Now there is a smaller lead heading into the final weekend. Live coverage is scheduled to begin in a few minutes. Until then, here is some of todays washington journal. David mclennan is a professor of Political Science at Meredith College and the director of the colleges meredith poll. Tells about the pole. Who do you talk to . How do you do your polling . Guest it started six years ago as a learning opportunity for students. So we have students involved in the process. But what we do is we Contact People from North Carolina only. We are a statewide poll. We started doing live collar only six years ago with students , being the callers. Now we have moved to mixed mode sampling. Now we do online and live caller. Because ofd, restrictions that we have on campus, we have had to temporarily go to online only. We have experienced almost every method of survey people from North Carolina. Host how did your polls fare in 2016 . What have you changed . Guest that is a great question. I get that question a lot. In 2016, the polling average had carolina had Hillary Clinton up by 3. 3 . We know that donald trump won the state. We are right smack dab in the middle of that. We recognized soon after the 2016 election that something was wrong with our sampling. So we tried to look at who really turned out versus what we were predicting . All pollsters weight their samples to try to predict what the turnout will be. We looked very carefully at that. We have adjusted our waiting models based on 2016 and 2018 to get a more accurate model. For North Carolina. We have built and some questions in our survey to try to get at whether people were telling us the truth. We had suspicion in 2016 that a small group of people were not honest about their support for donald trump. Host the latest meredith poll taken october 16 through the 19 shows the former Vice President with a 4 lead. What do you make of this . What is the margin of error . Guest the margin of error was 3. 5 . It is just outside of the margin of error. Be, i still thought it would an extraordinarily close election even with those results. We note that in the last weeks of 2016, things tightened in North Carolina. I wish i could have done one more poll closer to tuesday to try to see if that tightening would continue. If we look at the real clear politics polling average in North Carolina, we see it under 1 . With most margins of error in polls being around 3. 5 , this race could go either way. Host how did you find unaffiliated voters . Those unaffiliated voters breaking for joe biden 55 to donald trump 28 . Again, we used just like most , pollsters online, we use a panel. People self identify. We do not buy names with people already affiliated by party. These are people who self identify. And unaffiliated North Carolina does not always mean a swing voter. They could go either way. It really depends on where the voter is. A lot of urban unaffiliated voters, particularly young people who have been registering as unaffiliated, they are democrats or democratic leaners. People in the rural part of the state who register as unaffiliated are really republican leaners. Unaffiliated is a fun category to look at, but i look at it in different ways. Cut it by age, gender, location, that sort of thing. Host what role will these unaffiliated voters play this year . Guest i think they will be the deciding voters. If you look at democrats, they support joe biden at high rates. Are opposed to donald trump at historic rates. If you look at republicans, it is true in the reverse. Democrats and republicans are locked in. The unaffiliateds, again, we are talking maybe 10 of North Carolina really would be considered swing voters. Not all unaffiliateds. We pretty much know that urban unaffiliated voters are going to vote for joe biden. Rural unaffiliated voters are going to vote for donald trump. We are looking for those 10 who have not made up their mind or are going back and forth. That is why these last few days of the election cycle are so important for those people who have not voted. We are already over 4 Million People who have already voted. Host another part of your pull in midoctober shows 51 of white voters prefer the president. 81 of black voters prefer joe biden. 63 of hispanic voters prefer joe biden. These groups, how much of the electorate do they make up . How does that compare to 2016 . Guest what we have seen since 2016 is a huge influx of people in North Carolina. We are one of the fastestgrowing states. Over 1. 5 million new people have registered since 2016. If you break that down, they tend to be younger and browner. We are getting a lot of minority voters in the state and college aged or slightly older than college aged. As you look at the electorate and how it has changed since 2016, the percentage of white voters is probably going to drop by a couple of Percentage Points compared to where it was. The percentage of black voters will probably stay the same. It is about how they turn out. Hispanic voters have been increasing in numbers in the state as well as asian voters. So we are seeing the increased influence of minority voters in the North Carolina electorate. Host 58 of rural voters preferred the president. 51 of suburban voters prefer biden. 50 of urban voters prefer biden. Could these voters make up the difference for the former Vice President and show why he has the advantage . Guest we have seen the purpling of suburbs in the last few election cycles. We know that rural voters have supported republican candidates for quite a few election cycles. Urban areas have supported democratic. Where the battleground is is in the circles immediately around the major metropolitan areas, charlotte, raleigh, and even the ring counties a little bit outside of the suburbs that are changing as the population changes. That is why you are seeing when the candidates or surrogates come to North Carolina, the president is going to rural areas. Joe biden and his surrogates are going to urban and suburban areas. Host the president will be there on monday. Joe biden is traveling to the state over the weekend. Supporting the biden ticket, go ahead. Caller good morning, greta. Good morning, mr. Mclennan. Here is my poll for you. I voted for mr. Biden. I took my ballot to the absentee board of elections. It was very easy. I am glad it is done. Unfortunately, i did not get through, well i got through, but i did not get to speak to mr. Boyum. I guess i will talk to you. I just want to say that it kills me to listen to these Republican People parroting like tape recorders donald trump talking about how black people are doing so much better under donald trump when it absolutely is not true. And i mean, what is surreal about it is these are the very people whose usual opinions concerning black people is that we are lazy, do not work, we live on welfare and birth numerous babies out of wedlock. That is what usually comes out of their mouths concerning black people. But all of a sudden now, blacks are doing so great under trump. If you live in this city and you look around, tent cities are mushrooming all over the place. People everywhere without places to live thanks to this clown in the white house. Thank you, greta. Host im going to go on to pete in washington, pennsylvania, supporting the president. We will get two different views here and then have you respond. Pete, go ahead. Caller hello . Host yes, pete. Caller