(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
ASMA KHALID, HOST:
Hey there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign.
KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: And I’m Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress.
KHALID: And, Kelsey, you have been working on a series of special episodes that I’ve been fascinated by because I think that they really help us understand how political campaigns work. Last time we talked about political ads. And today we’re going to talk about something that has been on a lot of people’s minds because we are nearing the point where it will be the last day to cast your ballot. And what we’re going to talk about today is polling.
SNELL: Yeah. Polls can play a role in everything from where a candidate invests all of that money that they’re raising to little things about the way they run their campaigns and where they talk and ads. Just – they are so important. And yet, we’re all pretty aware of the kinds of polls that campaigns use to determine the really basic question of who’s up and who’s down and how many people out there still haven’t made up their minds.
KHALID: And, Kelsey, those undecided folks are really, it seems like, the coveted voters that campaigns are after. And at this point, people have less than two weeks to vote. According to the most recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, just 5% of voters are persuadable. Which, Kelsey, to be frank, I will say seems even a tad higher than I would have thought because out in the wild, talking to folks on my campaign travels, I don’t really meet a lot of truly undecided voters.
SNELL: Yeah, it is a super-low number, and it’s something that I talked to GOP super-pollster (ph) Bill McInturff about.
BILL MCINTURFF: The number of actual swing voters has dropped compared to 20 or 30 years ago. We’ve picked partisan sides. So there’s more and more money, more and more focus on what is, arguably, a smaller and smaller number of people. That’s sort of the state of play for where we are today.
SNELL: You know, and those topline numbers – the ones that people kind of follow breathlessly to try to predict the outcome of the election – they are not the only ones that matter to a campaign. The stuff that campaigns really look at are the other questions in those polls. So we’re going to come back to Bill in a little bit. But I want you to imagine now that you’re a Democrat running for office, and you have hired Margie Omero to run your polls. She’s going to ask people who they’re voting for, but then she’s going to dig a little bit deeper.
MARGIE OMERO: So there are a couple of things that we do. We have qualitative – that’s open-ended – where we talk to people and we ask them a question that we don’t give them the different answer categories. They can say whatever they like. What’s on your mind? What are the things you’re looking for in a candidate? What are some issues that you’re facing right now? What do you think is the direction – tell me what you think the direction of the country is right now. And people can say whatever they want to say.
And then there’s closed-ended questions, and that’s typically in a survey where we give people the answer categories. I’m going to read you some things. Which one of these things is closest to your point of view? I’m going to give you some candidates. Which candidate would you vote for? If you had to choose, which candidate do you think is best described by this phrase?
KHALID: OK. So before we get really deep into the nitty gritty of how polling works, Kelsey, I’ve got a quick question for you. Did either one of these pollsters speak about, you know, who they are specifically surveying? Like, how are they finding the people to poll?
SNELL: I had this exact same question. And are they calling people on their landline phones? Are people calling their cellphones? How are you getting to people right now?
OMERO: We get to people in a lot of different ways. So we’ve been adapting, obviously, as an industry, given the fact that – well, you know, when I first started doing this, everybody was reached on their landline, and that was it. There was one way to reach people – landline – the end. Now we have all these different ways.
With the coronavirus, we are finding even more different ways to reach people. We do focus groups through Zoom. We do focus groups where we talk to people in phone one-on-one interviews. Lots of people are at home. They want to make their voice heard. The election is really important. So we are finding people are able to talk to us.
SNELL: So she mentions focus groups there, and those are almost more important to the actual campaigns and how they operate than those horserace polls that we were talking about before. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Bill McInturff in specific is that he’s an expert at these things. He knows how to get a group of people together and get them talking in a way that kind of tells candidates more about the mood of voters, the things that motivate them and, you know, get them to talk about what they really feel in the political moment. And they do it in some pretty crazy ways.
MCINTURFF: So one thing we look at in groups are, one, you know, what people understand. Two, what’s language that makes them feel more positive or more negative about a position? And three, we do a lot of projective exercises. So projective exercises are, hey, if so-and-so candidate were an animal, what kind of animal would he or she be and the reasons why – if they were a car? If you were going on vacation and so-and-so candidate was your next-door neighbor, would he or she pick up your paper for you and pick up your mail? If they came over for lunch, what would they talk about?
KHALID: OK. So, Kelsey, say you are Bernie Sanders and you get a lot of feedback that voters, apparently, think of you as a Subaru. So what do you do with that information?
SNELL: Well, what if a voter tells you that, you know, they think that your candidate should be wearing jeans, and you want to go have a drink with them at a bar, or if your candidate looks like they might wear khakis and play golf? They say that can tell you a lot about the way voters view candidates. And when you ask those questions about issues and get people talking about their feelings about health care or their feelings about immigration, then you learn a little bit more then, yes, I support the Affordable Care Act or, yes, I support building a wall.
