you described the 2016 election as a classic example of a single input failure. what was that input? could you elaborate? then there has been a lot of conversation about the fact that pollsters have learned from 2016 and are now becoming much more sophisticated, i guess as a fox would be, to include other variables that would not miss the silent trump voter or whatever. the related question is that i am looking at a gallop poll that came out either yesterday or today, that shows -- and this is testimony to the degree of polarization in the united states, that the top-five issue for republicans in the top five issues for democrats and those leaving each direction are completely different. for republicans it is the economy, immigration, terrorism,

and national security, crime and taxes. whereas for democrats it is democracy in the u.s., the type of supreme court justices that a president would nominate, abortion, health care, and education. so when you say that the economy is the most important issue and that trump leads by 7% or whatever, are you really capturing this complete divide in terms of how partisan identities break down in terms of the issues that are considered most important? dr. young: those are great questions. on your second question, yeah, we are a highly, highly polarized society. if you look at the messages in each campaign, you have an overarching umbrella set of messages mostly about the economy. and you have a series of other

issues that are based issues. trump is talking about immigration. why? because he is talking to his base. harris is talking about threats of democracy. why? because she is talking to her base. but if you talk about the population in general, ours differs a little bit from the gallop poll but there are similarities. at some level, all americans are worried about the economy. if you take republicans and especially independents, the economy is number one. in this highly polarized time you have to have differentiated messages, you have to have some messages that are there to mobilize your base. you have to have some messages that are going to be able to carve off the undecideds. and the economy is the one that does that specifically. on your first question, the thing input -- the single input was the polls, if i was not clear on that. if you just looked at polling, the vast majority of polls at

the state and national level -- if you looked at fundamental models, incumbency, all the other problems with all the main factors, they suggested trump, or more specifically, a much tighter election. if not a 50-50 election. when i would say is this triangulation, we need to be careful. there is one thing about perfecting our own craft, the craft of the poll. ensuring that we have the most robust instrument possible. and in this context today, that means having methods that get at those maga nonresponders. those are the silent killers for us. but perfecting our craft is different than using multiple indicators to forecast an election. we want the most robust poll

possible. we want those maga nonresponders. we also want these other indicators, like the main problem i mentioned in our forecasting model to understand what we have so we can perform summary judgment. i wanted to separate the two. the poll book. i already have my copy and it is fantastic. kind of building on what you're talking about, looking -- putting that looking forward hat on. polling has evolved over time, and as new technologies have come on board we have either adopted to them or adapted to them. now that we are deep into the ai era and generative ai, are those tools as techniques enhancing

what pollsters do, but also what might be the dangers to look out for? dr. young: just as an aside, the photo of my book that i pushed out in social media, the finger is not my finger, it is actually your finger, michael. there we go. by the way, michael is a nationally renowned expert knows more on this than i do, but i fake it a bit. i think the following. i think the pollster is a pollster no matter what the method is to capture public opinion. whether we are using traditional polls where we talk to people, whether we are using non-survey based data in one way or another, we are still pollsters trying to capture the pulse of the people.

i think with the advent of ai and the plethora of data that is out there, i think this is a very exciting time. i think you and i will begin the mapping of alternative ways to measure public opinion. we will be the validator's invalidation become very important. validation is always important. our profession will be about taking these alternative measures and seeing if they work or not. i am excited about that. to what extent does ai affect the actual business of polling? obviously there will be a lot of innovation, a lot of creative destruction there. i think more from a data perspective and capturing public opinion.

i am avenue gnostic -- i am agnostic. the polls are there to be the guardian of public opinion. what i did not emphasize is the critical linchpin between those who govern and those who are governed. whether we are using the poll itself or some alternative that is less important, we will be there to validate it. >> hi, cliff. sorry if i am asking something you discussed in the book already because i have not finished it yet. but you mentioned polarization and calcification as a framework being used to analyze elections both here and in brazil, which i know you follow closely too. but in brazil, we are in the middle of a local election where this polarization didn't hold,

at least not the way where the analyst expected. do you think the local election is a different animal and that is why the polarization didn't hold as expected, or have we peaked on that kind of polarization and societies are moving away from that of the? -- that a little? dr. young: brazil just had the first round of its municipal elections. i think you are talking more specifically about sao paulo but generally about the elections. being extremely polarized between the right and the left doesn't necessarily mean the political outcomes will be exactly -- it is one fact among many that is important in determining what is going to happen. voters are complicated creatures that take into consideration many things.

