New presidential poll analyst says, ‘We can’t say for certain who’s ahead’

[MUSIC PLAYING] CHRIS FARRELL: So a new MPR News Star Tribune KARE 11 Minnesota poll has President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump running neck and neck here. Now, most surveyed disapprove of Biden's job performance and Trump's standing as well, but most, they've already made up their minds in the election. Reporter Mark Zdechlik has a breakdown on the poll's results.

MARK ZDECHLIK: The survey of 800 likely Minnesota voters was conducted by phone from June 3 to June 5. When asked who they backed for president, just under 45% of respondents picked Democratic President Joe Biden. Almost 41% chose former Republican President Donald Trump. That means Biden's lead is so slight, it's barely outside the poll's margin of sampling error.

A small percentage preferred a third-party candidate, Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A sliver remains undecided, but majorities of those questioned are unimpressed with either Biden or Trump, with many saying they lack enthusiasm about their choice.

KAYTEE BROSKOFF: So high. You go so fast.

[BABY CHATTERS]

MARK ZDECHLIK: Those sentiments are apparent among some people in Downtown North Branch at a park there. 22-year-old Kaytee Broskoff is swinging with her young son, Easton, as Hanna, the family dog, looks on. Broskoff says it's hard for her to afford what she needs. And she blames President Biden for inflation.

KAYTEE BROSKOFF: It's definitely a struggle to be a single mom and live in today's world.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Broskoff might not even vote this fall.

KAYTEE BROSKOFF: Probably not. Really, I don't know who I would vote for. If I did vote, I would probably vote for Trump. And I say that because my parents support him.

MARK ZDECHLIK: The economy and jobs was the top issue category for more than a quarter of respondents in the poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy. That slightly trailed the state of democracy as a driving issue. Democratic respondents said protecting democracy is their main concern, followed distantly by climate change. Republicans pointed to the economy as their top concern, followed by immigration.

Biden has a dominant edge in the populous Hennepin and Ramsey counties. Trump led in all other geographic regions of Minnesota.

SEAN MOE: I'm a Trump guy all day.

MARK ZDECHLIK: On Main Street in North Branch, Sean Moe was resolute in his support for Trump and his disdain for Biden.

SEAN MOE: I think Biden screwed up the country. Everything's expensive. Groceries are expensive, especially, because I liked grocery shopping. I hate it now.

MARK ZDECHLIK: The poll found Trump to be far more popular among men than Biden. It's flipped among women, who are strongly in Biden's column.

ANGELA FAIRBANKS JACOBSON: This is the Closet at George Floyd Square.

MARK ZDECHLIK: That's Angela Fairbanks Jacobson, who dropped off clothes last week at a bus shelter turned free store at the hallowed South Minneapolis intersection. She's supporting Biden, but does not sound very enthusiastic about the president.

ANGELA FAIRBANKS JACOBSON: I'm sad. It's unfortunate that we don't have younger candidates. But it is what it is right now.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Just three in 10 Biden supporters said they are very enthusiastic about him. More than twice that percentage of Trump supporters said they are very enthusiastic about his candidacy. Fairbanks Jacobson says her vote in November will be about preserving the nation's democracy.

ANGELA FAIRBANKS JACOBSON: Definitely supporting anybody but Trump. And I feel that Trump is a threat to our democracy. We do absolutely not want a dictator.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Around the corner, 36-year-old C. Terrence Anderson shares those fears. They're driving his support for Biden, too.

Has Biden done a good job as president?

C. TERRENCE ANDERSON: I feel like he's done an OK job. I mean, I think there's definitely been some successes in infrastructure and things like that, but very disappointing in Gaza. So I think it's a mixed bag.

MARK ZDECHLIK: While the new Minnesota poll found tepid support for Trump and Biden, roughly 55% of respondents said they approve of DFL Senator Amy Klobuchar's job performance. Klobuchar is running for a fourth term. It remains to be seen how much Klobuchar might be able to help Biden in a seemingly competitive Minnesota. I'm Mark Zdechlik, MPR News.

