Let's talk about polls and why they matter...

A THREAD

1/

There is plenty of anxiety about whether the polls will be "right" this year. It's because people care a lot about the outcome of the election and, notably, because of the larger than average polling errors in the upper Midwest in 2016...

2/

I think that's understandable. "How could it be that Clinton led in Michigan for the whole race only to lose it in the end? Polling must be broken!"

Of course, polling isn't broken...

3/

There is a pretty technical answer for what happened.

The political preferences of white voters with and w/o college degrees diverged to a historic degree in 2016. It used to not matter as much if the people who responded to polls did or didn't have a college degree...

4/

Now, it does. And if too many people in your poll have a college degree, that isn't going to be representative of broader public opinion. Pollsters have worked on this.

Also, there were shifts late in the race toward Trump...

5/

Also also, it is totally normal for there to be polling error. It happens in just about every election. Sometimes it's bigger or smaller. Sometimes the polling underestimates Republicans and sometimes Democrats.

That truth about polling isn't going to go away...

6/

But the more important thing to understand -- and this is really my point in writing all this -- is that even if you don't trust polls and think they suck...

The alternatives to polling are probably worse...

7/

If we didn't use polls to try to gauge opinion in America, we would have to do a lot of guessing at what millions of people who may be nothing like us think.

That guess work would probably rely a lot on our own biases -- what we want as individuals, our social circles...

8/

Even while reporting as journalists, we are very likely to end up interacting with an unrepresentative sample of the public.

Which is not to say that field reporting isn't vital. It is. It gives us a window into the intimate experiences of other people...

9/

And data is always best accompanied by the richness of those stories.

BUT no one can tell you -- for example -- what the people of Pennsylvania want their government to do about fracking by spending a week in Punxsutawney. They just can't...

10/

For that, our best tool is talking to people from all across the state, from all walks of life, and making sure we don't miss anyone just because they aren't the kind of people we usually talk to.

That's what polling is...

11/

Polling is one of the most open minded and thoughtful ways of listening to our fellow Americans.

It's not just a cold list of numbers that's only valuable if it has no margin of error...

12/

And in that sense, whether the polls are spot on, or off by some points on November 3rd is less important.

It will still be our best way of getting to know ALL our neighbors.

13/

END