Letter From the Editor 

After the midterms, I kept hearing discussions about why people bother paying attention to polls since they’ve been consistently inaccurate. I questioned the same thing. I'm fairly new to the survey world. I didn’t know how election polling worked. I talked to our survey science expert and thought-leader Erin Caldwell about the topic, and she taught me there are actually a lot of restrictions in election polling that make political predictions hard to pin down. The challenges she told me about would have never crossed my mind.

Our conversation got me thinking about how we are often unaware of the complexities of other people's jobs. The survey industry, in particular, is scientific with a lot of nitty-gritty details involved. A deep comprehension of survey science is why Polco is so beneficial to local governments; we have experts like Erin with decades of experience. That knowledge allows us to leverage tried-and-true best practices in survey methodology, while also leading the nation in civic analytics innovations. That expertise is an invaluable asset to decision-makers who rely on accurate data to improve their communities.

  Jessie O'Brien | Polco Copywriter and The Civil Review Editor