it could be the ideological distinction or polarization plays out at the national level but at the local level it is much more about meat and potatoes. actually in-- you win and lose t the garbage men to vote, you win and lose if you keep the streets paved. it might have been more basic bread-and-butter issues that mattered and where you sat on the political spectrum was less important. i think at the presidential level that matters, but maybe the local election brought out more practicality in brazilian voters. >> questions? >> thank you for this talk. i have a question about your thoughts on decision-makers,

policymakers, donald trump, kamala harris, joe biden and how they view the will of the people from your perspective. and if you had a magic wand that you could get decision-makers and politicians to understand about polling and the industry, what would you try to get them to understand? >> i can't speak specifically about these actors but what i can say is they run the gamut. you have individuals that are heavy consumers of information and incorporate that information in decision-making. not as a sole input, many inputs. my experience over my career is the best politicians or lay researchers because they listened to their networks when information came through. they tend to be lay researchers always listening and incorporating information.

i also work with people that are magical thinkers and they think they can magically think themselves out of a situation. the book in part as a critique on that because it shows public opinion is very stable and if not stable, very predictable. for the most part there is not room for magical thinking. but those sorts of decision-makers exist as well. what i would say is the following -- most important is meeting people where they are. if there was any rule, any take away from my career, you are more likely to be successful if you meet people where they are. a lot of factors go into that. decision-makers often get that wrong because they think they know best. >> joking on that, in the book

you talk a lot about public opinion being more static and changing over time with slower trends with events like 9/11 where president bush got overwhelming approval literally overnight. i understand public opinion is more static. what are the trends you are seeing, the directions especially as it related to the 2016 presidential election, as it related to antiestablishment fever spreading across the nation. what is the trend? is that increasing or is it plateaued or how do you view it going forward, what are the numbers telling you? >> again, the anti-system belief system is here to stay.

that means increase problems with governments, increased inability to come to consensus. we should get used to it. there is a clarity there. it's not increasing but it's not decreasing. it is embedded in who we are as global citizens, not just in the united states. i mention we found this all over the world. to properly put in context our political dispute today, specifically in the united states but more generally in the west, latin america and europe. look across the board, society is increasingly becoming more progressive and more tolerant across a host of domains. gender equity, racial equity -- equality, excuse me. gay marriage, identity, sexual

identity, etc. but there is a reaction to that. it is more complex than i am portraying it but we have these broad trends but in the short to medium-term we are in the middle of chaos in part because we have part of society reacting to that. in different countries that is taking on different forms, different flavors, but the trend forward has a reaction as well and we can understand the political disputes in that context. the question is, how long does this last? i would say it would probably take a generation or so to work itself out. for now this is the critical point of dispute in the united

states and most countries in the world. >> it's really interesting with the social trends. one of the last roles you talk about, you talked about three different roles, the role of spin dr. specifically spin daca -- spin dr. as it means how the messages will be received, what is the optimal message, given a certain policy, what is the optimal way of transmitting it to get more approval ratings, that's how i understand that. given the context of social trends going forward, are our politicians and organizations leveraging more of the spin dr. roll of posters? >> i've said this but i want to emphasize it again, spin dr. is somewhat pejorative in nature but i use it purposely because we can only do so much with

public opinion. public opinion in a given moment and you are more likely to be successful if you meet public opinion where it is rather than try to convince it to come to you. there's a lot of magical thinking professionally speaking around this issue but i think the data bears out that people are fairly set in the short term in terms of what they believe and you won't change that. you've got to talk about them and what they need. seeing a bit of messaging, let's call it, in this context, we can see it in the campaign today. harris is talking about the opportunity economy and the future, let's go to the future, not the past. trump is making allusion to the way things were back then, they were better. you see a framing in a way that means things to people.

