Last Monday at Pinstripes restaurant in North Bethesda, the League of Women Voters got an update on the latest methods of polling and how to evaluate polls in the news. Among those in attendance were State Senator Cheryl Kagan and District 3 Board of Education representative Julie Yang.
Steve Raabe, founder of the Annapolis based OpinionWorks and official pollster for the Baltimore Sun, told the audience the number of polls has more than doubled since the year 2000. And he had some other interesting insights about the current polling marketplace to share.
According to Raabe, the sweet spot for this Presidential election looks to be the “persuadable voters,” people who consistently vote but are “low information voters”. Also in this category “irregular voters” who vote less consistently and tend to lean towards one candidate. Even taken together they represent a small percentage of voters.
His general recommendations when it comes to polls:
- All pollsters make mistakes, but most try to learn from them
- Phone-only polls are problematic due to social pressures
- Other polling methods like online and texting have plusses and minuses
- We are in a period of polling innovation
- Look for information about the methodology of the poll
- Don’t fret over polling ups and downs. Look at the big picture
