>> watch the entire program saturday here on c-span lupup next, former gal senior editor david moore talks about his book, "the opinion makers." he discusses the way poll results are reported by the news media. waters ofecorded at street bookstore in new hampshire in 2008 and is about one hour and 10 minutes. dr. moore: i want to turn to essentially the theme of the book. "anays.,tle insider reveals the truth about the polls." they don't tell the truth about

the electorate, and they don't tell the truth about the public. that doesn't mean they don't tell the truth all the time. i think we find a lot of very interesting information from polls. particularly when the polls address what people know about their own experiences and what people genuinely know. example, we know, based upon arly gallup polls that majority of people in the 1930's approved of top list -- topless bathing suits for men. we know that a majority of women and a majority of men opposed having women go to work in business and industry if their husbands could afford to support them. those kinds of questions, we could not even asked today -- ask today. whether or not women should be allowed to work?

tremendousu what a change there has been in american history. polls can show you information about the culture. isre i object to the polls where they deliberately mislead us, with respect to elections, reelection polling, and respect to public policy. when it comes to public policy polling, the polls do not tell us the truth. the main purpose is not to find out what people are thinking, the main purpose of the polls is to provide information for the news media which is plausible and can be dovetailed in with regular news stories. we all know that prior to the the polls were showing about to-one support among the public for going to iraq.

this was in february and march, leading up to the invasion. asked whether or not people would support american troops going to the gulf region in order to remove saddam hussein from power. that phraseology came directly from the administration. "to remove saddam hussein from power." of course, the war was more than that. we did that, and we are still there. we did a lot of other things which were never part of the administration tagline or what the media reported or what we asked the public. know washat we now biased coverage of the information about weapons of mass destruction and an imminent , and wef saddam hussein know that the news media, yorkcularly the new times and washington post admitted they went overboard in

upporting the administration viewpoint, it does not mean the american public was persuaded they had to go to war. while i was working at gallup at the time, we decided to run an experiment to get below superficial opinion. when you ask people about their opinions, they give an opinion, because they are pressured to give it by the interviewers. not know what they're talking about, they may not know about the issue, but they are given what is called a "forced choice" question. it or doort or -- for you oppose it? by pressuring people to give their opinion, they will come up with an "off the top of their head" response.

question, for people who said they supported the war, whether or not they would be upset if we did not go to war. we asked people opposed to the war whether they would be upset if we did go to war. if you express an opinion and say, "but i don't care if my political leaders do the opposite of what i just said" and admit that within 30 seconds of having expressed an opinion, chances are you are not attached to that idea. that is what we wanted to measure. what was the net effect? the net result shows 29% of the -- publicred the war favored the war and would be upset if we can go. 30% opposed it. 41% did not have an opinion or care. i don't mean it in a cavalier way. whether wet know should go to war or shouldn't go

to war. probably, andare, some just simply did not know. the point is that a plurality of americans, going into the iraq war, one of the most heavily covered current events at the time, a plurality of americans were so unengaged that they did not have an opinion as to whether or not we should or shouldn't be going to war. what was the picture presented by the news media? greater-- ort for 2-1 support or greater. we have commentators saying the american people are as much to blame as the government because the american people were clamoring for war. justification, that kind of condemnation of the american public. the fact is, had we measured public opinion, without trying

to manipulate people into giving a response, and we measured it accurately, we would have seen a divided public. would that have made a difference to president bush? probably not [laughter] would that have made a difference to the democrats who may have opposed the war? there were 10 democrats in the senate, all named as possible presidential candidates, like senator reid who became a majority will leader -- majority leader, who supported the war. there is always the suspicion that they supported it for political reasons, because that is what the "public" wanted. is that this point is not just one issue. -- on the issue of guantanamo bay, on the issue of

ghraib, we are soliciting the public for an opinion off the top of their head so that the news media can say the majority says this or that. what is the net effect? let me give you an example with respect to guantanamo bay. did not evenle know guantanamo bay existed, much less that we had a prison. some did and some didn't. when it gallup asked the , our first effort with this was to give people information so that we could then question them on their opinion. let me tell you what is wrong with that to start. a sample of people that we choose, based upon very precise scientific statistical methods, is supposed to represent the larger population so that we can

