Polls Schmolls: Dan Pfieffer, Former Obama Advisor, on Why the Election Is a “Coin Flip”
Inside the Hive
Vanity Fair
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How reliable are political polls in an era when almost no one answers the phone? Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer tells Brian Stelter that he takes polls "seriously," if not literally, and says Democrats dismiss the data at their own peril. "We are living on the knife's edge," Pfeiffer says, with Donald Trump showing the "slightest of leads right now" over Joe Biden. Pfeiffer explains why he'd rather be the Biden campaign than the Trump campaign and gives tips about how to digest media coverage of the presidential campaign.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Radika Jones, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. |
| 0:05.0 | If you love digging into the week's political headlines, |
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| 0:32.3 | read watch and hear. Vanity Fair. Dan, do you believe the polls showing Donald Trump beating Joe Biden in a head-to-head |
| 0:53.5 | matchup? I believe the polls with a shakers worth of salt but I take the overall |
| 0:59.7 | narrative correctly. You do so you don't read these and say, ah, the polls, they can't be trusted, don't believe them. |
| 1:06.0 | No, no, I think all the polls are saying the same thing, which is a very close race where |
| 1:11.6 | Donald Trump probably has the slightest of |
| 1:13.1 | leads right now but it's still we saw the eight months to go. That is Dan |
| 1:17.3 | Fyfer, a veteran of the Obama White House, co-host of Pod Save America, and |
| 1:21.1 | author of the Message Box newsletter. |
| 1:24.2 | And I'm Brian Selter. |
| 1:25.6 | Let me welcome you to Inside The Hive from Vanity Fair. |
| 1:29.2 | You can hear what we're going inside today. |
| 1:30.8 | We're going inside the political polling machine with recent polls showing Trump |
| 1:35.7 | leading in several swing states and showing Biden bleeding black and |
| 1:39.3 | Hispanic voters. Democrats have reacted with dismay and in some cases disbelief. |
| 1:45.0 | How much stock should we be placing in these polls? |
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