Hello, I want to the Red Box Politics Podcast and The Times, I'm Matt Cholly.

Politicians, it could be said, would have a much easier time of it.

It doesn't have to go around worrying about what the voters think about everything constantly.

So what is on the nation's mind? Who is up and who is down? And in these extraordinary times,

what impact does a change in public opinion have potentially on public health.

Joining me on this episode, I've assembled whatever the collective noun is

are pollsters to pick through what the surveys and focus groups are saying

and to discuss what the politicians should do as a result.

Deborah Matison was Gordon Brown's pollster before setting up Insight Firm Britain Thinks.

James Johnson was Theresa May's pollster before setting up polling firm JL partners and Chris Curtis is research manager at

YouGov which fields endless questions for me every week asking can we ask this or that or the other about what's happening in the public

mood before we begin anyone got any thoughts on what the collective noun for

pollsters should be I was thinking maybe a confidence a surgeump, any other ideas?

A significance, or maybe an insignificant?

Yes, Chris, before we started recording,

you had quite a good suggestion.

People obviously mean about pollsters sometimes

and claim that we heard.

So I suppose I heard of pollsters would be a fairly mean way of describing us.

But also, yes, I said, in better times you could say somewhere between one and five

pollsters walked into the bar it may be free but there's also a margin of error on that.

And there are no bars.

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