Democracy Forum 10/19/18

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine
Engineer: Amy Browne

Political Polls: Can We Ever Trust Them Again?

Key Discussion Points:
the state of the art in political polling,
why polls sometimes get it wrong,
the emerging challenges for pollsters,
what citizens need to know about who and what to believe.

Guests:
aAmy Fried, Professor & Department Chair, Political Science, University of Maine umaine.edu/polisci/faculty-and-staff/amy-fried/
Courtney Kennedy, Director of Survey Research at the Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/staff/courtney-kennedy/

To learn more about this topic:
Can we still trust polls? by Courtney Kennedy, May, 2018, from FactTank: News in Numbers at the Pew Research Center.
Why Polling Can Be So Hard by Nate Cohn, September, 2018, from TheUpshot at the New York Times.
You can trust the polls in 2018, if you read them carefully by Josh Pasek and Michael Traugott for The Conversation.
Pathways to Polling: Crisis, Cooperation and the Making of Public Opinion Professions, Amy Fried, 2011.

The all-volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Sheila Kirby, Ann Luther, Maryann Ogonowski, Pam Person, Leah Taylor, Linda Washburn

FMI re League of Women Voters of Maine: www.lwvme.org