generalize from what these people say to what these people believe. but if these people are given information that these people do not have, the sampled the longer -- the sample no longer represents the general public, on a routine basis. you do not have a real was old, but hypothetical result. onlyothetical result is correct if everyone in the general population is informed in exactly the same way. let us go back to the example. how did we inform this sample of , who we knew, a large number of them, had no idea what guantanamo bay was, or that the prison was there, or anything of that nature? as you may know, the united ce at ones a presen

time obey and cuba where it houses suspected terrorists. do you think the united states should shut it down or not? of thehave never heard prison, why would you say yes, close it down? it houses terrorists. you would know anything about the controversy, the possible violation of geneva conventions. there are problems with guantanamo bay. you say "yes." , we reportedpublic it-- we reported it, the american public supports guantanamo bay. i was a part of the poll that came up with those results. we had no intention of being part of what i now call, "the spin cycle."

the administration comes up with a point of view, and they push it. the bush ministrations very effective with that. they push that point of view, and the news media in the united states tend to be fairly unimaginative when it comes to looking for new sources. they rely does proportionately on what the government tells them. other government sources, or other people in power. democrats, if the democrats oppose what happening. they don't do very much research. cross,n't go to the red or other organizations that might have information. so, instead, the media tends to reflect, pretty much, the dominant theme of the administration in power. then, the media, who owns their own polls, cbs, abc, washington

the fox poll, the cnn poll, the usa today poll, they all own these polls. i know from working on is that we have phrased the question pretty much the way that the media have been freezing the question. the media phrasing the issue doesn't the way they ministrations raises the issue. when we asked the public what they think, it supports the administration's point of view. that happened right after our after abu ghraib. the administration was saying "the united states does not torture." there were some polls, several polls that touched on that issue.

there was an abc washington post pulled it looked into the issue on greater depth. all of the polls, with the exception of one that asked only one question one time, all of the polls always talked about the abuse of prisoners. abc was even more creative. the "apparent"ut abuse of prisoners and asked several questions of the sample abuse of "apparent" prisoners. twice, three times, and the fourth time they said "abuse" of prisoners. the said, "do you think of treatment of prisoners in other wase -- in abu ghraib torture or abuse?"

what do you think they are going to say? they have been told four times that does abuse or apparent abuse. the polls announced the good news to the ministrations, the public did not consider what was happening at abu ghraib to be torture. they bought onto the notion that it was "abuse" and not torture. they bought onto the notion that it was an aberration. caused byof it was low-level soldiers rather than any policy within the administration. work ispolls essentially to complete, in many cases, to complete a spin cycle for the administration. i'll give you an example with the clinton administration. the attack on waco.

that happened so many years ago, you probably don't necessarily 1993 when theas justice department attacked waco, because of the cult. the question was, "did they attack quickly?" of course, the public did not know. they were essentially pressured into giving an answer. they did whatd, " was right, they waited the proper amount of time." enough, that kind of reaffirmed the clinton administration had done right. the point i want to make with respect to the way that polls operate is that instead of forcing people to come up with decisions and opinions when they the pollse them, ought to at least allow people to admit that they don't have an opinion.

"do you think they did this or did that or don't you know?" that is not what the polls are interested in doing. if they reported on a regular basis that somewhere around 60% of the public was unengaged in , and of the rest, 16% favored it, 21% opposed it, there were still even more , and there are these people who haven't even heard anything about it, that would not be very interesting. that is exactly the kind of result that george gallup produced in 1953, when asking about taft-hartley. the taft-hartley act was an act that had received a great deal of publicity. but, when george gallup the policy- preceded question with a question about

whether they had even heard of taft-hartley, 60% had no idea what it was about, which by itself, was amazing. the publicity. that those who had heard about it an additional 7% said they had no opinion as to whether or not it should be extended or curtailed. two thirds of the public, not knowing anything about it, you will never see a poll result in a newspaper or on tv these days that says 67% of the public doesn't know. if they did, you would say, why are they pulling them? -- polling them? if people are not engaged, why are we looking for opinion? that goes back to what george gallup wanted to do in 1935. he wanted a poll to monitor the pulse of democracy. period,ing came after a

the progressive. period.rogressive there is a real change in the orientation of the constitution, allowing people more input. that is one primary elections were designed, in order to take away power from the parties bid when leaders or candidates were put up by the people were able to have some kind of say. a lot of people felt there should be direct democracy. james bryce, and intellectual of the. an intellectual ofual o ought tod, said there

be a way to keep track of what people are thinking from week to week. others said the public was not too interested, too uninformed. "we cannot rely on the public to make policy caller." that wasn't necessarily a good solution. in the 1930's, george gallup came. growth -- is an polling isthat if not direct democracy, it ought to be part of the discussion. ofon't oppose the idea having public opinion polls reveal how many people are in favor, oppose, but also, how many people are truly unengaged. i think that is important part of this, a realistic description of the electorate.

