VIDEO: Trusting Preliminary Polls

ALABAMA (WCBI) – The Alabama special election for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat is tomorrow, December 12.

Right now, most survey polls show the race either heavily in favor of Roy Moore or heavily in favor of Doug Jones.

How this information is gathered varies, and the specific situation of this election may have people withholding who they’re planning to voting for.

The sexual allegations against candidate, Roy Moore hasn’t done polsters any favors.

“It’s complicated when you have other issues around an election, so in this case you have allegations , you have other things that are sort of clouding the airways of simply an election between two individuals,” said Executive Director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State, Dr. Dallas Breen.

Some polls put Moore in the lead; others give the edge to Jones.

Dr. Breen says how information is gathered for polls varies.

“So you have face-to-face interviews like we’re doing here,” explained Breen. “You have phone interviews, so I’ll still be talking to a person but they’ll be asking me questions. We also have an automated survey.”

Breen says speaking to an actual person, regarding this specific election, may affect how people respond.

“So you’re an interviewer calling me saying ‘Who would you vote for?’ Well, if I know there are allegations against someone or if I know there’s some sort of uncertainty or some sort of cloud around someone, I may not tell you. I may decide to hold back my opinion or say I’m undecided,” said Breen.

Regardless of how people answer survey questions, Breen believes the average of these polls may be the best guess at the outcome.

“I think people understand who they’re going to vote for, and they’re either going to vote one way or the other,” said Breen. “You may have Fox News being very accurate; you may have Emerson being very accurate. You may have the Washington Post being very accurate. My guess is it’s going to be somewhere in the middle.”

Tomorrow the polls that matter, the voting polls, will open at 7 a.m., and we will see who Alabama voters choose to be their next U.S. Senator.

Categories: Local News

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