Democracy 101

Election Day is just days away (Nov. 8th, to be precise), and while plenty of North Carolina voters will head to the polls on the day itself, there's still time to vote early, as well.

Millions of people are about to head to the polls, and not all of them are voters.

Polling and politics go hand-in-hand, with regular surveys of public opinion being a vital tool for campaigns and voters alike.

But with so many polls coming out so quickly these days, it can be hard to make sense of them, especially when they disagree.

As the election draws nearer, state and national campaigns are spending millions on reams of voter data, and they're using that information to connect with people in a wide variety of personalized ways. In our series Democracy 101, we're looking at how all this works.

“The primary purpose of the Electoral College was to put kind of a safety valve if we ever had too much democracy.”