Mark Blumenthal: What Do Americans Really Think About Politics?

Chris Riback speaks with pollster Mark Blumenthal on what we know about the 2016 presidential election.

For answers to a Presidential campaign that few predicted and fewer, perhaps, pretend to understand, we often turn to the dark science of polling. Given the overwhelming amount of data each of us generates each day – from clicks to searches to surveys and more – the people who tell us what we think and feel have taken an important if not outsized role in American society generally and American politics specifically. Among our big questions:

• Is this nasty campaign an accurate reflection of who we are as a country?
• What do American’s really want in our next leader?
• And if it does end up to be Clinton vs. Trump, who wins an election where both candidates are disliked in such intense ways by so many?

Complicated issues, which is why Mark Blumenthal is here to help us understand. Mark is Head of Election Polling for SurveyMonkey and runs their NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll. He, of course, is the original Mystery Pollster, and was co-founder of Pollster.com and previously served as Senior Polling Editor at The Huffington Post. He has worked for dozens of Democratic candidates running for office at various government levels.