trump is emphasizing a lot immigration but immigration politics is not about immigration, it's about national identity. so critically, especially for trump space, the key question for them is what does it mean to be a real american? who is a real american? is america today the same america that once was? no it is not. how do we go back to the way it was? you have this sort of orientation toward these issues and we see political actors framing their messages around the way public opinion thanks -- thinks. >> what are some other thoughts or the key lessons you would

love the public to glean off of the book? >> there is so much. i think generally speaking this is a book for the decision-maker. i think it's a manual they can use. our students use it but also those using public opinion data, that's the first point. i think the second is is a thin -- a synthetic piece that allows a poster at the beginning of his or her career to have a framework to provide meaning and understanding in terms of what they do. they can see around the corner. they don't have to bump up against the wall like i did and others have as well. i think lastly i would say this is a book about the profession of the pollster. i don't think it's been defined anywhere else.

i wanted to hear. a lot of what we do is on the job training and we also call ourselves a poster and i think that job is important. as i said before, we are the linchpin of democracy. elections are feedback loops of those in power, who was in power and who is not is out but polls are a faster feedback loop. i truly believe it's a noble profession. we are the guardians of public opinion and ultimately we are not a posters, we are posters -- pollsters. >> in our public opinion because we talked a lot about convergence and you were talking about the most effective politicians being the ones able to meet people where they are.

with that in mind, i was wondering how you see both campaigns in that regard and how effective the trump campaign in the harris campaign have been in this campaign cycle in terms of converging with public opinion. thanks. >> he's angling for an a, right? [laughter] ultimately i think they are both converging right now and i think that's why it's really close. i think the harris campaign hit the ground running and had a message that was convincing. she doubled down and it was trying to reframe the economy away from inflation i think that was the right thing to do. trump was a little unfocused at first but now you look at ads in swing states, they are really well done.

they talk about inflation and link inflation to biden and harris. i would say they are optimally converging right now and running fine campaigns. i think the difference probably will come down to relative credibility when it comes to the economy. right now trump has the edge but we will see. i think they both are running on message campaigns. >> any other questions? you want to give some closing thoughts on your book? >> i think the last one is, i really appreciate the time i've had here. if taught this class for 13 years. i taught it a few times as a summer course and then i tried to make it a semester course which was not easy.

i got a workers, our president f

the united states, kamala harris. ♪ >> ♪ freedom, freedom i need freedom too

i am going to keep running cuz' a winner don't quit on themselves ♪ i am going to wade through thte wa -- the water call me bulletproof vp harris: good evening,

wisconsin! [cheers and applause] good evening, everyone. thank you. come here again. it is good to be back. hey, everybody. hey, green bay. so many of you may know when i was five years old we lived in wisconsin. [cheers and applause] my parents talk for a short time here, and now every time i landed governor evers will greet me and say welcome home. it is so good to be back with everyone and thank you all for taking the time but your busy lives to be here this evening. thank you all. thank you. [cheers and applause] thank you.

and it is great to be with this incredible group of leaders, including ben wickler, sheriff lott wisconsin, democratic party. [cheers and applause] kristin riley who we need to send to the united states congress. and green bay, let's reelect someone who has spent her career fighting for wisconsin families and manufacturing right here in wisconsin, your senator tammy baldwin. [cheers and applause] we need her back in d.c. we are also joined by tribal heaters, including the president who is from a band of mohican indians, and i will say it met

in president but i strongly believe the relationship between tribal nations in the united states is sacred and that we must honor tribal sovereignty, embrace trust and treaty obligations and ensure tribal self-determination. and as president i will defend those principles. [cheers and applause] all right, green bay. green bay, we have 19 days until election day. 19 days, so we are entering the home stretch. and this is going to be a tight race until the very end. we are the underdog, and that is why we are and i am campaigning to earn every single vote, because i intend to be a president for all americans. [cheers and applause]