Are opinion polls accurate?

Do you prefer healthy, homemade snacks... or modern, packaged goodies?Find a full transcript, worksheet and interactive quiz for this episode at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english_2025/ep-250821SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER: ✔️ https://www.bbc. ... Show More

What was your favourite toy as a child? And would you consider playing with it as an adult...? It's not just kids who like to play with toys – many adults like to buy kids' toys for themselves! Phil and Beth discuss this and teach you some new vocabulary.Find a full transcript, w ... Show More

Many of us are familiar with wellbeing, but have you heard about flourishing?Find a full transcript, worksheet and interactive quiz for this episode at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english_2025/ep-250807SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER: ✔️ https://w ... Show More

Today, we can’t imagine an election without an opinion poll gauging public opinion on who’s leading, who’s won a debate or who’s more popular with a specific group of voters. Even our favourite chocolate bars and footballers are subject to a poll. But how did straw polls evolve i ... Show More

Hillary Clinton lost the US election despite some polls putting her chances of winning at 99%.In the run up to the vote pollsters spent huge sums of money speaking to thousands of Americans. They were careful to collect the best possible data from representative samples, and they ... Show More

The 2016 U.S. presidential election is over. And if you'd been following the polls, the results might have been surprising. What went wrong with those polls? It has to do with statistical and systematic uncertainties. Read the full transcript here: http://bit.ly/2gnNRpX 

Pollsters are starting to panic. There’s headline after headline after headline ahead of the midterms on whether this election cycle’s polling is accurate or not. How does polling actually work? Is it really representative of how voters are feeling and what the outcome will be on ... Show More

Polling is facing an existential crisis. Few people are answering the phone, and fewer people want to answer surveys. On today's show, we pick up the phones ourselves to find out how polling got to this place, and what the future of the poll looks like. Subscribe to Planet Money+ ... Show More

Nate Cohn, an expert on polling for The New York Times, knows that the predictions for the 2016 presidential election were bad.But this year, he says, they were even worse.So, what happened?Nate talks us through a few of his theories and considers whether, after two flawed perfor ... Show More

How can Democrats do a better job of messaging to voters? Which party is hurt more by Independent candidates? And are poll numbers as helpful as pundits claim? In this episode, Claire McCaskill and Jennifer Palmieri answer your listener questions. 

The primary election is in full swing, and our feeds are full of political polls that are surveying everything from who’s on top, to each candidates favorite comfort food. In this episode, Titi & Zakiya dive into polling to understand survey methodology (how polls are designed) a ... Show More