Gallup won't be releasing pre-presidential race poles, tips to prepare your car for El Niño, a look at the state of the coffee business.
Gallup is out of the pre-presidential horse race
Polling giant Gallup told Politico on Wednesday that it will be stepping back from handicapping the presidential horse race.
The survey company has been calling political contests since FDR was in the White House, but recent mistakes have led Gallup to rethink its relationship with who's-in-first style polling.
In 2012, the Gallup poll showed Mitt Romney leading President Barack Obama heading into the election. As it turns out, the numbers were nearly five points off.
Experts say errors are becoming more common in political polling, mostly because traditional survey methods no longer work.
Cliff Zukin is a professor of political science at Rutgers University and the former president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. He shared his thoughts on the announcement with Take Two's A. Martinez.
"I guess I was more sad than anything," he said. "I think it's a loss to the profession and to what journalists get to find out about and what the public gets to know."
Zukin explained how Gallup came to be the "gold standard" in political polling.
"George Gallup was a pioneer in polling methodology and he believed that the public should have a voice in democracy," he said. Zukin says Gallup editor Frank Newport probably decided that polling before the general election had little value for voters. "I think he's gotten to the point -- as have others -- that horse racing polling doesn't make that much of a contribution," he said. "The big thing really is that it's become so much more expensive to do well in the last four and eight years."
Zukin says it's becoming increasingly difficult to get an accurate idea of how voting Americans are feeling, even during the general election. In 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibited companies from calling cell phones using automatic dialers. Zukin says this forced companies like Gallup to dial all survey calls by hand. He says it's not uncommon for companies to make about 20,000 calls to complete a 1000-person survey.
The Protection Act had little impact on the survey industry at the time, but Zukin says the data collection process got harder as more Americans bought mobile phones. "Going back two elections, we had cell phone only in the United States for about eight percent, and we really didn't worry about it," he said. "As of this last year, we have 43 percent of the country that's cell phone only and another 17 percent that's cell phone mostly." He says this is one of the reasons why the cost of conducting a survey has risen rapidly.
Looking to the future, Zukin says polling firms have yet to find a survey method as reliable and cost-efficient as the data gathering methods of old. "The move is everybody to internet polling, and I think that's going to happen for cost reasons," he says. But he adds that it's no silver bullet. "Maybe 85 percent [of the country] have Internet now, but that includes just about 60 percent of those over 65 -- and those people vote. They were 23 percent of all voters in the congressional election."
Zukin adds that, just because Gallup won't be polling now, this doesn't mean that they won't start tracking candidate popularity in during the 2016 election season. "I think they'll be back then," he says. No word yet from Gallup on how they'll collect the data.
Press the blue play button above to hear more.
3 ways to prepare your car for the rain
Southern Californians don't often see a lot of rain. So when they do, it can be a bit disorienting. To make sure you're ready, we've got tips on how to prepare your car for wet weather:
- Check your windshield wipers. If your wipers are streaking or skipping, it's time for a new set.
- Spray your windshield with Rain-X. It's supposed to improve visibility when driving in the rain.
- Check your brakes and tires. Bald or worn tires will slip more easily in wet weather. The penny (or quarter) trick could work for you, or it never hurts to take your car to a pro. Also, make sure your tires are inflated to recommended pressure.
New NOAA report says we'll surely see a strong El Niño
With temperatures in Southern California pushing up to the century mark as we head into the weekend, it's hard to imagine all those rainy days that are supposed to be just around the corner.
According to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, there's a 95 percent chance that El Niño will continue through Spring 2016, triggering a series of rainstorms that could inundate Southern California.
But when is it going to kick into high gear?
Mark Jackson is the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in Oxnard, California and he joins the show to talk about the wet winter that we could be having.
Gender discrimination in Hollywood being investigated
Gender discrimination in Hollywood has been a hot topic for a good long while now, and we've talked about it a lot here on Take Two. Back in May we had a conversation with Melissa Goldman of the ACLU about the sorts of things that female directors frequently encounter in The Business.
"A number of women told us they heard things in meetings with studio executives like "Oh, we already hired a woman this season," or "Oh, we hired a woman once and that didn't really work out." Or, "We love to hire women, but our crew doesn't really work that well with women." Comments like that were things that we heard a lot."
At the time Goldman told us the ACLU was presenting the information that they had gathered to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in the hope it would investigate Hollywood's hiring practices.
