How Political Polls Work – Mo News Interview

After the most recent presidential elections, there are ongoing questions about the accuracy of polling and which ones to trust. And whenever I post a story about a poll, I get so many requests to do more on this topic. 

Enter Anthony Salvanto, CBS News' director of elections and surveys. He is also the author of “Where Did You Get This Number? A Pollster’s Guide To Making Sense of the World.” 

I talked to him about how pollsters get a true picture of the mood and sentiment of the country and why 1,000 people is the right sample size for both a city the size of Chicago and the entire US population. His answer: We need to think about the accuracy of a poll the same way we get a sense for how a bowl of soup or spaghetti sauce tastes. From one spoonful.

More on that analogy in our interview, as well as his answers on how the internet has changed polling, his response to critics, which populations are the most difficult to capture and why polls have more power than ever before.

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Mosheh Oinounou (@mosheh) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. He has 20 years of experience at networks including Fox News, Bloomberg Television and CBS News, where he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and launched the network's 24 hour news channel. He founded the @mosheh Instagram news account in 2020 and the Mo News podcast and newsletter in 2022.

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