Making this possible, as well as to the cspan crew who are with us tonight. And welcome to everybody who was watching us as well. Im really, really delighted to be able to have conversation about the updated of lost in the gulf with my friend and and colleague joe campbell. And im sure that youll have a lot of questions afterwards. I think were going to, you know, start by listening to joe. I have a few questions you and well see how this is going. But please, you know, we are going to be looking forward to hearing from you as well later on. Thank you, filippo. Thanks very much. Okay. Thanks many thanks to the fine staff and professional staff here at politics prose. Its been a real pleasure working them and and their efforts and making tonight possible so thank you thank very much all right lets get started ive got my copy its a signed copy as well. I encourage you to do take the opportunity and do that later on as well towards the end. You know, this is your seventh solo author book. I hope im not messing up the numbers here. Thats a lot. And as you those who have written a book and even those who havent come probably imagine every book has own story. And its a little bit of a story in and of itself about why. Whats the motivation, writing it. And, you know, how that all came together. So i was just to get us warmed up. You could tell us a little bit more about the story of the origin of this and why you decided to write and how you went about it. Great question then. Thank you for that. Yes, it it is the seventh solo authored book and as ive written and when i this book, i was sort of in between books, the number six book had been done and i was looking for the next book project and november 9th, 2016. And that was the day after the 2016 election at about 3 a. M. , i started working on this book actually. I was working on a on a blog post that, that posted later that morning about the shock of the 2016 election. Donald trumps defeating Hillary Clinton up in the popular vote, but in the Electoral College and this was a shock that was felt around country and around the world and nobody really had anticipated no pollster, no pundit. The press certainly had not anticipated Hillary Clinton defeat. And so so i said to at about 3 a. M. Writing a blog post that said essentially that for the news media today is an awful lot like 1948. And that was a reference to the famous or infamous Dewey Defeats Truman election of 1948 when thomas the republican governor of new york, was the hands down favorite win election that year. All the polls, all the pundits, the press all said that dewey was going to defeat harry truman, the incumbent president who became president Franklin Roosevelts death in 1945. And so the two elections seem to be very close and at least in shock value. And thats when i began thinking this book, what became this . And it was it was over the course of, i guess three and a half years between that idea that night and the time when the book was published by university of California Press that so sort of relatively fast timeline is or a book which is based on Academic Research and but talks to a variety of audiences as well because you know thats one of the things i really do like about it. Its its its full of detail an interesting sort of historical facts and comparisons, but its also really, really accessible and you know, kudos to you for being up at 3 a. M. After the election. I was up at 3 a. M. , but i wasnt writing a book i think many of us can relate to that sort of feeling. Someones me that she was in tears that that early that morning and and was pleased to know that somebody went to work right at you know they say three hour wow i thats what you do you know youre good i get to do something do something about it so as i said you know the book really of charts the history of what you call polling surprises or polling failures. I mean, using both of these terms throughout the book, it goes chronologically in 1936 and then onward. But i think, you know, for a few minutes, lets maybe start from the and without really giving too much of a spoiler this new updated does have a chapter on the 2020 election and then it goes on to talk a little bit about whats happening this year and 20 for this new election cycle, which i think, you know, presenting pollsters, journalists, analysts with, again, new different challenges and maybe present and the kind of landscape. And i just want to read a little bit of indulge me in this from the final part of the book. So towards the end you say so what to expect in 2024 from the interplay of polls pollsters and journalists. Its not farfetched at all to expect surprise. Not if the recent past is revealing in meaningful ways. But whatever happens, whatever polling controversy arises, it may not be a rerun of 2020 or 2016. Voters 2024 are welladvised to regard election polls and poll based predictions with skepticism and you know what you seem to suggest here is that what matters isnt, just polling per se, but how we interpret it, how we understand how its reported, how its framed. So i was just wondering if, you could tell us a little bit more about what role do you see polling playing in this cycle with whats happening around all of us this year . The polls this year, as they have in all president ial elections, since perhaps 36, even before, do set the narrative. They set the narrative for the news media. They set the narrative for pundits and they set the narrative for the public at large. This is how we understand the dynamics of of a president ial election campaign. Whos ahead, whos behind . Whats the gap . Whats the whats the difficulty that the candidates are facing, so forth . So polls really do establish the narrative and they already have they already have this year in 2024. What the polls are showing so far is that this is shaping up this year as a tight race between trump, the former president , biden, the incumbent president , and this an unusual election