AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A flurry of polls in recent weeks have landed as the midterm election draws closer. Recent surveys show Democrats ahead in key districts and states, but with the election still weeks away, how much can these polls really predict? Well, we ask senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro to come by and help us understand what to make of all these numbers. Hi, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey there.
CHANG: All right. So there are so many polls out there, a lot of data. How should people be interpreting these numbers that they're seeing?
MONTANARO: The only thing people need to know at this point is that the compass is certainly pointing in Democrats' direction, and that's really all you need to know from a horse race perspective. And that's because we are so expecting in our society such specificity...
CHANG: Yes.
MONTANARO: ...Out of polls when they're really not. They're kind of more of a fuzzy target with a margin of error. And people don't think about that all the time...
CHANG: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...Because we have such close elections. We're so closely divided that telling people that, you know, a two-point race means it could be three points lower or three points higher and that the other person might even have the lead, that's not very satisfying...
CHANG: Right.
MONTANARO: ...To people. But...
CHANG: No, humans hunger for certainty.
MONTANARO: That's right. You know, and when it comes to horse race polling, really, it's not the best use of polling. There's so much better stuff underneath. I mean, I look at horse race polling as, like, the sprinkles on ice cream. Like, I like sprinkles, right?
CHANG: Yeah. Me too.
MONTANARO: And a lot of people like sprinkles. But if you just eat sprinkles, you're just going to get a mouthful of wax, right?
CHANG: (Laughter).
MONTANARO: I mean, you got to - the good stuff, the best stuff is underneath.
CHANG: Exactly. I want to know more about what is underneath. So tell me about the bowl of ice cream that you're gleaning from the numbers.
(LAUGHTER)
MONTANARO: Yeah, I'll stop the ice cream metaphor. But, you know, what I'm looking at are things like job approval ratings over time, issues over time and how people feel about things, the intensity of opposition, especially in a midterm year, which can really determine whether or not a president's party loses seats and by how many, you know, which issues matter most and to which groups, which party is more trusted to handle those issues and who they blame for the problems that they see the country having. Those are more interesting...
CHANG: Yeah.
MONTANARO: ...Certainly gives you more depth, and you can tell a better story out of that.
CHANG: I agree. There are all these other factors to look at, but if one were to look at polls, what do you look for in terms of determining whether the data is reputable or high quality?
MONTANARO: Yeah. So look, for me, I'm looking at high-quality polls and giving more weight to those in my mind, anyway. And those are polls that are rigorously conducted. They're multimodality. In other words, they're trying to find people not just on land lines or cell phones, but they're trying to get them by text or online and trying to do all of those things together. And most importantly, they're transparent. If you can't find a methodology, that is a major red flag of whether or not you should or should not trust a poll.
CHANG: Got it. What are some other red flags that show a poll might not be so great?
MONTANARO: Does it have a long track record? Is this a pollster that we've seen often in a state in particular? Because I have to tell you, state polling versus national polling is very different and much lower quality.
CHANG: State polling is.
MONTANARO: Yeah. So when we're talking about these Senate races, there's a lot of polls right now out there that are just not well conducted or they're done by AI or they're by some company that I've never heard of and I can't find their methodology for. You got to be a little skeptical of that. And I think when it comes to the national polls, they tend to be a little bit better because they're backed often by bigger media outlets that understand what the better polling outfits are, and they try to hire them. For example, we work with Marist, a very high-quality pollster, conducts our national poll with PBS News. Marist also does some state polling for other outlets. Siena College (ph), for example, does polling, obviously, with the New York Times.
And there's a whole host of other polls that do a good job. The Fox News poll, for example, is very good. They hire a Democratic and Republican firm that go and conduct their surveys. NBC News does the same thing, where they have a Democratic and Republican firm conduct their polls, as well. So, you know, there are good, high-quality polls. There are fewer of them in the states really because of the decline in local journalism and the lack of money that's available to pay for that kind of good, rigorous, frequent polling that's really necessary to measure in a campaign, because, remember, polls are not predictive.
CHANG: Right.
MONTANARO: They're snapshots during the time that they were conducted and by that particular pollster. They're not supposed to be for, oh, here's what's going to happen - now it's October - in three weeks when the game hasn't even been played yet, when the votes haven't even been cast.
CHANG: That is NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thank you so much for your guidance.
MONTANARO: You're so welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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