electorate is neither completely useless, as litman anld've argued, nor is it entity that can guide public .olicy coul it is healthy to know how any people are opposed and how the people are undecided. it could be very educational. that is not the way the polls operate. that wayot operate with respect to public policy or with respect to elections. one of the biggest embarrassments the news media should have right now is as thei versus clinton two candidates they were continuing to run in in 2007.cal matchups

giuliani and hillary clinton, who according to gallup polls, had a solid lead on the democratic vote. , major,e two reasons fundamental reasons why the polls were so wrong. pollsters will say, well, the voters change their minds. others will say, no, they had never made up their minds in the first place. let's talk about pulling the right voters. are we talking about when we say giuliani was the front runner and that hillary clinton had a lock? they were talking about republicans nationally. they were not talking about republicans who were and i are new hampshire, south carolina -- owa, new in i

hampshire, south carolina. we know there is no such thing as a national primary electorate. we don't have a national primary. we have a series of contests. people who vote at the end of it are not paying attention and don't have to. by the time it comes down to march or april, a lot of things will have changed. why should they pay attention to that? if you force them to, with a name, they will say, ok, i have heard of giuliani. "if the election were held today, who would you vote for?" that's always the question. "who would you vote for among the following candidates?" nationally arens not right voters.

while giuliani was leading among republicans nationally, he was trailing in iowa, in new hampshire, in south carolina and michigan. he was barely competitive in florida. florida,me you get to all of these other contests , heing him to be a loser ended up with not a single delegate in the republican national convention. think of all the money and all the effort and time people spend in support of the candidacy that was mythological from the beginning. innever had a lead anywhere the early contest and was a this electorate. although hillary clinton was doing well in new hampshire and some of the other contests, she

did not have a solid lead, but she was leading by double digits , 20 points among national democrats. iowa, the very first contest, and everybody knows iowa can receive everything, but certainly what happened is, we know, four years ago, when howard dean was the overwhelming front-runner among national democrats until he lost in iowa and john kerry came over, there wasn't any shock at the fact , whatillary clinton happened in iowa could be a detriment to her bid. yet, everybody, and by everybody i mean all of the major media to theations, retreated expected race between hillary clinton and giuliani.

we were not even measuring the right voters. let's say another thing. many in the national media should really be ashamed. polls who dideral do polling in new hampshire and remained until the end. that is, until election. they got burned. gallup said they were 2% undecided and hillary and barack obama had a nine point lead. how did that work out? after the election, gallup found out, sure enough, there were somewhere around 25% of the voters who made up their minds in just the last couple of days. that is what the exit polls showed good by the way, the unh survey center asked upfront whether people had made up their minds and reported, accurately,

that about 21% of democratic voters, going into the election, were completely undecided. in any case, the media got burned. what happened in south carolina, in the subsequent polls? the major media went into those so that their elections could be checked against the final results. major media polls, they were talking to national republicans, national democrats, talking about the race.

the real fight, state-by-state, was being measured by a lot of other organizations, who is centrally come out of the woodwork during election time to get media attention. it doesn't mean they aren't always very good, but some of him, you don't hear about until election time. even among national democrats, national republicans, they were not even measuring correctly. why do i say that? in october, 2007, gallup abandoned its normal process of asking, "if the election were held today, would you support these candidates?" in a separate poll, they asked upfront, if you made up your mind, who would you support for president.

instead, they asked have you made up your mind in the democratic primary or republican primary. they found that 75% had not made up their mind among the republicans and 65% among the democrats. no candidate got more than 5% of the vote. giuliani got 5%. ron paul got 4%. mitt romney got 5%. no one got more than 5%. -- what was true the true state of the republicans when they were saying giuliani was the front runner? the true state of opinion was, "i don't know." that was the truth. but by having giuliani as the front-runner, it really cut off a lot of time for the lower tier

candidates, cut off a lot of people who would've participated. on the democratic side, it showed hillary clinton was a hit. she had 17%. barack obama had 9%. but that is not a 22 point lead. 69% are still undecided. no one could say she has a lock on the nomination. if they had done a national primary electorate, it would've shown us the race was truly whitwide open. being able to attract candidates, what can we say about the polls during the election? what we can say is they did a disservice to the democratic process. they did not tell us the truth. they manipulated people to come up with these names so that they .ould report them they affect the democratic