KHALID: All right. Well, let’s take a quick break. And when we get back, we’ll have lots more to talk about, both on focus groups and on trusting the polls.
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KHALID: And we’re back. So, Kelsey, why don’t we start by having you walk us through how focus groups actually work?
SNELL: Yeah. I was wondering how they get people talking about these big-picture political things and sharing their feelings.
Bring me to a focus group. So in my mind, I’m picturing I walk into a white-walled room with folding chairs and a mirror where there’s somebody sitting on the other side watching me. Is that really what a focus group is like?
MCINTURFF: Yeah, that’s actually not that different. You’re in a room with a small number of people. We believe in homogeneous groups. In other words, we do women by themselves, men by themselves, Republicans by themselves, Democrats by themselves. We think and believe the more homogeneous the population, the room, the more they share and talk.
SNELL: Do you think that people are more honest when they’re around people that look and feel like them that they can relate to?
MCINTURFF: You know, if you’re in a Republican primary voter, for example, and you talk about your views about immigration and building the wall and your attitudes about that issue – those are sensitive issues in our country – if you say it in front of other Republican primary voters, they agree with you. And because they agree with you, you feel comfortable and you say and talk more about it. Or if you’re in a Democrat primary voter group and you start talking about the coronavirus and national mask mandate – Donald Trump – you can say a lot of stuff that might set hair on fire if you were with Republican primary voters, and a group of other Democrat primary voters, they agree with you. And what I’m suggesting is our experience has been the more you’re in a group of people that share certain common things with you, the more comfortable you are, the deeper and the more you will express your opinion.
KHALID: OK. So then, Kelsey, you have all of these opinions – right? – from people who participated in the focus group. So what does the candidate do with that information?
SNELL: Both of our pollsters said that campaigns use the information basically the same way they do straightforward polling data. It’s just kind of about building a picture of what’s at stake and what people care about. And they said that good candidates use that information to kind of tweak what they talk about. It’s not about kind of reformatting your entire campaign to fit what’s coming out of these groups.
OMERO: Polling really is about finding a way to translate what the candidates want to say into something that voters hear in the same way that the candidates mean them and vice versa. You’re translating what voters think and are feeling and want and their thoughts into something that’s actionable for candidates. So it’s a – you’re translating it in both directions.
SNELL: They say that there are limitations to the number of people that polls can reach. There are limitations in the ways that people answer questions. But the idea is that, you know, these extra questions in polls that give people more open-ended answers, and these focus groups are supposed to get at that nuance and are supposed to kind of help people be more open and honest about which way they’re leaning.
So in a lot of ways, there’s a sense that, you know, polls aren’t perfect, and the public polling we see may not always get to the information. But, you know, pollsters have also made some changes to the way they conduct horse race polls. And there have been a lot of efforts to kind of catch up with the way that people are being reached and the kind of questions that they’re asking them. But at the end of the day, Margie Omero says she has some advice for those of you watching polls like crystal balls in the last weeks of an election.
So I guess one of the things that we hear a lot from listeners is why should I care? Why should I listen to polls? As you mentioned, 2016, 2018 – I just don’t believe it anymore. What do you say to those people to give them a reason to think about polls differently?
OMERO: Well, I mean, I would say a couple of things. One, you don’t have to pay attention to polls.
(LAUGHTER)
OMERO: Perfectly – you know, you can live a very full, rich life as an informed voter not listening to polls. That’s fine. But I do think that, you know, there is this, like, desire for people to show that they are sharp consumers of stuff by saying, I don’t believe all the polls. And I don’t think the polling and the success that polling has had in, you know, showing that we were going to have Democratic takeover of the House in 2018, for example, or, you know, the national polling in the 2016 race, which correctly showed that Hillary Clinton, you know, won the popular vote. I mean, there are plenty of examples of polling that gave people an idea of what was going to happen and that turned out to be what happened.
KHALID: So it sounds like she’s saying, you know, polling can be useful, but even campaigns don’t live and die by them. And maybe that’s why I guess I’ve begun to hear some anxiety among Democrats about Joe Biden’s candidacy, even though most polls show him having a pretty sizable lead.
SNELL: Yeah. I think this has felt like a really volatile year politically. But the polls themselves have been pretty stable when it comes to Biden’s lead. I think one takeaway is that polls, by their nature, are just a snapshot of a group of people in a moment in time. And we all know that what really matters is the outcome when people cast their ballots.
KHALID: All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. But before we go, we should let you know that tomorrow night, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are set to debate in Nashville, Tenn. And we will be back in your feeds late after that debate with our recap.
I’m Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign.
SNELL: And I’m Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress.
KHALID: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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