What The Polls Are Really Telling You with Pew Research Center's Jocelyn Kiley

In Reality

At this moment, weeks shy of the 2024 election, the polls are showing that the race between Trump and Harris is neck and neck. It’s tight nationally. It’s tight in all the swing states. If you think you know who’s going to win, you’re going on gut, not numbers.

So what good are polls this year? In Eric's class at the University of Chicago, he put the question to guest speaker Jocelyn Kiley, senior associate director, US politics and public opinion at the Pew Research Center. It turns out that polls can tell you a lot, even now, if you know how to look. Jocelyn and I discuss the stability of poll results this year despite events like the assassination attempts and what that says about the information environment. We’ll discuss how to tell trustworthy polls from slapdash ones; and we’ll cover how you really should read polls, which is not to find out who’s ahead in the horse race.

This interview was recorded live in my class at the University of Chicago’s Graham School on October 7th.

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Produced by Tom Platts at Sound Sapien
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Alliance for Trust in Media
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