process, all because they did not want to admit that a large number of people were undecided. if they did that, people would say, "why are you pulling them-- polling them?" when george gallup first did this in 1935, he knew that when willked the question, "who you vote for in the november election 18 months away," if you asked about on -- asked if that way, so few people would have known that they would not have picked up the question. what turned out to be a minor way for george gallup to push forward pulling, which at that was -- has become the dominant paradigm misleading approach for this measuring the way electorate thinks about

candidates. i think that is really unfortunate. one last thing with respect to the current polls. polls suggest that -98% of the 95% voters have made up their mind already about who they will vote for in november. there's a significant number of people who are undecided. there are really people who are undecided who are being forced to come up with an opinion. was getting aama lot of attention, undecided voters said, "barack obama." when the republicans got a lot of media attention, the undecided voters say, "john mccain." apparent crazys

electorate, totally decided, but constantly changing its mind? that doesn't make sense. [laughter] dr. moore: the truth of the matter. votersoll showed 35% of could be called "swing voters." they do it backwards, they ask people who they will vote for, and, "is that a firm decision or will you change your mind?" they got about 35% in august, who would probably be swing voters. those conclusions were that most of the changes, after the conventions, were undecided voters who began to make up their minds. what really bothered me was that and say, "how did people are still undecided and what is the status of the electorate?"

the campaign manager said that he found the gallup polls -- campaign manager for barack obama said he found that the polls were completely worthless, because so many voters were undecided. that ae to recognize certain number of people are thinking about the campaign, they are going to be influenced by it. if you think, "wow, the numbers are going back and forth, "you don't get a good idea of what-- are going back and you don't get a good idea of what voters actually want. the media wants the race to keep going up and down, because it gets commentators something to talk about.

i think they still could talk meaningfully about a race, if it was accurately measured by the polls, which show a large number of people undecided, a vast number declining over time, trying to figure out where it is that's persuading them, rather than continuing with the misleading method of asking questions about the state of the election campaign. that is my complaint with the media. there are ways to make the polls useful, for the polls to tell the truth about the public. i think they can be very helpful. i am mostly concerned about public policy polls and pre-election polls. when they talk about personal experiences, they can provide good information.

when they refuse to tell the truth about the electorate, or the unengaged of public, i do think they do a disservice to democracy. let me open it up to questions. ,> if i follow you correctly from your first anecdote about votersl, with 30% of the are originally against going to war and 30% also said they would be upset if they went to war, is that correct, that implies that all the people that didn't care ended up saying, "yes?" dr. moore: that's true. most of people that said they favored the war in the first question, the superficial one, the people that said they were not upset if the opposite happened disproportionally were people who supported the war.

there was only a small group of people who opposed it who would not have been upset if we did. >> what can you conclude from that? dr. moore: that there are some issues where the opposition is strong. that when they express opposition, they have to know more. there is a tendency to say, "yes "yes" to policy. you tend to go along with things if you don't know about it, you're more likely to go with it than against it if pressured for response. it could be anything. that's just kind of the nature of it. >> did they take that into account when making decisions? dr. moore: our political leaders?

the interpretation of political leaders of polls is quite varied, as you can imagine. there seems to be a lot of evidence that some politicians use poll results in a manipulative way. it is true that a lot of politicians don't know very much about what the public is thinking and pay attention to media polls and what they say. with respect to the administration's point of view on abu ghraib, on gitmo, on the poq war, the liticians thought the public was "overwhelmingly in support." the polls create an environment for the politicians, and certainly for the news media.

they believe their own polls, their own coverage is shaped by what they think the majority is as well. ok. >> how do you get your supposedly representative samples? once you get them, how do you get past coloaller id? dr. moore: can you asked that in the microphone? >> have you find your supposedly representative samples? dr. moore: how do we find our samples? a lot of people want to know why they have never been called. with respect to telephone polling, use computer-generated, randomly generated telephone numbers. every residential telephone number, in pure, is equally probable to be selected. we know that a lot of telephone numbers have already been assigned to businesses, have already been assigned to