in that regard. But the polls consistently since september since, midseptember have shown trump with a slight lead. This is the collective polling average by real clear politics on a daily basis and they show they showed trump with a very. Narrow lead. So that tells us i think that consistently through the past and a half months that were looking at a likely looking at a very tight election in 2024. So the polls are setting the narrative as they typically always now if there is polling misfire, theres a polling failure. Were not going to have probably the same sort of polling failure that we had in 2016 when a few states, the midwest, were thought to be pretty secure. And Hillary Clintons camp. But they went to trump very narrowly. Im talking wisconsin. Michigan and pennsylvania. And those states tip the election, the Electoral College to trump and that pundits anticipated and those states that the polls in those states being off and thats what happened that was the key to that polling misfire in 2016 and 2020 it was different many the polls thought that joe biden was going to win by a healthy margin. He won popular vote by four and a half Percentage Points. Some polls, cnn had him up by 12. Quinnipiac university had him up by 11. The wall street journal nbc news poll had biden by ten points. So these these polls are anticipate hitting a double digit rout of donald trump. It didnt turn out that was a much election. In fact, it was so that the wellplaced of 43,000 votes in arizona, georgia and wisconsin would have produced a269269 Electoral College tie. And you can imagine what that would have done to the country in 2020 on top of of covid and urban rioting and just general upheaval to an election that ended in a tie. That would have been an awful outcome. I think so. I think we can anticipate if there is another polling misfire, its not going be of the same order of 2016 or 2020 or of 1948, for that matter. Any websites, polls, services that youre watching closely that you think you know and is a lot of i must say as well, like in recognizing all of these challenges, there is a lot of sympathy. Pollsters in this book as well and how difficult their job really has become over this last few years. So any any places where you think, you know, there might be somebody doing Something Interesting different. Yeah. Im glad you mention that because it is a very difficult pursuit. Polling is not easy. One analyst said. Its like a 15 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of difficult, the polling difficulty to get it right is probably even higher than that. But pollsters dont do this. They dont take the time, energy and spend the money to get it wrong. Theyre hoping that theyre right and to to that end they have been and they have been experimenting with methodologies over the last years since 2016, since the surprise of 2016. And then again since the the 2020 election to their their moving around with different kinds of ways of tapping into Public Opinion the Gold Standard the former Gold Standard of random digit dial calling has sort of gone by boards. I mean, its still used by some pollsters, but there are also other different attempts to different techniques to to tap Public Opinion in a president ial. Now, whether those are going to work and be successful in terms of, you know, getting close to the to the outcome remains to be seen so pollsters wouldnt be going through all this experimentation if. They didnt have a problem that theyre trying to resolve and one one way that theyre trying to do this is through what are called panels. They recruit panels, large numbers of people whom they can go back to on a number of to ask, you know, have have them complete the polling questionnaire. So whether panels really the future of polling it is a an element certainly an aspect of the future of polling. But to answer your question about what am i looking at one of the sites that i do on a daily basis is real politics. And they have a polling average that they update daily. And the polling average today show trump was ahead of biden by 1. 6 points. This is this is a collection, an averaging a number of of polls are done in the country. And on a regular basis. So 1. 6 points is not a very healthy lead, but its not a lot anything could happen. And it sounds and plus, were you know, were than eight months out before the before election day. So yeah, a lot can happen. Glad theyre still getting people to pick the phone. I mean thats you know, thats like the first barrier and there are so many more after that in terms of accuracy, so on. So im people, you know, who are here with us tonight will have more questions about whats happening year and are going to be interested in take on that. But i do want to take a step back a little bit now and think, you know, the other the kind of historical trajectory that the book explores when it relates to polling. And, you know, its important, i think, to just clarify, this is a book about this isnt a book about polling methodology or do you know youve been talking quite a bit about it and and clearly and you do that a bit in the book. Well, albeit in a very excessive way, as i was i was saying earlier. But really, this is a history of the relation shape between polling and the news. And, you know, the citizenry as intended as voters or readers and and, you know, one of the aspects that i think is most enjoyable, the book is that while talk about numbers, you also talk people and some those people are colorful characters. And with, you know, distinct egos, you know, thinking they were, you know, doing their job right. And sometime staking pretty sort of drastic decisions in how they were doing their work, whether would be continuing to do polling after a certain in the cycle if they thought that one of the candidates was ahead. And so so im just wondering you out of all of the different characters, there are many in the book that you you mentioned talk about whether there are any