Chicken or Egg: A Collaboration from On the Media + FiveThirtyEight (On the Media)

Donald Trump's supporters have taken up the claim that polls are rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton because they "oversample" Democrats. The charge is based on emails published by Wikileaks, in which the 2008 Clinton campaign considers oversampling Hispanic and Native American voters.  Micah Cohen of FiveThirtyEight says the claim is a willful misunderstanding of how polling works and what "oversampling" means. Brooke talks to Micah, who is politics editor of the data news site, about how pollsters try to get it right, why they sometimes don't, and what this latest conspiracy theory says about the industry in this election.  We've partnered with FiveThirtyEight this election season. You can check out our partnership here. Their politics team is also putting out a daily podcast until November 8th, and you can find it here. And check out our joint Breaking News Consumer's Handbook for election polls. Song: Middlesex Times by Michael Andrews

Months ago, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver crunched the numbers and found it was extremely unlikely that Trump would become the nominee. He wasn't wrong, and yet here we are. So why is this election so unpredictable? Silver talks to Brooke about why the rules of politics seem to be broken this year, and how electoral predictions are based on a short history. Plus: could the country be due for a political realignment?  Nate is also author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't. 

Primary voters in twelve states (and American Samoa) head to the polls on Super Tuesday -- and media expectations are high. Our collaborators at the data news site FiveThirtyEight have a politics podcast, and this week their look at Super Tuesday explains how to read the Super Tuesday results, including media declarations of "inevitability" and "momentum." Plus: why Donald Trump's candidacy has thrown forecasting models into disarray. We play two long excerpts from the podcast, which you can listen to in its entirety here.  You can subscribe to FiveThirtyEight's podcasts here.   

A "Dean Scream" is shorthand for a campaign disaster. But did Howard Dean's 2004 shriek even happen the way it's remembered? And did the moment really doom his campaign? In this excerpt of a documentary from FiveThirtyEight and ESPN Films, producer Galen Druke investigates the post-Iowa call to action through interviews with Howard Dean, his former campaign staffers, and OTM's own Jennifer Munson -- who uses her technical expertise to analyze why the Dean Scream sounded so strange on the airwaves. You can hear the entire documentary and see a short accompanying film here. The Howard Dean Scream documentary was edited by Jody Avirgan, Chloe Prasinos, and Steven Jackson.  Song: "Roary's Waltz" by John Zorn

In our ongoing collaboration with FiveThirtyEight.com, we've been considering whether media coverage drives polls or whether polls (and general interest) drive media coverage. According to Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, it's the former; the Vermont senator has long accused the media of "blacking out" his campaign, dumbing down the national conversation on the issues behind candidate platforms, and handing Donald Trump free publicity and undue legitimacy.  Is there a Bernie "blackout?" Has he actually received less coverage? What accounts for his sudden surge? Bob sits down with FiveThirtyEight's Senior Political Writer Clare Malone to look at the question of Bernie and the media.

Reports say GOP front-runner Donald Trump has 25 to 30 percent of voter support in recent polls. But, not so fast, says Nate Silver of the data news site FiveThirtyEight. It's early yet, and when you break those numbers down it's more like six to eight percent of the American electorate -- around the same percentage as believe the moon landing was faked. Brooke speaks with Nate about how poll numbers on American public opinion can sometimes obscure the truth. 

What moves voters? Do candidates get more coverage because they're polling well, or do they poll well because they get more coverage? This election season, On the Media is teaming up with the data news site FiveThirtyEight to look track the push and pull between polling, media attention, and public interest. Brooke and Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight's editor-in-chief, launch the collaboration and go through two very different models of media influence: Donald Trump and Ben Carson.  You can find FiveThirtyEight's election coverage here and their podcasts here. Discuss this segment on Twitter: #OTM_538