nonresidential enterprises. now, thatcompanies, make it their business to help design samples. i'm talking about land lines right now, across the country. it is not that much different when it comes to cell phones. don'tason most pollsters call cell phones is because it costs the interviewee as much as it costs the interviewer. phones,pect to cell there is a growing number of people who only have cell phones and are systematically excluded from the vast majority of media polling. go into great depth with it except to say that we use computer-generated random numbers to ensure that there is

an equal representation in all regions of the country, that all telephone numbers have an equal chance of being selected. the sample size is typically around 1000, nationwide. sometimes more, sometimes less. >> the first black governor of virginia who had advised obama about this said that in the end, the polls cannot detect racial attitudes, that they are often , andn and are volatile that at the last moment, decisive. this is called the "wilder effect." what is your response to that? determiningniques, the racial component in the election, is there a wilder effect? dr. moore: referring to governor

doug wilder of virginia, when he ran for governor, polls n heavyed he would wi handedly, but he barely won. that suggested that a lot of white voters who might've expected -- have been expected to support a white nominee told the polls he would support him, but didn't, because of race. effect."he, "wilder there was something like that for mayor dinkins who ran in for reelection. i forgot the dates exactly. he barely won even though the polls said he would win handily. reelection, ir was with gallup at the time.

the question is whether or not with obama there are white voters who say they support him but won't. it is hard to predict, right now. we know that he won in illinois. the polls are accurate, suggesting that there was no effect because of his race. what is happening right now are not, it is hard to say. the feeling is that that affect does not really pertain anymore. we are talking about examples from various states. you talk about the nation as a whether there is a racial effect in some states, it is difficult to say.

after the election, we do a close analysis of all the polls. i'm inclined to think there won't be much of an effect. black candidates have become fairly common, by comparison with 15 or 20 years ago. that is just speculation. >> are you suggesting that if people are given the chance to say i don't know, and those questions or friend or family -- questions are framed more fairly , a lot of people don't like to admit ignorance and probably would choose, even if not coerced, just for fear of looking dumb? is that a valid idea? dr. moore: that's valid research. it is very difficult what measure -- very difficult to measure. is it socially desirable to have

an opinion when you are in a context where you are being interviewed by an organization and they want you to have an opinion? yes, it is. can we get that, the notion that some people may not have an opinion? would they be willing to appear in -- to admit it? a lot of people are. usually get a larger don't know larger "illy get a larges a don't know." we can't measure precisely, because people themselves don't always fully know what their opinion is. they are kind of confused about a lot of things, a lot of ideas come to mind.

the major point i will make is that we should not systematically try to ignore the undecided. we should allow the possibility for people to admit that they don't know. if we have long polls where ,here are a bunch of questions favor, oppose, unsure, then that makes unsure ok. i think if you have a whole series of questions, even if you is illegitimate some people will so resist saying "i don't know" to all of those questions. i do not think we can overcome it completely, but i think we should not systematically oppress the undecided, giving mpression that

the electorate is fully informed and fully engaged. a follow-up to that. that question. if you say somebody is undecided, it sounds like they are just forming an opinion and don't know. the media wants to put left against right, yes against no. sellingt you telik and -- can't you tell a compelling story about 35% of the electorate being undecided? so much polling has been hijacked by people manipulating it, isn't it your responsibility to come up with a good housekeeping seal of approval? [laughter] >> to get the word out there about which pulls you can stand

behind, which ones are doing it correctly. how do you take back your own field and get people to understand which ones they can believe in? to simply say, "you can't thinke anything," i people are tired of it. dr. moore: to the first question, it had to do with theher or not we can make make it a salable to the news media that there's a significant portion of the public that is not involve. -- involved. there is a paradigm shift right now. for so many years, the framework has emphasized that the public is rational, fully informed, fully engaged. that has been persistent since the time of gallup.

he is to ignore people that said they didn't know and take them he of the equation, until was approached by lindsay rogers, who said instead of measuring public will, he is measuring "baby talk." he came up with a new plan. off by asking whether people had even heard of the issue, and then would ask them what they thought about it, and a few other things.. -- things. the problem is that the plan never went anywhere with the news media. he could never sell it to newspapers. that was his major outlet at the time. they did not want that depth, they want superficial response. i propose a simple follow-up

question. favor a person or are you unsure?" would you beasked, " upset if the opposite happened?" it should not be too much for the news media, as far as time and resources go, if they want to get at least a little bit below surface opinion. can we make that salable? some say my prescription sounds while at a pipe dream. -- like a pipe dream. i know from my colleagues in political science, not necessarily the polling

industry, that they also have a feeling that it could be done, if somehow we could change the so that peoplet recognize that there is a certain public that is unengaged. not manipulate them into coming up with responses that suggested that we have overwhelming majorities that favor war or this or that. i don't know whether you will be able to see whether my argument has any staying power. some want to modify the questions according to what i want to propose, and others will try to do it and come we will see whether or not it works. the second question, whether or not there is a "good housekeeping" seal of approval.

