Tuesday, our class had the pleasure of hosting Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin. Franklin has been recently brought on by the law school to conduct a political election poll for the upcoming state and federal elections, and to gauge voter identification within the state. While he did not get into his poll at Marquette specifically, Franklin spoke a lot towards his extensive history in polling and the benefits of polling to understand a variety of issues (most notably the upcoming election).
Franklin began teaching at Washington University-St. Louis and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having an extensive history in polling, Franklin and a partner started the polling website pollster.com which has since became an entity of the Huffington Post, once they bought it from him. He had some very important and interesting insights unto polling:
For one, Franklin stated that polling sponsored and paid for by political candidates, contrary to public opinion, are relatively accurate. Given a 5% margin of error (2.5% each way, Dem-Rep.) the polls were extremely accurate on their trend lines. Polling may differ from the questions asked and the way they are presented however. If a pollster is looking for a specific result, he demonstrated how easy it was to manipulate a poll in order to make it more favorable to that outcome. Franklin noted that the most accurate polls however gauge voter opinion from the most unbiased questions possible. This includes presenting an issue equally and in the most straightforward way.
While I was extremely interested in the political polling conducted by Franklin, I did not want to admit to him that at the moment, I'm not all too concerned about his political polls. The most important poll to me at the moment is an Espn.com poll which shows us that 66% of the country thinks Marquette Men's Basketball team will beat the University of Florida's team in the Sweet 16 round of the March Madness tournament. Let's hope these polls are just as accurate as Franklin claims!
Franklin began teaching at Washington University-St. Louis and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having an extensive history in polling, Franklin and a partner started the polling website pollster.com which has since became an entity of the Huffington Post, once they bought it from him. He had some very important and interesting insights unto polling:
For one, Franklin stated that polling sponsored and paid for by political candidates, contrary to public opinion, are relatively accurate. Given a 5% margin of error (2.5% each way, Dem-Rep.) the polls were extremely accurate on their trend lines. Polling may differ from the questions asked and the way they are presented however. If a pollster is looking for a specific result, he demonstrated how easy it was to manipulate a poll in order to make it more favorable to that outcome. Franklin noted that the most accurate polls however gauge voter opinion from the most unbiased questions possible. This includes presenting an issue equally and in the most straightforward way.
While I was extremely interested in the political polling conducted by Franklin, I did not want to admit to him that at the moment, I'm not all too concerned about his political polls. The most important poll to me at the moment is an Espn.com poll which shows us that 66% of the country thinks Marquette Men's Basketball team will beat the University of Florida's team in the Sweet 16 round of the March Madness tournament. Let's hope these polls are just as accurate as Franklin claims!
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