Welcome to the Pollcast

Read the headline here while channeling your inner Don Newman. "...the P-o-o-o-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-c-a-s-t."

Very excited to launch the CBC Pollcast today! You can find it here, or listen to it directly here.

Every week, and perhaps more often once the campaign gets going, we'll be inviting guests to the Pollcast to discuss everything about the polling industry: how polls are done, what challenges the polling industry faces, what influence polling has on election campaigns and, of course, the trends, both national and regional.

Joining me this week is David Coletto, the CEO of Abacus Data. We discussed how polling is done in this new modern world of ours, and we saved a little time to talk about what the polls are showing right now. David had some interesting thoughts on what it will take to move the numbers.

We're going to get at the topic of polls from every angle in future episodes. It isn't just about the horserace.

We'll have more pollsters on to discuss what they are seeing in their numbers, as well as to discuss issues related to the industry and the relationship pollsters have with the media. We'll have members of the media on to discuss that relationship and the role of polling in political journalism. We'll also have them on to give some context to the numbers themselves. And we'll have some party insiders, too. Not to spin the numbers (though they might try!), but to discuss how parties are using polls in their campaign strategies.

I think it will be a lot of fun, and I hope you'll enjoy it. And it's a podcast for the ThreeHundredEight.com audience. We're not going to shy away from getting into the details - in this week's episode we even get into sampling quotas - like is often the case on other platforms.

Please let me know what you think, and what you'd like to see from the Pollcast!