CHRIS FARRELL: All right, well, thank you, Mark. And let's dive deeper into polling. And our own Craig Helmstetter is here to explain exactly how his team at APM Research Lab conducted the presidential poll. So, Craig, thanks for joining us.

CRAIG HELMSTETTER: Hi, Chris, yeah, it's great to be here with you. And I'll just have one small correction. We actually didn't conduct this poll. But we worked closely with the newsroom on the analysis and putting together the visuals, the graphs, and so on. But this was a collaborative effort with the Star Tribune and Carol Levin with Mason-Dixon actually doing the polling.

CHRIS FARRELL: OK, so tell us now, there's been some doubt cast in recent years about polling, the polling numbers. So how should we approach numbers like those that are in this poll?

CRAIG HELMSTETTER: Yeah, very good question. But let me just-- I'll go right to the proof that's in the pudding. So in 2022, we conducted a Minnesota poll very similar to this one. And that poll had Walz ahead of Jensen by 7 percentage points just two months prior to the election. And then Walz won by 9 percentage points. So the poll was very close to the eventual result.

Again, in 2020, our Minnesota poll had Biden up by 6 points two months prior to the election. And then, two months later, Biden won by 7 percentage points. So you can see that the poll results have really closely reflected what we've seen in the election. That said, today we're several months out from the election. So this is just a snapshot of what Minnesota thinks right now at this point in time.

CHRIS FARRELL: OK, so a technical question. Emily Reese mentioned it, Mark Zdechlik mentioned it. This margin of sampling error, what is the margin of sampling error and how do we think about that?

CRAIG HELMSTETTER: Yeah, margin of error, we are conducting a sample here, so we're not, of course, able to talk to every voter in the state. So it's a mathematical concept that's all built around probabilities. And so without getting too technical, though, mathematically, when we have a sample of 800 people, we can say with a high degree of confidence that our results are within 3 and 1/2 percentage points of what the poll is reporting.

So in this case, we said that 44.5% of Minnesota voters favor Biden. So we have a high degree of confidence that somewhere between 41% and 48% of Minnesota voters favor Biden currently. Similarly, when we look at Trump and put those margins of error around his number, there's somewhere between 38% and 44% are favoring Trump. So if you're listening real carefully to all of those numbers, you'll see that the high end of the Trump, of what we call this confidence interval, the high end of that is at 44%.

The low end of the confidence interval around Biden's number is at 41%. And so those are overlapping. So that's why we say that statistically we can't say for certain who's ahead right now in Minnesota, even though that the point estimate shows Biden ahead, that margin of error shows them tied. So us stats geeks will say, yes, we are tied here in Minnesota.

CHRIS FARRELL: OK, so you live this stuff. You're a self-described stat geek. But for the listener, we see a lot of these polls. And they get reported. I mean, what is the purpose of polling? How should we think about them.

CRAIG HELMSTETTER: Yeah, well, one of the purposes of polling-- and it's really funny because we get two reactions to polls. And one is that they must be wrong because they don't say what I'm thinking or what my friends are thinking. And then the other reaction is, I already knew that.

So people tend to react to polls, in the same way that we react to a lot of data. And that is, we have this confirmation bias of favoring data that suggests what we already think. But I think that's the real value of polls is really knowing what is on the mind of a broad spectrum of the population and not just those within our bubbles. And so I think it's important, thinking back to 2016, when Trump was voted in as president, a lot of people were surprised.

We didn't have the greatest polling back then. But also, we did have some polling that showed, hey, the race then was in the margin of error. And people should pay attention to it. And yet, people were very surprised in many cases that Trump won. So I think it's just a way of us getting outside of our own bubbles to understand what the broader public is thinking.

CHRIS FARRELL: Well, thank you very much. Well, I'm sure we'll be talking more and more as the election becomes closer.

CRAIG HELMSTETTER: Great, thank you, Chris.

CHRIS FARRELL: That was Craig Helmstetter, Managing Partner of APM Research Lab. Listen to Morning Edition tomorrow morning for more from Mark Zdechlik on the second batch of poll results.