so far, i haven't established such a group. [laughter] dr. moore: i doubt there will be one. let me speak to the difficulty of the polling industry itself. it is very concerned about some polls. a lot of people think that internet polls that measure the general public cannot work and are not good because you cannot get a random sample. you have got harris interactive that claims it can make a living off of it, doing polling. a lot of people think that is bad polling. but when the national council of public polls, a group of major pollsters, decided to establish a board that would judge some polls, one of the persons on there was from harris interactive. there could never be any combination of internet polling,

because it is a part of the industry. this illustrates that there are a lot of standards that are difficult to police. the american association of public opinion research does set , good practices, best practices, but on the other hand, it doesn't address the kind of issues i'm concerned about. i don't think you will see the polling industry police itself the way you have suggested. the news would have us believe that sarah palin is the best and since sliced bread. are we being manipulated? dr. moore: i will talk about as far as the polls go. the polls, at this point, when the polls measure public opinion about sarah palin, they do at

the same way they measure opinion about other candidates. have al say, "do you favorable opinion, and an unfavorable opinion, or don't you have one opinion the one way or the other?" cbs is the only organization that bends over backwards to allow people to say they don't have an opinion. avorable,thers say, "f unfavorable?" i would say, with respect to measuring favorability towards sarah palin, that the polls are measured pre-much the way you would measure any other candidate. that's pretty much the way you would measure any other

candidat i think there is manipulation everywhere when it comes to election. i don't want to comment specifically on that. to get a better idea of how you think polls ought to be conducted, if you were trying to determine, right now, who would carry new hampshire between mccain and obama, how would you rephrase those questions? dr. moore: if i were phrasing the question, i would mention the names. i would mention that in the presidential election in november, who do you expect to vote for? ask for democrats, barack obama and joe biden, republicans, john mccain, and

-- john mccain and sarah palin? i would list, "some other candidate" for the other haveendent candidates and an option for those who have not made up their minds yet. for those who haven't, i would follow-up, by asking them whether they are firm or haven't changed their minds. i would ask those who are undecided if they are leaning. it gives me a white shade of opinion, from firm to not firm. what i would tracker the results of the first question, which the measurement of the two major candidates, other or undecided.

i don't want to minimize the undecided as the campaign goes along. but, for further analysis, asking follow-up questions, you can get a better insight into what the shade of opinion is. that would be my recommendation. i know some will be following it, and others won't. any others? there is a lot of discussion .n your blog about internals that?u talk about dr. moore: you're talking about the extent to which a candidates support varies by age, by region , by partyntry edification or income.

-- identification or income. the race has not changed, but has polarized. thereternals of suggests has been a polarization of the race, while the overall results suggest no different. a lot of times, internals will shift because you have smaller groups. if you see some changes among the four income groups, at best, you have around 250 people. change can be kind of random. a lot of the time, you will find stories about internals, that are what you might call, "analytical overkill." they're trying to find a real change here, change there. "he is doing better with white

blue-collar workers who work at night." verses, you know, that kind of thing. [laughter] meanoore: it doesn't internals aren't important, but given the general sample size of most of the major media polls, too much internal analysis is misleading. it can be helpful if you do it right. yes? it must be discouraging to you and the pollsters to realize that there are people like me and a few of my friends who really don't care about your polls. we don't believe your polls, we don't believe everything in the believer, and we don't everything on television. we tend to think and apparently. what does that do to you? are there more people that just

mr. moore: as far as i know you are the only person. [laughter] we will have to rethink our whole profession. >> i feel manipulated. mr. moore: i do too. all i can say is that there are a lot of people interested in the polls, and i am one of those people. i always take a look at them. but i get frustrated because i know that they are not done right. but apart from that, i try to read them. see whatt internals to they might mean. it gets to a point where i am interested in the technique into what people are doing. as far as you concerned, that is a different story and there is a significant portion of the

american public that is not interested, that is why we have a decline in response rates. , out of everyw five people that are supposed to be included, we are lucky if we can get one. to of the people who we want take part, we cannot get a hold of. some refuse outright, some refuse to respond, and others happen to be not there. rate isall response fairly common and even lower. so there are a lot of people who do not like polls in general. whether they are disgusted by them or feel manipulated by them, we have asked. in a poll. [laughter] mr. moore: i do not think that we've ever asked, do you still disgusted?

