Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover

Institution.

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My guest today is Doug Rivers, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and

Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Doug, welcome to Econ Talk.

Thanks.

Doug is one of the world's leading experts on polling, which is our topic for today, and

we're going to talk about some of the surprising aspects of polling that you don't hear about

or read about too much in the paper, where there's sort of, I'd say, a more optimistic

view of the scientific aspects of polling than maybe they deserve.

Most of us have an idea or think we have an idea of how polls are done.

So let's start by talking about how polls get conducted these days, starting with a traditional

telephone poll.

Well, let's go back a little before telephone polling, which arose in the 1970s.

From about the 1930s when polling started to the 1970s, interviewing was done in person.

So the Gallup organization would send people around door to door who would ask how you're

going to vote what your opinions are on various issues and so forth.

...