What Do The Polls Tell Us About Election Day 2020?

In the run up to Election Day, we are bombarded with new polling results, talk about swing states and swing voters, and pundits’ making a wide array of guesses about whether President Donald Trump or Former Vice President Joe Biden will win. In 2016, the polls famously “got it wrong,” incorrectly predicting that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump. But that narrative is only partially right and ignores the differences between national polls and state polls as well as election polls and election forecasts. In this webinar, Associate Professor of Sociology Andrew Lindner ’03 will discuss the difference between polls and forecast models, how the 2020 Presidential Election differs from races of the past, and how confident we ought to be about what will happen on November 3rd. If you have ever had a question about election polls, prediction models, or presidential politics, this webinar is your chance to ask! Andrew M. Lindner is Associate Professor of Sociology. He received a B.A. from Skidmore College in sociology and psychology and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in sociology from The Pennsylvania State University. His primary teaching and research interests are mass media, politics, sociology of sport, and quantitative research methods. He is the co-author of All Media Are Social: Sociological Perspectives on Mass Media.