world is aragorn iced -- the world is organized, therefore i have to make sense of it. right now pollsters are trying to understand the scenario today. 2019, which was sort of a primary -- it is more than a primary because everyone is on the ballot, but in argentina the polls -- and the pundits more importantly, seriously overstated the president's chances of winning and they were surprised on election day. why? because he looked the role, he was an orthodox from an economic perspective. he went to all the right schools. he circled around the right circles. obviously things were going to improve over time. there was even this notion that

somehow there was a trend towards him up to election day. whether that was the case or not is another question. on the flipside you had the opposition that didn't look the role, wasn't found in the right circles. who ultimately won the election and became president of argentina. the problem is that the polls were shaky. there are lots of new methodologies, a lot of online, untested. and so the polls were, i would say questionable at best. misleading at worst. if you look at all the indicators, it suggested he was going to get creamed. you had an economy that was imploding. economy was a number one issue. fernandez was leading by about 10 points on the economy. just three data points suggested

that. maybe i shouldn't trust those. that is just a great example where he had mixed signals and if analysts took all the signals together, they would have a lower level of conviction. ultimately the day after election day, the market was very surprised. mr. marckwardt: so, there are events that change really quickly public opinion, such as 9/11, black swan events. kind of taking it a little more can temporarily, you mentioned incumbent approval rating being 40% or higher. now we have a change in the election. we have kamala harris and biden. not so much to predict what's going to come, but are the pollsters trying to work with the change and the fact that there is not really an

incumbent, or there is, and it is arguable in one way or another because she is the vice president? how do you account for that change, or are you obviously still trying to figure out how you might be able to account for that difference? dr. young: we are in a complicated moment. because a lot of events have happened. and they have muddied the scenario. we have a former president running again. we have a vice president that took the place of the same president. i think that all we can do in a situation like this is go to our basic indicators and look at them at face value. a lot of what is happening right now, and if you listen to the market today, everyone is questioning all the indicators. maybe we need to step back and say maybe they are just right and we just have to read them for what they are. on the polling side up until about four days ago, harris was

in the lead in most places. that is slowly shifting. the number one problems are the economy and inflation. trump leads by about seven on that. we have a historically weak incumbent, the successor is running. all these sorts of things which should suggest a trump victory by a lot. but it's pretty close. and why is that the case, perhaps? perhaps because he has a ceiling. i think he does have a ceiling. he is not liked by everyone. he has not ingratiated himself to the majority of the population. but ultimately this is an election about inflation, about cost-of-living, and there are constituencies that are really suffering still today and they don't trust the sitting government. that's the summation of our indicators.

yeah, probably it's an election that should be leaning trump. should be. but there a lot of second-guessing right now. and why second-guessing right now? because the polls are so close. mr. marckwardt: so, kind of taking it to a broader look at latin america, what have been the successes and failures of polling, and what are some of the trends in latin america? obviously there is a lot of discussion of democratic backsliding a lot of countries, and tendencies towards more authoritarian figures, policies. taking it back to the polling, is that something that will continue over the long-term? can polling even ascertain as a fortuneteller of those tendencies to continue? or is this something that might be temporary and what you are seeing? dr. young: part of the role of

the fortuneteller is they say something discrete about the future. we work with other subject matters like referenda, or impeachments, for instance. but a lot of the work we do, a lot of the work i do is also setting the stage, the broad stage for the future. what i can say about latin america is first and foremost, like in the united states, there is a widespread belief that the system is broken. this antiestablishment sentiment is not going anywhere. like in the united states, in latin america there has been a relative break down in ev consensus. i think we should expect more anti-system politics looking forward into the medium to long-term. i think that is a given. brazil is the place i pay most attention to and without a doubt be can see out every day.

lula right now is an anti-system political actor who is exercising his role as such. i see this next election in 2026 repeating that. i think this trend, this is a generalized trend. mr. marckwardt: what i wanted to do is open it up for some questions from our audience. we do have a microphone, so we will have it passed over here. but please. >> thanks a lot. i wanted to ask many questions, but i will only ask one. when you talk about your hat as a spin doctor, and put in the context of the 206 election, i wonder if we failure at the time wasn't one of misinterpreting a probabilistic situation as a certainty.

