Learn how to cover polls at Campaign Boot Camp, tomorrow

Was the Michigan primary -- won by Bernie Sanders after the Real Clear Politics average showed Hillary Clinton up by 21 points -- an anomaly or a sign of things to come? Were the reported “surges” by various non-Trump candidates in the past year mirages or something else?

Find out tomorrow, March 22 -- and learn much else about election polling -- in the Club's Campaign Boot Camp in the Bloomberg Room starting at 9:30 a.m.

Cost is $5 for National Press Club members and $10 for other journalists.

Reservations are required. To reserve, click here.

Polling in the 2016 election is playing a bigger role in news coverage -– even without Donald Trump telling everyone how well he’s doing -- than ever before. And it may be less reliable than ever.

Learn about how pollsters do their job and what you need to know when covering polls in the first Campaign Boot Camp of 2016, presented by the National Press Club Journalism Institute and the Club’s Professional Development Committee.

Hear from Cliff Zukin, who wrote in The New York Times last June that “election polling is in near crisis,” and Scott Keeter, who retired in January as director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. Both are former presidents of the American Association of Public Opinion Research, and collaborated on their book, ‘Uninformed Choice: Failure of the New Presidential Nominating System.’

Jonathan Salant, a former club president and Washington reporter for New Jersey Advance Media who was responsible for poll coverage during his days at Bloomberg News, will moderate.

The program will focus on:

How can you tell a good poll from a bad poll?

What are the signs that a poll just should not be presented as news, no matter how many clicks you’ll get reporting it?

Why are polls generally becoming less reliable?

What can pollsters do if people don’t answer the phone any more?