or do you not know. [laughter] the, you hear people commenting on the polls, plus or minus a percent within this range, does that have validity?l how do they come up with that number? mr. moore: the margin of error tells you how close the sample is, compared to the population at large. if you have 1000 people randomly and thereor a cause are 2 million people across the representhey would the general population within plus or -2%.

95% of the time when you do a sample at large, you say so many percentage whites -- points. tellis what statisticians us and i believe them. there is evidence to support, it is theoretical but something to be done, but the problem with polls is that they are not perfect, random samples. we have a high refusal rate or nonresponse rate that we cannot even measure how different the sample is from the larger population as a whole. we cannot measure it. minus 3% is or something i we can put out there, but it is a minor consideration when you try to figure out the real meaning of the poll. mentioned that we have a

romantic idea of ourselves as an active, well informed, concerned population. and that that ideal is held closely by the press and public institutions in general. the truth seems to be the opposite of that, that we are uninformed and generally self absorbed, that with most issues we do not even care. does a poll support one or the other of those views? mr. moore: the current poll results show that everybody is informed. the reason is, if they are not informed enough, we tell them. polls, wek objective that to get the undecided will show that there is a

substantial portion of the public that is not gauged on a given issue. when it iss times not. it varies by issue. on issues with foreign policy i'm a you can be sure that you'll have somewhere around 70%-90% of the public and engaged. should we -- unengaged. should we recognize cuba? say yes,some people you get 70% may be who have no opinion. easyhat is a fairly foreign policy to talk about it when you talk about whether or should support the initiative with china coming into the world trade

organization, we found the 92% who didn't.e had 92% who we expressed an opinion. , the word china or the country china, that might have triggered some kind of gut reaction. but an actual question that dealt with china's trade, how much trade it they do, this is evidence of it, i am sure that you would find 90% of people unengaged. people have lives to lead. that is why we elect representatives spirit i do not fault the american paul -- public to be unengaged on a lot of issues. i do not have the time to keep up with it. and i do know that many times, representatives

, we have this very complicated question and we say, how will you answer it? we have to admit, we've no idea ourselves. we were probably as well informed as any of the general public given the fact that we are asking questions about the news and talking to news reporters, yet we cannot answer some of our own questions. occasionally, that would happen. and so that comes back to the notion, i would never describe the american public as ignorant. i would say, we need to make a distinction for those who are and are not engaged, those who do not care at all, those who have an opinion. it is useful to know the truth about it, rather than to continually pretend as though you have a monolithic public.

>> how do you square that with the decline and low percentage of the population that votes in elections, even presidential elections? mr. moore: i cannot read -- remember these that number, but in the last in section -- last , in new hampshire, 75% of the people vote. byif varies -- it varies state. in the primaries, it is very low. engagedre not very much in the primary process. but in any case, it is measurable. the major point i would come away with is, it is not wrong to admit that on any issue, and number of issue -- a number of people are not engaged. it could be a greater engaged

public. the truth is, this is about the public. do you have a concern about programs,lls in news and how much focuses on the horse race instead of the issues themselves? -- polls: kohl's have have increased in the news cycle. reading -- and there is a chart on how polls were becoming essential part of news stories. it has increased. these polls to provide very important flavor of the political environment.

it they are interpreted in a lot of different ways depending on who is talking. i do think that they make it easy for journalists to be able to talk about something. then they do not have to do as much research. but when you have as much cable news, 20 47 kind of news -- 24 -seven kind of news, they need more to talk about. i would not argue that we need more polls, but i would argue that if they are going to be discussed, at least have the polls tell us the truth about what is going on so that we can ,e talking about that aspect rather than about other interpretations. [applause] [applause] >> on history bookshelf, here

from the best writers from the past decade. and you can watch any of our programs at any time when you visit our website, www.c-span.org/history. you are watching american history tv on c-span3. , 2 holocaust survivors from poland and latvia talk about being singled out, being sent to concentration camps, and eventually liberated. the two survivors are joined by colonel shames, who witnessed several concentration camps in germany. in this hour-long program is cohosted