Well, now the Commission is officially looking into it and Ted Johnson, Senior Writer with Variety, joins the show to talk about it.
State of Affairs: Kevin McCarthy drops House Speaker bid - what happens next?
In today's State of Affairs: Rep. Kevin McCarthy drops out, Gov. Jerry Brown signs aggressive climate change bill, and California becomes the fifth state to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
USC's
and KQED reporter
join Take Two for a weekly look at news and politics in California.
Kevin McCarthy drops out of House Speaker race - who else could step in?
“As to an obvious choice, there is one – Paul Ryan – who again and again has said 'Thank you, but no thank you.' I think he is probably the only Republican out there now who has half a chance of bringing some kind of order to that caucus. But... again this morning [he] was very firm in saying 'No.' The one name I’ve heard out here from California Republicans is Ed Royce who is a senior Republican member of the House and is well-respected. But I don’t see how that works in the real world. Unless you are the heir apparent, as McCarthy seemed to be, the House will vote for anybody but California." -Sherry Bebitch Jeffe
Gov. Jerry Brown signs climate change bill with targets for 2030
"Essentially what this says is that by 2030, half of California's electricity will come from wind, sun, other renewable sources. It also sets some pretty ambitious efforts around doubling the energy efficiency of buildings. Now, it left out a target to halve our gas consumption after a lot of pushback by the oil industry, so this is something that I think the Governor is going to continue pushing through his executive power. But this was a win for him and for Senate pro tem Kevin de Leon from Los Angeles who really took the lead on this and pushed it hard." -Marisa Lagos
California legalizes physician-assisted suicide
"The fact that [Governor Brown] actually signed the bill surprised me. I had finally come to the thought that he'd let the bill become law without his signature and then avoid all of the debate and end all of the hand-wringing that obviously he did. But he did all of that. And this was I think a very impressive statement, very personal, he opened up, and it was very Jerry Brown. I can't think of another Governor, at least in the modern era, for whom I've seen a [signing] message that is so open and transparent and personal." -Sherry Bebitch Jeffe
Only paper plates in restaurants, orders Fort Bragg
One of the new ways of life in a drought is California restaurants will only serve you water if you ask for it.
But in the city of Fort Bragg, 130 miles up the coast from San Francisco, people are taking it a step further.
The dry conditions there are so extreme that the city's requiring restaurants to serve people only with paper plates and flatware.
It's one of the many measures Fort Bragg enacted because one of the city's main sources of water is now unusable.
A lack of fresh water flowing from the Noyo River means that ocean tides can creep up the channel to reach intake pipes that provide 40 percent of the city's water supply.
Tom Varga, director of public works for the city of Fort Bragg, joins Take Two to talk about some of the drastic measures the city has enacted.
Peet's buys Stumptown coffee, hoping to ride the success of 'third wave' roasters
There is a lot of dough in a cuppa Joe.
The national chain Peet's just bought the relatively small but hip coffee roaster Stumptown for an undisclosed amount. The food and beverage industry is buzzing, because these roasters represent one of the fastest growing and profitable segments in the business: Craft coffee.
Stumptown is part of what's known as the "third wave" of roasters because they take the art and love of coffee beyond where Peet's and Starbucks brought it in the 1990s.
Cory Eldridge, editor of the trade magazine Fresh Cup magazine, explains why coffee drinkers are turning to these craft brews in droves, and how national chains don't want to be left behind.
A new partnership to get the Inland Empire more health care workers
In the coming years, more than 16,000 health care jobs are expected to open up in the Inland Empire. However, there might not be enough people to take those positions.
To create a pipeline of students to head into these fields, high schools, universities, health providers and more are all teaming up to streamline the education process.
This collaboration is called Convergence. It would clearly lay out paths that students could take, and at which institutions they could take them.
For example, if a high school student wanted to become a nurse, a school counselor would suggest classes at several different colleges to fulfill a program's requirements. The colleges, themselves, would also agree that credits could easily transfer. Finally, a participating medical provider would agree to fast-track a graduating student's job application to better ensure their chances at being hired.
Devorah Lieberman, president of the University of La Verne, says this kind of communication and partnership between local organizations is unheard of.
She believes that in the past, students had to navigate this bureaucracy on their own without assistance; Convergence would offer them guidance the whole way through.
Lieberman joins Take Two to describe how it could help address the area's health care needs.