Viewer Spotlight: How Scripps News reports on political polls

With the political season ramping up, we've received several calls from you to our toll-free Viewer Hotline asking about one staple of modern-day campaign coverage: polling.

Here at Scripps News, we view poll numbers as just one piece of data that helps us better understand political sentiment at a particular moment in time. We pair that with our own reporting to offer additional context and clarity. Still, understandably, some of you have questions.

"I like Scripps News. It's a very good news station. It seems to be very objective. However, I really have to push back against the use of all of these polls as if they're news. These polls that you cite for the coming election are not news. They're just polls, " said one caller.

"All these polls y'all keep posting all the time of how Democrats are gaining in Democrat loyalty and all this crap, why don't y'all put the sampling at the bottom of voters on each side of who you're sampling, because if you're sampling 22 to 30 percent more Democrats, you're probably going to lean that way, wouldn't you think?" asked another.

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Behind the scenes, we have a thorough set of guidelines meant to gauge the validity of political polls before we report on them.

Among the questions we ask: Who conducted the poll and how was it conducted? How many people were surveyed and what's the margin of sampling error? What population is represented? When was the poll conducted? Were interviews conducted over the phone, in person, or by mail? What questions were asked? Were those questions balanced and unbiased? Was the data weighted?

Not every political poll that comes out meets our standards for broadcast. But we hear your calls for more transparency around poll results and our political reporting in general. On our website, we try to provide links to full datasets so you can take a closer look if you want. And we'll keep working to give you more insight into our newsgathering and review process throughout campaign season and beyond.

In the meantime, keep those calls coming to our TOLL-FREE Viewer Hotline at 1-833-4-Scripps.

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