Can We Trust Polls? (Joshua Johnson, The 1A)

Polls show that most Americans don’t believe polls. Rasmussen found that just over a quarter of Americans trust them (but that’s a poll, too).

And after the Brexit vote and the 2016 election went against many pollsters’ predictions, can we blame anyone who is giving percentages a side-eye?

Trustworthy or not, polls are everywhere. They make for click-friendly headlines and they add a feeling of statistical heft to arguments. To paraphrase Homer, “You can use stats to prove anything that’s even remotely true.”

We’ll convene a panel of experts to look at poll methodology, the use of polls in journalism and whether or not we can really trust them.
Interview:
https://the1a.org/shows/2018-02-06/can-we-trust-polls