The director of elections and surveys at CBS News, Anthony Salvanto, said Friday that is essential for pollsters to be transparent with the public so that they can understand how the polling process works.
“The role of a pollster is to be neutral. The role of a pollster is to listen to what people have to say,” Salvanto told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.” “But look, we get skepticism. Pollsters always hear people say, ‘you can’t possibly represent me. You didn’t talk to me. You talked to a thousand people. How does this possibly work?'”
“I do think that’s incumbent upon us to always tell people how we put these together,” he continued. “To show people we’re creating these representative samples, so that even if we didn’t talk to you, we talked to somebody like you,” he said.
“If you’re a Republican, there are millions of other Republicans, and we talked to one of them, who would have answered the questions the same way that you did. The same if you’re a Democrat, there are millions of others.”
Salvanto’s comments come amid a flurry of polls taking place ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Pollsters and other forecasters faced immense criticism during the 2016 election for finding that a majority of voters said they would vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who ultimately lost to then-candidate Donald Trump.
While Clinton won the popular vote, Trump was able to claim victory by winning the Electoral College.
— Julia Manchester
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