DENVER — Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a razor thin race according to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll. The numbers show Harris with 51% and Trump with 47% with a margin of error +/-2%. Polls are generally looked at as an indicator not only for candidates but also to the public on who is leading in a particular race.
Denver7 talked with pollsters in Colorado to get a perspective on how polls are produced and learned that some pollsters are having a difficult time getting voters to participate.
“So we're really using different modes in order to in order to give people the opportunity to participate and express their opinions, whether that's text message, whether that's an email, sometimes a text message, whether it's even a postcard, “Lori Weigel with New Bridge Strategy said who is a Republican.
When it comes down to the methodology, Kevin Ingham with Aspect Strategic shared they like to keep their margin of error below 5%. That is accomplished by getting a random sampling of at least 400 people from the voter file of people who typically vote.
“That may not seem like very much, but the truth is, you don't need to drink an entire bowl of soup to know what it tastes like. You just need a spoonful. So sampling is actually a very a scientifically proven way for us to be able to know what the larger population believes,” Ingham who is Democrat said.
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While polls are not meant to predict who will win the presidential race, pollsters say that if more people participated in the polling process, they could give a more accurate picture on a number of topics and races.
“What we're trying to do is accurately represent what people actually believe, because that then helps policymakers, it helps the public helps people in a position to affect positive change for their communities,” Ingham said.
This election season issues all voters can get behind it is the the cost of living and housing among a number of other things according to Weigel. But when you mix those issues into more partisan issues that is when a difference of opinion and candidate comes in.
“For the most part, I think when consistently, you're seeing a tight race, it's going to be a tight face down to the finish, right?,” Weigel said.
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When everything is all said and done it is the swing states that may decide who ends up in the White House. It’s those undecided or last-minute voters that could swing the election either way, for example Wisconsin voters have increasingly become more difficult to project who could win.
“Recently, it's been one of the states where we've had the highest sort of polling misses when you look at the combined averages of what we think is going to happen in Wisconsin, when it happens on election day, there's typically a larger Delta there than there is in some other states,” Ingham said.
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