How could political polling and Disney World possibly be related? Just ask Doug Usher, who serves as the Managing Partner of Purple Insights, and is an expert of opinion research and methodology and U.S. elections. Her also created the Purple Poll, which looks at trends across the political and brand spheres. On April 5, 2016, Usher presented a talk at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics to a packed audience of students from various disciplines and community members looking to get an inside look into polling of the 2016 presidential primary.

Throughout his talk, Usher explained what is was like working as a pollster and corrected some common misconceptions about polling, while weaving in humorous, real-world anecdotes and analogies that helped keep the audience engaged and informed.

For example, he noted that someone had mistaken him for an 'upholsterer' when he introduced himself as 'a pollster.' In explaining how his job has changed, Usher described the difficulties pollsters now have in fielding an accurate poll due to the rise of cell phones. Today, people that usually answer the phone and talk to pollsters are older people who are used to depending on a landline. On the other hand, young people are often never reached by pollsters as they are more likely to use a cell phone or not have a landline at all. This creates a problem for pollsters, as their respondents to a phone survey may not be reflective of the overall population who will be voting in the election, making the poll results less accurate.

In discussing the 2016 presidential primaries, Usher also demonstrated that although many people think that polls during this primary season have been really far off from the actual results of the election, polls have actually been on the mark in the vast majority of states with only a few exceptions.

At the end of his talk, Usher related the job of a pollster to the job of an employee at Disney World. One of the most common questions Disney employees are asked is, "What time is the 3 p.m. parade?" While the answer to this question might seem blatantly obvious, Usher notes that what the person may really be asking is different than how they phrased their question. For example, the person may really be asking: "What time is it now?" or "When will the parade get to where I am standing?"

Usher says he feels that the job of a pollster is to dig deeper and find underlying meaning in what people are asking or saying in the same way that a Disney employee might have to answer the question about the parade.