Husser, director of the Elon University Poll, spoke with WUNC's Due South program about what makes a good poll, where polls can go wrong and the roll of polling during an election.
A recent episode of Due South, a daily news and politics show produced by WUNC, featured the insights of Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll, about the role that public opinion research can play during an election.
Husser joined Due South co-host Jeff Tiberii for the episode, which included scholars from Meredith College, Duke University, Florida State University and East Carolina University. Among the topics covered in the episode was what the news media can do to better represent the results of public opinion surveys, particularly during election season.
“Two things stand out to me. One is expectation management. Polls give a good estimate of a population. They don’t give a precise measure,” Husser said. “The second is to focus on what matters for democracy. Who is up and who is down in a race that we knew from the start was going to be really close is not nearly as important as knowing what people think about disaster response, what do they think about marijuana legalization, what do they think about health care access?”
Listen to the entire episode to learn more.