the full episode, along with an index of it, is below.
00:25 -- The World Of A Campaign Pollster
1:39 -- The Parallel Between Donald Trump And Bill Clinton
7:18 -- The Nutty Unskew Phenomenon Of 2012
11:18 -- The Most Surprising Survey You’ve Done
13:57 -- Obama And The Bradley Effect
18:08 -- What Have Mobile Phones Done for Polling?
20:26 -- The Dynamic State Of The Polling Industry
"Drinking and Talking" is produced and edited by Christine Conetta, Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, with special thanks to Jason Linkins.