good morning. In my mind, going to carolina, always liked to visit, wonderful state. I am a christian. I do not know. Will you tell me about the demographics, the religious church down in North Carolina . Worshipers, which is the breakdown . It is mostly baptists . T do we had to go host im going to jump in because it is very hard to understand you. He is talking about the religious vote. Guest the religious vote is very important in North Carolina. We are part of the bible belt historically. The baptist denomination is the largest protestant denomination in North Carolina. The evangelical vote is significant. So, he raises a good point about the support for the president. It does come strongly from the evangelicals within the protestant community. Your previous caller made a good point about the messaging related to the black community in North Carolina. I think that both callers raised an interesting point. This is going to be such a close election in North Carolina that if the president s messaging even peels off a few black voters, young black voters in urban areas, or if joe biden is able to attract a few evangelical voters, they could make a difference in a close election. Host what is important to these evangelical voters . Guest the issue of the Supreme Court appointment, justice barrett, seems in other polls that have been done in North Carolina seems very significant. They see her importance around social issues that they attach a lot of importance to come the opportunity for overturning roe v. Wade, or you hear some evangelicals in the state, they are concerned about things like marriage equality. So, the symbolism of justice barretts appointment and the reality of the ways she could vote are very important for that community. Host how do you think it impacts the senate race . Guest the senate race is not as tight as the president ial race. But it is a margin of error race. It is something republicans throughout North Carolina felt very strongly about. In the polls i have seen, they did not think Mitch Mcconnell was doing anything wrong to advance the Supreme Court justice late in the election cycle. Democrats obviously felt very differently. I think it is a motivating factor for republicans. That is what i am watching for, when we get the final results, who turned out . I would think the Supreme Court nomination hearings as well as the confirmation of justice barrett, if the republicans come out in larger than expected numbers, will be a major factor. Host james, North Carolina. Caller good morning. I tell you, i really have a problem with all of these polls. It is almost like the polls are there because they always overemphasize the democratic vote. Every poll. Im talking going back 20 years. The democrats are always in the lead initially when everyone knows nobody has got a 14 point lead, 12 point lead. It gives the democrats a false sense of security, and by that time, registration is over. And then all of a sudden, 10 days before the vote, it is two points. This is not something that happens rarely. Its happens every time. It is almost as if the pollsters are not scientifically equipped to do it, or they do not get enough real samples to say this is where we are going rather than this is where we are at, which really means very little. And i dont know if it is a secret cabal doing it. All of the polls do it. There is something to it. Host lets get an answer. The question that many have raised, particularly after 2016. That in North Carolina, though real clear politics poll averaging is under one point. Even though my poll was done in little while ago and indicated that joe biden had a fourpoint lead, the polls have tightened. Every poll that i have seen that has come out this week has shown this as a very close race. Whether things that i engine that i mentioned early in the show is that we address methods. We make mistakes, we try to learn from our mistakes. Are all get polls, they done differently. Some polls are forprofit companies. Others are attached to news organizations. Different in terms of our assumptions and waiting period i would say that if you pay tension to the polls this year, we have made adjustments, and i hope that the polls continue to be used after this election cycle. Greta there is an opinion piece and the papers today talking to a couple of pollsters who try to get a feel for the secret trump voter. The way that they go about asking that is not directly, will you vote for the president , how do you think your neighbors are going to vote and your friends . Person inhey put that the category of probably voting for the president if they think that their friends and neighbors are voting for the president. What you think about that strategy . Mr. Mclennan there are a lot of different strategies. Historically, since i have used live caller pulling and online polling, the online polling is completely in nine this. Name, is identified by they are not talking to a human being. The idea is that an online sample, there is no downside for being honest. Ist we found is that there not much difference between the live callers and the online sample. We use different techniques. Do not use that particular question, how do your neighbors feel. I try to match up other questions, because we can measure how people respond to policy questions that we know for the president favors, example with do you support the president . We try to look for correlations there. Greta clay, in North Carolina. How are you doing today, david . In the county that i believe in, i believe that it is a blue county. My brothers and sisters are more back toward the eastern part, elizabeth city, North Carolina. I am curious of the black vote. I do not think that we get sampled. Have all my brothers switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party for many reasons. But for the simple, we preferred to have opportunity not free bies. Polling,on is zombie ive never been my question is on the polling, and i dont have a home phone. I just have a cell phone. Do you call cell phone . How does that work . Thatp seeing on the news white folks are switching to the Democrat Party because i do not agree somewhat with trumps style. Im curious how big of a role that is going to play. Tillishe cunningham and race, how that will play with the new revelation about the democrat cunningham. You know what i mean. Mr. Mclennan a lot of interesting questions. I will answer the methods question first. We call cell phones. Calls are tof our cell phones. As you say, a lot of people do not have them. I think the other questions are interesting, too. The black vote in the state. We know that the black vote in the state is red significant. Over 20 of the electorate is black. Key areasparticularly in the state. Let me point to one county in North Carolina. It is nash county. It is considered to be a part of the black belt. I high number of black voters live in nash county, but what is interesting, that county has supported president obama twice. In 316, it would for President Trump. In 2016, it went for President Trump. The black vote is not monolithic. As i watch that county, i went to see how that county is voting , and if it goes for President Trump again. And of President Trump has a good chance of curing the state. If it was back to joe biden, that would be a good thing for the democrats. It is a bellwether county. Women, we have seen a big