Sam Wong
speaker
20 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2012
last heard Nov 2012
Sam Wong’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, I think there are two possible motivations that a traditional pollster could have.
You mentioned Gallup.
Since they were reporting Mr. Romney up by five points, I think that perhaps a little self-examination might be ordering.
In fact, aggregators can give useful feedback to pollsters to help shape their craft.
And so we're a tool for them as well.
The other use of polls is that individual polls can always give very interesting information about subgroups, say, for instance, how people over 40 feel or how people under 30 feel.
Those are called crosstabs in the polling industry.
And I think that those crosstabs are of great interest in understanding what people think.
And I think there's lots of opportunity for pollsters to use their craft in ways that they've done in the past and can do in the future.
All we're doing as aggregators is taking what they do and putting it together and getting a somewhat sharper view.
So I would say that I don't think there's very much wrong that pollsters are doing.
I just think that there's such a lot of information that they have a new way of sharpening their craft.
I think one problem with the current media approach to interpreting polls is that individual entities tend to use their own polls.
USA Today will use its Gallup information.
The New York Times and CBS will partner to use their own information from Quinnipiac.
And so one thing that they do is they tend to not watch one another.
And I think some low level of aggregation on their part would really shape their coverage better.
It's certainly possible that natural disasters can actually reduce typical urban deaths if households change their behavior on those days.
For example, driving continues to be a major cause of death in the United States.
And if people hunker down in their homes and change their behavior, they can actually perhaps reduce their risk exposure because a storm is taking place.
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