Since 1956, European countries have come together each year to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, a competition of primarily pop and techno artists that can often seem like a parody of European musical tastes. There have long been accusations of bias in the voting process and last Saturday’s contest, which Sweden won, was no exception. In this installment of FiveThirtyEight Politics podcastGalen talks with professor of statistics and health economics Gianluca Baio, who created a model to determine if there really are biases that favor or harm certain nations.
Galen also speaks with Courtney Kennedy, vice president of methods and innovation at the Pew Research Center, who recently published a study showing that the survey industry today bears little resemblance to the survey industry at the turn of the century. The days of real humans randomly dialing landlines are long gone, but what does that mean for the accuracy of public opinion research?