The Vast Majority of American Voters Should Never See a Poll
On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, MSNBC political analyst and pollster Cornell Belcher breaks down the science and the art of polling.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
With just under a year until Americans head to the voting booths, MSNBC analyst and pollster Cornell Belcher has a piece of advice on this week’s The New Abnormal: Stop looking at polls.
“Polling are strategic documents that are internal for strategy,” Belcher explains to co-host Danielle Moodie. “Most people should never actually know what the polls say, or even care what the polls say, because the dynamics of it are still unfolding and it shouldn’t mean anything. So, and this is where I think polling gets a bad name because people misunderstand it and it’s being misused.”
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Belcher adds his “larger critique” is that the “media and the news outlets, they’re focusing too much” on polling. “Even as a pollster, I say the average voter, it should be rare that the average voter sees a poll.”
Plus! Journalist Radley Balko joins the show to discuss his recent piece in The New Republic—“How Medical Examiners Shield Violent Cops From Scrutiny”—and how, unfortunately, the conclusion he comes to isn't the one we would all hope for.
“The coroner in places like the U.K. is a trained lawyer who’s gotten specific training and has specific expertise in doing death investigations and can factor the medical information with the non-medical information in a way that lets them determine a manner of death,” Balko explains.
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“Here we just ask medical examiners to do it. That’s a problem because they are susceptible to cognitive bias… they’re susceptible to pressure from law enforcement and other groups and [their job] often requires them to act outside of their area of expertise. And what we found is that … they can get this wrong.”
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
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