Lee Miringoff and Steve Greenberg on what the 2016 election means for polling

Donald Trump’s election shocked many across the country – but you can’t blame the pollsters for getting it wrong. That’s according to Dr. Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, and Steve Greenberg of Siena College Research Institute. The two longtime polling experts say that the polls before the election were actually pretty accurate, and it was aggregators like FiveThirtyEight that promoted a misleading narrative.

“The polls themselves, both national and a lot of the state polls – particularly the ones close to Election Day – were okay,” Miringoff said. “So, the shock was less for the polling community, although we took a big hit in terms of a profession because there was that perception.”

The Slant podcast traveled to the Marist College campus to meet with Miringoff and Greenberg, who did some soul-searching about the results of 2016 election and what it meant for their institutions.

“Nobody, not Lee, not any of the other pollsters that were doing states – and that includes Siena – was doing Michigan, was doing Wisconsin,” Greenberg said about the final weeks of the campaign, noting that many polling institutes had shifted their attention to traditionally red states.

Miringoff and Greenberg also discussed the underlying reasons for Trump’s victory, and spent time debunking some myths around polling. You can subscribe and listen to the podcast below.

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