September 29, 2016

So You’re Freaking Out About the Latest Polls. Here Are Some Important Things to Remember.

Consider this your long, deep breath before reading the next set of numbers.


Recent national polls show presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump locked in an increasingly tight race. That’s freaking out Democrats, and allowing the Trump campaign some relief after the Republican nominee’s numbers dropped significantly after the conventions.

But what are polls actually an indication of? And how do you know which poll you should trust?

What even is a poll?

Should you really be freaking out right now?

Thankfully, we’ve got some great experts in this new video from the We The Voters project, a new web-series about the US elections. Clare Malone and Harry Enten are senior political writers at FiveThirtyEight, the news and politics data analysis site headed by statistician Nate Silver. (Silver rose to fame after accurately predicting the outcome of 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 elections, and then all 50 states in 2012.) Using easy-to-understand analogies, Malone and Enten illustrate how polls work and what makes certain polls more representative than others.

Watch the video for a few key takeaways, but here’s a pretty important one: Be aware of how polls are presented. A poll might be nonpartisan in itself, but the outlets that report them are free to deploy their own spin.

Or, the candidates themselves can self-servingly select which polls they choose to showcase. Case in point:

As NPR points out, most poll numbers show that Trump didn’t “win” Monday’s presidential debate. Instead, Trump used online reader polls, which are less scientific, to boast that he did. On Tuesday, a Fox News executive reminded Fox producers that online polls “do not meet our editorial standards,” according to a memo obtained by Business Insider.

And of course, you shouldn’t rely on just one poll. Generally, you should be looking at a number of polls to get an overall picture of how a candidate is doing—unless you want to flat-out deny reality, like this top Trump adviser:

Stay tuned for more from We The Voters, a new digital, nonpartisan campaign to inform voters of key issues this election season.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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