to some extent, i think it feels like when you say there is a 70% chance that candidate x is going to win, people interpret that as candidate x is going to get 70% of the vote and a certain outcome. i felt that when biden was in place people were doing that, but the opposite. trump has a 70% chance of winning and treating that as a certainty. how do you think about communicating results in a world where people make this type of interpretation your wrist -- how do you marry the fortuneteller with the spin doctor in a way that gets around that, if that is at all possible? dr. young: that is a great question. that is super difficult and a huge challenge. we talked about cognitive biases. single input learning styles and confirmation bias.

in that chapter is a third one which is probabilistic versus determine a list of thinking. and the importance of the analyst thinking probably stickally. the critique on 2016 is they had the probabilities wrong. it was more of a 50-50 election. whether it was 6040, it was leaning clinton but was much closer. and so we got that wrong because we didn't incorporate all the signals. if we had, i think it would have been more reasonable at least, our expectations would have been. but communicating this to the larger public is very difficult. because most people think determine illicitly. they think trump will win, will not win. harris will win, will not win. i would just say the only answer i have is every day of my professional career i explained

to someone the notion of variance, even though i don't say variance. how do you communicate uncertainty in a way that people understand? i think it is incumbent upon us professionals to try and provide the context needed to explain things, and i do that obviously with clients and with the media, i am doing it here in part. but that is essential challenge because most people think determine unless the clay. and we have these sorts of problems of interpretation ultimately. that is not an easy answer to that question but it definitely is a challenge we face every day. mr. marckwardt: yes, up here in the front. or in the back. >> what are your thoughts on our lichtman -- on alan lichtman,

academics like him who have these, what, 13 bases, or? dr. young: his keys? it's a model. it's a model that i don't understand 100% but i think it is a bit of take about how he measures things. there is a measurement issue. only he knows how to use the keys, it seems. if he can't open up the method from a scientific perspective and locate it then we have a problem. just as an aside i teach another class at some other places i am forecasting. what we do is we take the last electoral cycle and decompose all the models and recompose them. because they are transparent so we know how they are put together. we can take them apart and put them back together and figure out is wrong. there's not a lot of transparency there. i don't know how he is measuring

variables. but he has some sort of probabilistic model so it is no different. there is no special sauce. it is like any other model that exists. it has an outcome which is the election and a series of other variables. his are mostly structural. but i do not think there is a lot of mystery. it is just a mystery of what is the framework. >> thank you very much. i don't envy your position as being the avatar of all pollster s. one comment which is that, in looking back on it, to me, the 2016 miss was partially an improper focus. the focus pushed was the aggregate popular vote. of course hillary clinton indeed won the aggregate popular vote.

but due to the nature of our system, it's the electoral college that counts. and trump took by a good margin. somehow the polling was saying look at the popular vote, look at the popular vote, she's winning, she's winning. and don't look at this, which is indicating he's not winning. let's not publicize that. i really picked that up with nate silver a lot. like, we want hillary, so the stuff that doesn't look good, we simply aren't going to make public. which really undermines credibility. there is that factor and there is also the expense factor. i adhered -- they had to dramatically cut back sample sizes because they simply can't afford the big

person-to-person sampling. as you mentioned, personal contacts on the phone or face-to-face or elaborate questionnaires. so do you think those kind of things are seriously eroding public confidence at least in polling? thank you. dr. young: there is a lot to unpack there. we just take this step-by-step. i agree with you about the swing states. actually in the book i go through systematically and show if we focused just on the swing states we would have gotten it right. the signals were there, the polls were overstated towards clinton but the other signals told a different story. i think we have gotten better in the united states with

understanding that there is a certain degree of divergence between the swing states and the national result. i do a lot of brazilian media talking about the u.s. elections in brazil. they will not talk to me about the national polls. they have been taught by someone, i don't know who, that they only look at the swing states. i think that is an innovation in the general sense for all of us where the swing states don't clearly represent the national poll. when it comes to accuracy, if you look at the long-term trends we have only become more accurate. the problem is we have erred in some massively important elections on the wrong side that undermines confidence, when we picked the wrong winner. actually we were more off in 2020 then we were in 2016, but w e picked the right winger. and all we can do, we can only

control what we can control when we make an error like that, we admit it. we are open and transparent about it. the pollsters don't do anything individually, we work as a group and we did down into the data to understand is wrong and then we come up with solutions looking forward. that is the only way that i believe we stay credible in a very complex world doing a very complex thing, is to open up the door and let people in. >> thank you so much for this. i have two related questions. 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