User:GDevi17745/sandbox/AnthonySalvanto

Anthony Salvanto is CBS News' Director of Elections and Surveys and the author of Where Did You Get This Number?: A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World.

Salvanto joined CBS News as Manager of Surveys in 2002 and has been instrumental in implementing new survey practices including online interviewing, list-based sampling and cellphone interviews. Salvanto was also involved in deploying the CBS Nation Tracker survey in 2017, which explains the levels of presidential support, different from or distinct from just partisan breakdowns, on a host of issues including economy, jobs, trade, tariffs, national security, Russia collusion, immigration, foreign policy etc to identify the reasons why the president's supporters support him in the midst of opposition.

Salvanto was also instrumental in establishing the CBS Battleground tracking poll that shows voting patterns over time as opposed to random-sample telephone polling to predict the outcome of congressional as well as national elections. Based on the battleground tracking poll data, Salvanto has predicted that a "blue wave" is unlikely in the 2018 midterm elections.

In ''Where did You Get this Number? A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World'', Salvanto aims to make pollsters responsible not merely "to predict the world but to explain it." Salvanto worked on the book immediately following the 2016 presidential election since "the 2016 election felt like a good jumping-off point because so many people, when they were asking me what happened to the polls what they were really asking is: do I understand the country as well as I thought?"

Education
Salvanto earned his BA at Tufts University and a PhD in Political Science at University of California, Irvine.

CBS Battleground tracker
The CBS News Battleground Tracker is a panel study based on interviews conducted of registered voters in a congressional or national election in battleground states where no party has a clear majority. The poll is conducted by YouGov, an online polling organization. The survey respondents are interviewed in "waves," with later waves interviewing recontacted respondents from earlier waves of interviews. Respondents are interviewed randomly and after major election events such as the Republican and Democratic party conventions, announcement of Vice Presidential running candidate etc. In 2016, when the poll was first instituted, respondents were selected from YouGov's lists, and from voter registration lists of those who had previously voted in primary elections contacted by phone, and two other online "opt-in" panels that anyone can join. Respondents were selected for participation from available panel members to be representative of registered voters from each state in terms of age, race, and gender.

For the 2018 midterm elections, based on poll data from Battleground Tracker in key battleground states, Salvanto has predicted the election a "toss-up." The polls indicate the Republican party holding on to the House. The Battleground Tracker has a panel of 5,700 registered voters with the majority in the key contested states.

Views on Polling in 2016 Presidential Election and 2018 Midterm Elections
The 2016 presidential election outcome undercut the prevailing national poll data that favored Hillary Clinton leading industry figures to describe the event as the "catastrophic polling error that we’ve been fearing for decades." Salvanto has said that the polling in the 2016 presidential election did not accurately capture the "late movement" in states that "flipped" for Donald Trump at the last minute. Salvanto noted that pollsters "could be a little more discriminating about who we ask and who we think is going to show up if, in fact, there is going to be an enthusiasm gap. If, in fact, there are going to be people who tell pollsters that they are coming and they do not show up, then we need to do-- we can do a better job of modeling the electorate in making sure that we keep in only those people who are, in fact, going to turn out." Studying the 2016 exit polls, Salvanto called the race "contested," as the late-deciders gave Trump his victory. Rejecting the horse-race analogy for elections, Salvanto noted that "“In a campaign, everything can change tomorrow.”

Where Did You Get This Number? A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World
Kirkus Reviews called ''Where Did You Get This Number? A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World'' "timely reading for the coming midterm elections." "A campaign is a collective decision," Salvanto noted, "in theory everyone could change their minds the day before the election." Written for both the general audience as well as those following election news, ''Where Did you Get This Number? A Pollster's Guide to Making Sense of the World'' "takes readers beyond election day polling and into more complex realms like social issues—a survey he conducted in late 2017 revealed gun owners and nongun owners agree on more things than either group would expect."