How we predict elections

The Conversation with Dasha Burns

POLITICO

Politics, News, Government

4.0 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scott Bland is POLITICO’s national politics editor and leading all of POLITICO’s 2022 midterm coverage. To do it, he has a team of about 15 reporters around the country following campaigns. Despite the cooling temperatures, this is when people like Bland start to sweat. His job is to ensure readers and listeners aren’t surprised on election night — that POLITICO has considered and reported on all possible outcomes, including the outliers — those black swan scenarios with seemingly low probabilities. Not just the most likely ones, according to conventional wisdom. The specter of 2016 still haunts newsrooms. Bland and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza dissect how 2016 midterm misses can be applied lessons for reporters covering the 2022 elections. Bland also weighs in on pressing questions like; what are the chances of Democrats winning the House while the Republicans take the Senate? Could all of those allegedly flawed Trump-backed candidates sweep their races? And could Biden be the first President since 2002 to avoid a party defeat in the first-midterm election? Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Scott Bland is the national politics editor for POLITICO.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott Bland is Politico's national politics editor, which means that he leads all of our
0:12.0	2022 midterm coverage.
0:14.7	And to do it, he has a team of about 15 reporters, he deploys in campaigns around the country.
0:20.6	Number one thing we're focused on is the fight for control of the Senate.
0:25.2	And it's that time of year when people like Scott start to sweat.
0:29.2	But you know, how are the coalition shifting?
0:31.7	What can they tell us about Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin?
0:36.8	It's his job to make sure that readers and listeners aren't surprised on election
0:41.8	night that we've considered and reported on all of the possible outcomes, not just the
0:47.6	most likely ones, according to the conventional wisdom.
0:51.7	The specter of 2016 still haunts newsrooms in 2022.
0:58.5	The possibility that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote and lose the electoral
1:02.9	college to Donald Trump was undercover to say the least.
1:08.6	The polls showed that the Donald Trump was going to lose.
1:11.8	And I and many others were way too dialed in on that.
1:14.8	And it turns out it's very important to think about elections in terms of the range of possibilities.
1:23.7	I'm Ryan Liza.
1:24.8	This is Playbook Deep Dive.
1:28.8	That 2016 miss continues to shape political coverage in newsrooms across the country.
1:36.5	Nowadays top political editors spend a lot more time thinking about outliers.
1:41.8	Those black swan scenarios with seemingly low probabilities.
1:46.3	Could the Democrats win the House while the Republicans take the Senate?
	...

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