NM Pollster Brian Sanderoff weighs in on polling and the 2024 election
KSFR’s Mary Lou Cooper interviewed New Mexico’s premier pollster Brian Sanderoff to find out how political polling works and to get his take on the upcoming elections. Sanderoff is president and CEO of the Albuquerque-based Research and Polling, Inc.
According to Sanderoff, some key things to know about political polling are:
· Polling is essentially gathering a list of people you want to survey and generating a random sample. Doing so allows you to generalize opinions from a smaller to a larger group of voters.
· As to what is a good sample size, the larger the sample, the more accurate the results. In New Mexico, a sample size of 600 voters will yield a margin of error of plus or minus 4 %. A sample size of 1000 will increase the likelihood of accuracy with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 %. The more you sample, the more expensive the polling is.
· Margin of error is simply a statistic on the probability of a poll’s accuracy. The reason you have different results and different margins of error in national political polls is that different pollsters use different techniques to collect information. Some pollsters survey voters using the internet and texts. Sanderoff’s polling firm sticks to calls to cell phones and landlines. This approach is more expensive, but Sanderoff believes it is more accurate.
· A bigger problem than margin of error is sample bias—that is, not polling a representative sample of the voting population which will skew results.
· Undecided voters present another challenge to pollsters. Sanderoff says these voters tend to be younger, less affiliated with a particular party and less likely to vote on election day. The percentage of undecided voters in the 2024 elections keeps dropping.
When asked about how New Mexicans are polling on specific races, based on polls from a month ago Sanderoff reported:
· Trump v. Harris 39% to 49%
· Senator Henrich v. Domenici shows Heinrich up by 12 points
· U.S. House Rep. Stansbury v. Jones at interview time, not yet polled
· U.S. House Rep. Vasquez v. Herrell, very close--one of the tightest races in the nation.
· U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez v. Sharon Clachiscilliage shows Leger with a comfortable lead.
New Mexico is a blue state with 43% registered voters Democratic and 31% voters Republican. The percentage of voters in NM who say they are unaffiliated is growing. A registered voter is someone who has registered to vote, but a likely voter is someone with a proven voter history of voting one way or another. Sanderoff polls likely voters.
When it comes to what issues matter to New Mexico this election season, Sanderoff listed: inflation as reflected in cost of groceries and housing, crime, voter security and in some races, abortion.
