...with Polling in Politics (Ep. 88)

What on Earth is Going on?

One of the key features of the democratic process is opinion polling, whether it is leader likability or attitudes on various issues. But do these snapshots of the horserace have an impact on the race itself? How has scientific polling and statistical analysis changed? How will it change in the years to come? And, what happens when the data shows us that the story we think is happening is not the one actually playing out?

Ben joins writer and political analyst Eric Grenier at his CBC office in Ottawa.

About the Guest

Éric Grenier is a senior writer and the CBC's polls analyst. He was the founder of ThreeHundredEight.com and has written for The Globe and Mail, Huffington Post Canada, The Hill Times, Le Devoir, and L’actualité.

Mentioned in this Episode

• FiveThirtyEight, a comprehensive website dedicated to statistics, especially related to politics, founded by Nate Silver
• Outliers: The Story of Success, a 2008 book by Malcolm Gladwell in which he describes his popular theory of the 10,000 hours needed to master a skill
• "The Polls Are All Right", a 2018 article written by Nate Silver for FiveThirtyEight
• Episode 3 of Bob Rae's Political Stripes podcast, featuring an interview with guest Eric Grenier

The Quote of the Week

"One of the pervasive risks that we face in the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening." - From The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail (2012) by Nate Silver