Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Good Skews. We're going to talk today with John Ray about some of the polling that we've been seeing out there. It's not as bad as we might expect. It's not as bad as maybe it feels. Obviously,

it's not all good news, but there is some good news. So John's going to walk us through that.

John, welcome to the show.

Do you want to talk a little bit about your background? What brought you into the polling world

before we jump into some of the numbers you've been looking at?

Sure, everybody. I'm John. I work at UGov. Specifically, I work at UGov Blue, which is our political team.

I've been doing this for years and years. My background, I've basically been in politics for my career.

I kind of had kind of the reverse revelation that many

people do in college. I began life as an art student and as a filmmaker, and I one day picked up

a stats textbook and liked that shit better. And so I switched over to being a nerd instead.

And here we are.

I've actually been a pollster basically for, for my entire career, but I've not been busy being in school.

And so we've worked together, Matt, for at least the past few years on various forms of rural research in that regard.

So happy to be on.

Excellent. Well, maybe talk a little bit about

what polling can and can't tell us. I think maybe some of the times that people are

frustrated about the polling, if it feels wrong or it doesn't really line up with what they're

seeing, they get a little bit frustrated. And obviously,

there's good pulling and bad pulling, and pulling can be wrong. But when you are out in the field

as a pollster, how are you thinking about the questions you're asking and what information do

you hope will come from that? Maybe start there and then we could talk a little bit about what

pulls don't really tell us.

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