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Planet Money
Planet Money

We try to fix election polling (update)

October 21, 2026 • 29m

Summary

⏱️ 8 min read

Overview

Planet Money revisits their 2022 investigation into the crisis facing modern polling. As response rates plummet below 5%, pollsters struggle to achieve representative samples that once made telephone polling the gold standard. The team visits Marist College's polling center to understand the challenges firsthand, explores polling's history of infamous blunders, and tests a 'wisdom of crowds' approach to potentially improve accuracy. The episode provides an update on how their experimental questions are still being used, though not quite as expected.

The Crisis in Modern Polling

Polling has become exponentially harder as people simply stopped answering their phones. Response rates have crashed to less than one in twenty, threatening the foundation of how we gather critical data about everything from elections to unemployment. The team heads to Marist College, one of the top polling operations in America, to experience this crisis firsthand and learn the tricks pollsters use to keep people on the line.

  • Response rate for telephone polls has plummeted to less than 1 in 20, creating a full-on crisis for pollsters
  • Marist College uses magic phrases like 'let's try a few and see how it goes' to keep people on surveys
  • The FCC banned robo-dialing cell phones in 2015, tripling polling costs by requiring hand-dialing
  • Pollsters work night shifts from noon to midnight because that's when people are most likely to be home
" My very favorite is, let's try a few and see how it goes. As in, let's try a few questions and see how it goes. She says it works for nearly everything. "
" If you smile, you sound upbeat. You sound good. And you sound like someone that the respondent's going to want to talk to. "
" You can get rid of a vampire a lot easier than you can get rid of a pollster. "

Polling Blunder #1: The Literary Digest Disaster of 1936

The first major polling failure came in 1936 when the Literary Digest surveyed 2 million people and predicted FDR would lose to Alf Landon. George Gallup, with just a tiny fraction of respondents, correctly predicted FDR's landslide victory. The disaster revealed that sheer volume doesn't matter—what matters is having a representative sample. The problem was that Literary Digest readers were wealthier car owners and homeowners, not everyday Americans.

  • Literary Digest surveyed 2 million people and predicted Alf Landon would win in 1936
  • George Gallup used just 3,000 carefully selected respondents and correctly predicted FDR's victory
  • Literary Digest respondents were unrepresentative—they owned cars, homes, and read a magazine called 'Literary Digest'
  • Gallup's big insight: you need a representative sample, not just a large sample
" Gallup said I just interview a fraction of that amount just 3 but the right people And they give me the more accurate answer "
" Math won. Math won. Math always wins. "

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