pollsters or other characters that are some of your favorites, maybe some anecdotes youd like to share with us. Yeah, thats a great question. Thanks. You know, in doing this book, i was really struck by the fact nobody had tried to do this before that a book about polling failure in president ial elections had, you know, had never really been attempted. And one of the neat things about it is, you suggesting, phillipos, that there are a number of colorful characters, quite a few colorful characters who turned up in the book. And some of them are worthy of their own biographies. I think George Gallup, for example, he was he was the sort of a founding father of contemporary or modern Opinion Research. And he has this reputation of being a real and he died in 1984. His a reputation of being a real avuncular character, open and warm, you know, and, you know accessible and often quoted. And its sort of like the founding father of Opinion Research. But you look a little closer to George Gallup was a real prickly guy and was he was inclined to attack his critics openly, harshly, unrelentingly and. This really had never come through before. And what i had been able to research about about the history of polling and president ial elections. So i was digging around in the archives at the Gallup Organization archives at the university iowa. And i got i was this guy was really going the handle of his critics not once or twice. But, you know, many times so he was he was certainly one of the more colorful characters. Another one is a contemporary of gausss elmo roper, who was a failed jeweler in iowa who became got into Market Research in new york and Public Opinion became a sort of a spinoff of that work that he did. And he was he was an election pollster, but he had a lot of reservations about polls and he wasnt really a big fan it as gallup was and he was he was a real tepid kind of supporter polling and one reason is it cost him a lot of money to do election polls. His bread and butter from commercial clients, industrial clients and and consumer consumer opinion. Thats where he was really most at home. But elmo roper is one of those Founding Fathers as well, a founding figures in polling, research and another and perhaps my most favorite character in the book is a guy named warren metcalf. He was the polling director at cbs news and was a Great Innovator in in polling and Opinion Research. He he developed or helped develop random Dial Telephone calling, which possible polling at an accessible way that, you know, people wouldnt have to go door to door anymore to go to Opinion Research could reach people by phone and that was a real breakthrough in polling because it it accessible and less expensive. He also warren metascore also was a it was the founder father, if you will, of exit polling, which is when pollsters and their representatives asked people about their voting preferences as theyre the polling place on election typically. And that was that quite an innovation too. And kotowski also had an interest in the history of polling, and unlike many pollsters and figures in Opinion Research who are all always, it seems, looking to ask you is inclined to look back from time to time. And he kept on his wall an image of the famous photograph of harry Truman Holding up the chicago tribune. Thats the banner headline Dewey Defeats Truman the 1948 election, which is probably the most single, most memorable photograph in political history. And kotowski it on the wall, a wall and and said at the 50th anniversary of that of that election failure, of the polling failure, theres a lot of room, he said, for humility in polling every time, you get cocky, you lose. And sure enough hes hes right. So i think my is a very interesting character but none of them gallup kotowski has been the subject of a full length biography rather interesting and im not going to do it. Im not going to do the biography. This that would take six years. You know, living with these guys. I dont think so. Yeah. I mean, some of that advice you know, would be true in politics as well. I mean, that kind of reality check, um, when you were talking about humility is interesting. So we have caller for collectors on this side some other colorful characters though on the journalistic side of things as well. And i think thats the other, you know, quite amusing at times element in the book as well. You talk quite a bit about what you call paul bashing journalists some of you know some of these columnists just built their reputation for having strong on polling and i just again you know reading a small quote in the book one of the figures you talk about in mike royko newspaper columnists in chicago who in one of his columns invited to lie in opinion polls, none of us have ever done that right right, because he called pollsters a hired brain picker, trying to figure out what your personal fears hopes and prejudices are so that he can advise a politician how to more skillfully lie to you. That may be radical advice. Im not going to, you know, vouch for that, but today would be your advice to, based on the research youve done, what went into the book to citizens and voters when it comes to navigating trying to navigate all of this, you know, the poll bashing among journalists was pretty commonplace up until 2004 and then it stopped the last real poll bashing journalist was Jimmy Breslin, the newsday columnist. He was wellknown figure, a Pulitzer Prize winner. And in that election in 2004, john kerry versus george w bush, bush was the. Jimmy breslin went after the pollsters almost the same with the same vigor that mike royko did in chicago that you quoted a moment ago. And he said that this is essentially just lies because theyre not reaching people had cell phones in 2000, four, cell phone use was growing, but it wasnt quite the way it had expanded today. So most pollsters were polling people via cell phones in 2004. And Jimmy Breslin thought that was just insane was lud