Anthony Salvanto: Polling and Public Opinion, What Does It All Mean?

Midterm elections are fast approaching and many are looking at polls with a more critical eye than in 2016. Yet people still expect polls to offer clear cut answers, not just about which candidate will win or lose but also about the complex issues facing the country. Anthony Salvanto notes that “the very idea of expressing things in probabilistic terms is to express uncertainty, but too often everyone just wants to express things in quite the opposite fashion: as either yes or no.” By recognizing this ambiguity, he points out, we might be better equipped to understand what’s really driving voters on hot-button issues. Salvanto is the person behind many of the poll numbers seen today and the author of the new book “Where Did You Get This Number? A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World.” He is an expert in utilizing numbers as a language to interpret the stories they tell about people. Salvanto will take a look at the language of poll numbers, explore how these numbers are derived and interpreted, and ask why they sometimes fail us.

Can we use polls to tell where the country may be headed and what’s really driving them? Is America as divided as it seems, and what are the big factors that shape how Americans think about issues?

Anthony Salvanto, PhD, is CBS News director of Elections and Surveys. He currently conducts all polling across the nation, states, and congressional races, and heads the decision desk that projects outcomes on election night. He appears regularly on Face the Nation, the CBS Evening News and CBS This Morning.

The author will sign books at the end of the program. A limited number will be available for purchase at the event.

SPEAKER:
Anthony Salvanto
Director of Elections and Surveys, CBS

MODERATOR:
Chris Weicher
Producer, CBS News

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[edmsing]

Was anyone not surprised to see program host of CBS’s Face
the Nation, Margaret Brennan, always tastefully hair dyed, in a segment discussion
with an always odd appearing Anthony Salvanto, CBS News, elections and surveys
director, who has seemingly  been
scrubbed from Wikipedia, will never probably ever appear with one speck of gray
hair, and oh yes, because while seated, Miss Brennan could be comfortably seen in
high heels, all the above being perfectly normal at CBS and on chat shows in
general…